Welcome to the final week of our nine week series. Congratulations if you've made it this far, staying with something for nine weeks/sessions is no small thing.
This week we explore building our inner resource of wellbeing and then go deep into some of the closing stages of the practice.
In my experience over these past eight years of offering Yoga Nidras to people in groups and 1-1 settings, these stages are the ones that seem to have the most profound impact and keep people coming back for more. It's here that we can often connect to states of being not otherwise accessible (soberly!) in our waking experience of life.
Whenever I check in after a session around experiences it is often these stages that people are sharing on; feeling deeply asleep in body but aware in mind, the blurring of the physical boundaries of the body with the space around, the feeling of being beyond clock time, an inner knowing that there is something far deeper that lay beyond ‘I’ and identity, inter-connectedness, peace, expansiveness, profound relaxation, deep meditation, connecting to our true essence and so many more experiences that are not easily describable in words.
I have had a good number of people share that they come to Yoga Nidra to get ‘high’ or to 'trip' and that feeling often arises from these later stages, as we drift away from relentless thinking into a more spacious and expanded, less linear experience of self, a self that is a part of the whole and that unshakeable feeling of wholeness.
For me Yoga Nidra gets me closer to who I truly am, beyond who I think I am and connects me back to my animal nature, my heart, my community and divinity. It weaves me back into the fabric of life on Earth, so that I feel less like a single thread of lonely yarn and more like an integral yet insignificant part of a great tapestry of diversity, connection and creation.
Inner Resource
This stage is usually found fairly near the start of an iRest Yoga Nidra practice. If you've ever done any forms of trauma therapy which require it, such as EMDR, then you'll be familiar with this concept. It's the cultivation of a place within you to which you can return any time you need to. During a practice of yoga nidra, as in life, moments of difficulty can arise and the cultivation of this place gives us a home base and an anchor for our awareness when things feel too much for us to bear. A sacred inner refuge to return to whenever we need to feel soothed. However, sometimes we have been through so much and our bodies are so traumatised that it's impossible to find a safe space within us. In this case, it might be finding a neutral place to return our awareness to, it could even be a place as tiny as a fingernail.
East and West
Western thought categorises the human experience into three states of being; mental, physical and emotional, whereas yogic thought expands this to a theory of seven bodies or layers of experience known as kośas (koshas). Yoga Nidra invites awareness to soak into and permeate all of these layers of experience, making it possible to infuse the body, mind and spirit with feeling and intention all the way to the deepest layers of awareness through the gateway of the subconscious. A subconscious that becomes more permeable in the liminal states of awareness that can arise between stages. Along the way there is an invitation to release unnecessary stress whether mental, physical, emotional or all three, making it easier to reach the wild and natural divine human animal state of changeless being.
The Kośas and The Stages of Yoga Nidra
A recap of the stages of Yoga Nidra through the lens of the Kośas.
Annamaya Kośa - The Physical Body: Awareness of Sensation
During this stage, you are invited to explore and observe the sensations of the physical body through a variety of techniques culminating in a body scan, the itinerary of which depends on the intention of the practice and the style of Yoga Nidra. The overall purpose is generally to welcome sensation, clear neural pathways and facilitate a connection or reconnection between body and mind.
Pranamaya Kośa – The Energy Body: Awareness of Breath and Energy
During this stage, awareness begins to move from the gross to the subtle through experiencing the breath as ripples and flows of energy and sensation moving through the body. A variety of different breath awareness techniques can be employed during this stage, again, depending on the intention and the practice style.
Manomaya Kośa – The Emotional Body: Awareness of Feelings and Emotions
Yoga Nidra can allow emotions to rise to the surface through the dissipation of physical, mental and emotional tension and armouring. These emotions can then be explored explicitly during the ‘exploring opposites of emotion’ stage or implicitly without this stage by welcoming everything to be just as it is, witnessing the experience of emotions arising, stabilising, dissipating and releasing without attachment, impression or repression. Witnessing emotions from the deeply restful states of Yoga Nidra can help to rewire the brain to be able to welcome and tolerate challenging emotions in everyday life.
Vijnanamaya Kośa – The Wisdom Body: Awareness of Witness Consciousness
This kośa can be explored in many ways but is an invitation to connect to inner wisdom. It might be a guided visualisation, an exploration of stepping in and out of the experience of an emotions or the cultivation of inner listening. Inner listening requires us to shift from the language of the mind and cognition; that of words and reason, to the language of our bodies; that of feelings and emotions, insights and images, symbols, hunches and inner knowings, training the capacity to hear, respond to and draw guidance from our intuition and instincts.
