This week we explore the visualisation stage of Yoga Nidra. This stage is perhaps one of the most varied in terms of its delivery, whether or not it is included and if it is where and how. It can be potent when it meets our needs and it can also be unhelpful when it doesn't. It's a supremely personal stage but one that is too important to skip even with its limitations and challenges.
Visualisation Stage in the Different Traditions
In the iRest form of Yoga Nidra there is no explicit visualisation stage but visualisation is used in other stages such as the Inner Resource stage, where you may be invited to recall memories for the purpose of building a resource of wellbeing to be used both in practice and in everyday life. In the Satyananda form of Yoga Nidra the visualisation has a huge amount of variability and scope. Two of the common ways that visualisations are used in this stage are in the form of a story or journey guided by the facilitator or a series of archetypal images known as ‘spot’ images, delivered in a rapid stream to be seen in the mind’s eye. The Himalayan tradition doesn't include the visualisation stage. This is such a personal part of the practice. I use it with caution in groups settings because you never know what you might be evoking for each individual.
East Meets West
Visualisation can be incredibly powerful, as we discussed in week 3. It can activate the reticular activating system which means that the brain is firing as wiring as though what is being visualised is happening in real time. This has powerful potential.
Visualisation is used in the sports world, for example, seeing yourself in a yoga pose in your mind’s eye has been shown to improve your capacity to do it and it’s even been shown that you can think about a muscle and build muscle mass, which has huge implications for those rehabilitating injuries or mobility limited in some way. And I’ve even heard about it being used in the more forward thinking approaches to cancer treatment. Modern science has caught up with ancient practices in this respect and Yoga Nidra harnesses this capacity in many ways depending on the practice, the intention and the practitioner.
Liberation from Past Patterns
Visualisation can be incredibly healing for anyone working to shed habitual patterns and tendencies (samskaras in sanskrit) to uncover their authentic/essential/highest self or true nature, whatever language you feel most comfy with. This is the self we know ourselves to be at our core without our adaptive patterns. When working through challenges or distortions of identity it can be incredibly healing to see yourself living out your true nature in your mind’s eye, living in a liberated way, a little like future-self journaling. Just as a sports person might visualise the perfect golf swing, you might visualise yourself showing up in a way that is more true to who you are at your core. Over time it can support us to become more congruent, so our insides match our outward expression.
As a person who has spent a lifetime trying to liberate myself from adaptive patterns and suppression of my true self, I've found these kinds of visualisations incredibly helpful. Not as a way to berate myself for not showing up as I know I can when those patterns reinstate themselves but as a way of reminding myself, in an embodied way, how it feels to be me, with so much grace for the adaptive patterns that have kept me alive thus far.
Accessing Inner Wisdom
Outside of the visualisations during the sankalpa and inner resource stages, I like to harness this stage to offer space to observe the mind’s eye (chidakash in the yogic tradition) or listen inwardly to the heart space (hridayakash) with guidance and cues. Sometimes I do this in the form of what I like to call a ‘Narnia Nidra’ stepping through a threshold of some kind and observing without expectation or preference what lay beyond. Sometimes I might guide a journey but other times I like to simply welcome quiet space to witness the inner experience. Humans are incredibly intuitive and instinctive. I believe we hold all of the wisdom we need within and this stage can simply invite space and time to explore and uncover what is already there.
This stage also sometimes happens spontaneously. As mentioned previously, there is the capacity to experience wakeful REM during a practice of Yoga Nidra. This is often described as seeing a rapid succession of images or flashes in the later stages of the practice and can be incredibly insightful and interesting to explore. If you want to invite the potential for this into your practice, it is best not to use an eye pillow, as this can stop the rapid eye movements. You might instead use a light scarf, eye mask or something similar.
Waking REM can also be a little unsettling if what is revealed to you is not pleasant. I have experienced this myself. During a practice on one of my Yoga Nidra training courses, I suddenly saw in my mind's eye a memory which I had suppressed. The intense relaxation of the practice had allowed me to gain access to that which I had been unwilling to meet in my previously armoured state. It was painful but helpful as it allowed me to put together another piece of the puzzle of my suffering at that time. I wouldn't have changed that experience but it certainly wasn't an enjoyable one. I am always aware of the potential for this kind of experience when guiding a practice.
AphantasiaÂ
It’s also important to be aware of the phenomenon of aphantasia. Around a third of people cannot visualise at all. For this reason, I always include a sensory aspect to any journey or visual I might offer. I often use the experience of bare feet on the ground traversing various terrain alongside the visual cues of what might be there ie. a forest. I might use language such as 'sense, feel or imagine' rather than simply 'imagine or visualise' so that there is the invitation to feel or sense what is also being offered visually.
Next week we explore the stage sometimes referred to as the 'bliss', 'joy' or 'pure awareness' stage towards the end of the practice.
Carly x
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