What IS Yoga Nidra?

Reading from Wednesday, February 13, 2013 yoga class

The following appeared in a monthly online newsletter by Jennifer Reis.  The author, Susan Abbattista, is describing her 5 day-long stay at Kripalu and her experience of yoga nidra with Jennifer Reis. She had enough of her intense vinyasa practice and needed some stillness.  I am including highlights from her piece in what follows:

Yoga Nidra: power yoga of the mind

One day, toward the end of September, you decide you've had enough of Boston's back-to-school keg-party scene and you fly out to Kripalu.  Ah, the Berkshires!  The air is so clean and fresh!  You are in a room where about 30 people are apparently doing yoga.  But they're lying in the dark.  Tucked under blankets, they are woolly lumps with human ears, noses, and lips.  They appear to be doing nothing more than listening and breathing. 

One of my favorite vinyasa yoga teachers once said, "If dropping into stillness is the hardest thing for you to do, then that is what you need the most."  And so, sometime around the first frost, I came to Kripalu to try a meditative practice called yoga nidra.  Translated as "yogic sleep" this type of yoga focuses on systematic relaxation of the body while the mind enters a state of deep, meditative awareness--like dreaming while fully awake.  I'd never done this type of yoga before and didn't quite know what ot expect.  One thing I did know: underneath my blanket, I was an exhausted mess.  Now here it was, the onset of fall, the hardest seasonal transition for me.  I felt myself floating and drifting, a balloon accidentally released from the fist of a child.   I needed to reel myself back in.  I wasn't alone.  Most of the other participants also confessed to being deeply fatigued.  A friendly couple from New Jersey needed time to decompress from their management jobs;  a shy woman shared that this was her first trip without her husband and kids...she had come here to get to know herself a little better; and my favorite: the tough-on-the-outside/soft-on-the-inside cop who was trying to gain some emotional footing around the 10-year anniversary of September 11th.  Our teacher, Jennifer Reis, guided us with compassion with a voice as soothing as warm maple syrup on pancakes.  The only instruction: listen and don't try too hard.

Over the course of five days some unspoken guidelines emerged from the darkness:

Stay awake if you can.  Yoga nidra is really not about sleeping (though you might).  In this ultra-relaxed state of consciousness, your mind is focused, fully alert, and receptive... called the relaxation response, where deep healing and regeneration can happen.

Don't worry if you can't relax at first.
For me, it was a slow process of trusting and letting go.  In fact, for the first two days, I felt like an egg sitting on the edge of a kitchen counter.

Trust the flow.  It can seem formless and passive, but the practice of yoga nidra is as systematic as most any other yoga flow.  There is a basic sequence: get comfortable, set an intention for your practice, relax each part of the body, take a guided journey (maybe it's forest, field of sage, a warm beach) and see what you see, feel what you feel, repeat your intention, return to your self. 

Inner vision.  You close your eyes and gaze into your heart.  You find words there like, freedom.  You see symbols: a turtle retracted inside its shell; the stop sign thatn actually says GO; the picnic table from your childhood; the backyard of your first home; the tablecloth your mother used for company.

Outward vision.  After doing this for a few days, you start to have a different view of everything around you.  You see the autumn leaves in exquisite detail--sad and beautiful at once. 

Soft vision.  By the fifth day, you see yourself and others with more gentleness.  You realize everyone is searching for the same thing.  A wise swami one said, "Observation without judgment is the greatest spiritual practice of all.  Trust what you see.