Anandamaya Kośa – The Bliss Body: Awareness of Pleasure & Joy
This stage appears as an explicit stage in the iRest Yoga Nidra form of Yoga Nidra but often arises spontaneously as a result of the practice. It is the exploration of our natural state of being that can be unveiled through the practice of Yoga Nidra. There is the invitation to dive into sensations of joy and pleasure if they do emerge, rather than delay or deny the experiences in favour of the duties and demands of everyday life. This stage explores the wild and natural state of joy available to us in every moment, even the hardest, through conscious awareness.
Asmitamaya Kośa – I/Ego: Awareness of The Ego/Existential Explorations
Towards the end of a Yoga Nidra we can move beyond the realms of I/me/my thinking as the Default Mode Network is de-activated and it can allow us to zoom out from the perspective of the experiencer to that of the observer. This state of being can provide a new vantage point and an opportunity to explore the meaning of ‘I’, and ego. Existential explorations can arise here such as contemplating the nature of being and awareness or what remains beyond 'I' and identity.
Sahaj – Natural State: Awareness of the Wild and Natural State of Being
After exploring awareness and being it can become possible to truly embody our natural state of being. The unchanging and unchanged state that exists beneath the surface levels of experience and beyond all of the thoughts, distractions, stories, tensions and adaptive patterns. During this stage, it can be possible to explore and experience non-separate wholeness and feel a true sense of unity with all things.
Hypnopompic State
The later stages of a Yoga Nidra can facilitate potent and permeable states similar to the moment just before waking, known as the hypnopompic state. Just as in hypnotherapy where the end of the session offers space for the hypnotist to implant therapeutic post-hypnotic suggestions, here at the end of a Yoga Nidra it can be useful to offer space for the practitioner to implant their own post-hypnotic suggestions into this receptive state, such as revisiting sankalpa or using an affirmation. It can be particularly powerful to explore sankalpa in a visceral way at this point by inviting in all of the emotions, sensations and images associated with the fulfilment of this sankalpa. Inviting the nervous system to fully experience this vision as though it is already our reality.
Merging with Everyday Life
The period of time immediately following the experience of these deep states of awareness can be a vulnerable and sensitive and as such the emergence from a practice of Yoga Nidra should be slow, sensitive and integrative.
When teaching private sessions and group classes I try to allow at least five minutes for practitioners to bathe in the aftermath of the practice, integrate the practice into everyday states of awareness and begin to move again completely in their own time. Some people want to move immediately, particularly if their practice has been restless or distracted, whilst others can require around five minutes of stillness before even beginning to think about moving a finger, let alone slowly returning back to full waking consciousness.
This liminal state between practice and everyday life can be a potent time to explore merging the state of Yoga Nidra with everyday states of awareness. One way of doing this is to explore opening and closing your eyes whilst still lying down at the end of practice and exploring bringing vision back whilst staying connected to the state of Yoga Nidra. With practice and commitment, it can become possible to use techniques like the body scan in everyday life situations to invoke the state of Yoga Nidra into everyday waking states and this merging towards the end of practice is a key aspect of this integration.
After a class I then like to allow another five to ten minutes at least for practitioners to come fully back to a wakeful state, to offer conversation, brighter lighting, time and space, especially if they have to drive.
The after-effects of Yoga Nidra can be long-lasting, which is one of the real draws of this practice for me but it can mean that it can take a little while to feel fully ready to drive or be completely cognitive again. When offering Yoga Nidra as part of a retreat or after my women's circles, I offer smells such as essential oils and snacks such as dates and dark chocolate to facilitate a return using the senses.
Thank you
There is so much more that could be shared but I have to have some kind of containment. So here we are at the end of this series! Thank you so much for taking the time to explore this with me. I don't take it lightly at all that you've spent your time in this way, I know how precious time is.
If you do have a couple of precious minutes to spare to drop me some feedback or to share your experiences with me, I'd absolutely love that.
And if you want to support my work, sharing this series on your socials or with your friends is hugely appreciated.
Carly x
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Links:
Uma and Nirlipta ~ https://www.yoganidranetwork.org/
