Abdominal prenatal yoga poses

Congratulations! Soon you’ll be a mommy. How are you feeling? We bet you can shake off that awful, tiresome feeling, right? Well, don’t worry, you’re actually doing great. This is one of the most exciting times in the life of a young woman and something that you should be proud of.

However, to help you out during these changes, prenatal yoga has emerged as an efficient and reliable solution. Basically, it concentrates on pregnant woman poses that are meant to boost both flexibility and strength. Most importantly, it improves one’s breathing and creates sufficient relaxation time.

With that in mind, this brief but detailed guide will look at these prenatal yoga poses and also mention their general advantages. Once you’re through reading, you will notice that these tips are just as crucial as choosing the best baby products for your unborn child. Take a look!

7 Brilliant Prenatal Yoga Poses for You to Try Out!

1.     Putting Your Legs Up Against the Wall

This is one of the simplest and effective prenatal yoga poses that calm the body’s nervous system. As a result, it relieves stress and drowsiness as well as dehydration. However, if you’re in your 3^rd or 2^nd trimester, don’t lie on your back. If for some reason, you’re not okay using a wall, the chair is another remarkable option.

2.     The Wide-Legged Child’s Pose Variation

The next prenatal yoga posture on our list is this child’s pose. It’s a highly grounding position that connects you to your every breath. It opens up your chest and hips and lengthens your spine for a seamless labor process. Experts add that practicing this prenatal yoga at home exercise will assist you in accommodating your constantly growing tummy.

3.     The Seated ‘Piriformis’ Stretch

Here’s another remarkable prenatal yoga posture that reduces the discomforts of pregnancy. Research shows that a majority of pregnant mothers go through sciatic pains caused by a change in the lumbar spine. With this in mind, this prenatal yoga position ensures that the glut or buttock muscles stay loose throughout the pregnancy process.

4.     The ‘Malasana’ or Yogi Squat

A group of women in a yoga class

(Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/pFyKRmDiWEA)

This is another of the best prenatal yoga postures which every pregnant mother needs to try out. What makes it unique from the rest is that it’s the normally used birthing posture. It, will, therefore, prepare your hips for the crucial task ahead.

5.     The Cat or Cow Pose

This is one of those prenatal yoga poses which do a fantastic job in toning your arms and abdominals not to mention keeping your spine properly straight. The exercise also keeps the baby in the right labor position. All in all, it keeps pregnant mothers completely relaxed by stretching both their back and chest.

6.     The Standing Forward Gentle Fold

Are you experiencing back pains during your pregnancy? Don’t panic as this is a common discomfort felt by many expectant mothers. Luckily, this prenatal yoga posture is here to help you decompress your spine for better relief.

Now, to avoid compressing your tummy, carry out your stretches gently. What’s more, remember that gravity is on your side, so just breathe and you’ll have achieved maximum relaxation.

7.     The ‘Sukhasana’ or Easy Pose

This prenatal yoga posture comes with a lot of benefits. Pregnancy is known to change the state of your mind and body making it hard for you to carry out your day to day activities. Fortunately, by doing the easy pose, you can meditate and connect better with your body. It’s one of the easiest transformative experiences.

The Key Advantages of Prenatal Yoga

Like we’ve previously mentioned, many amazing perks come with prenatal yoga poses. The postures involved improve your pregnancy wellness in various ways. Key among them include:

• Promoting sufficient sleep
• Reducing back pains
• Minimizing stress
• Decreasing headaches and feelings of nausea
• Minimizing the preterm labor risks.

Now other than the benefits mentioned above, research further shows that prenatal yoga poses also help in alleviating problems of hypertension. In fact, they improve the general development of the fetus!

Conclusion

With these prenatal yoga online tips, you can finally say goodbye to that awful feeling of discomfort during pregnancy. If possible, do these 7 poses daily for effective and satisfactory results. They will ensure you remain calm and happy throughout the nine months. Most importantly, you’ll get a healthy and perfectly developed baby.

So, which posture do you think you’ll try first?

Although yoga is an ancient practice, in recent years, it has gained worldwide popularity. Various forms of yoga combine different poses with helping you relax and promote good posture. Chakras are important in yoga because they are the central points of feelings, energy, and thoughts. Today, yoga is evolving, and it mainly focuses on flexibility, exercise, and strength. It not only helps with mental wellness, but also on overall physical strength.

Is Yoga Enough as the Main Physical Activity for You?

People exercise to stay healthy and to ward off diseases. Yogis claim that yoga has many benefits compared to other exercises. Below are ways yoga contributes to your fitness:

Strength

Did you know that yoga can be a strength-training exercise? This means it helps in bone density and boosting muscular strength. If you haven’t engaged in any strength-training workouts, yoga benefits include boosting your strength as you do the poses.

Yoga, as an exercise, focuses on improving your shoulders and hips stability. For yoga to count as strength training, you have to do various poses. Yoga poses to recruit the whole body instead of focusing on specific muscles like other strength training. For instance, if you practice Chaturanga Dandasana, you often feel mostly in the upper body, thighs, feet, and core. You also feel it in your arms as the muscles struggle to maintain balance. This is what makes yoga an effective strength-training workout. With yoga, you don’t have to lift weights or risk injuries.

Coordination and Balance

Coordination is an important aspect of our health, especially as we get older. Whether you’re an athlete, gym enthusiast, or simply want to get fit, coordination and balance are necessary for your exercises.

Yoga is an excellent way to improve your coordination. You don’t have to attend a yoga class. According to professionals, at Gym Expert, you just need a mat and space. You can learn yoga from online sources and magazines. To reap yoga benefits for balance, you need to focus on poses that focus on coordination.

Mobility

Functional movement is a part of having a healthy life. It means that you can move your joints without difficulty or pain. Yoga as an exercise concentrates on movements rather than your muscles.

Yoga not only helps with strength but also with flexibility. With time, your muscles might lose their functionality, and you might have limited movement. Most people shy away from yoga because they think they are not flexible enough. Yoga does not mean that you have to pull your legs over your head. On the contrary, you practice yoga to be flexible, to boost your strength, and to connect the body to the brain through meditation.

Cardiovascular Fitness

Yoga is beneficial for your overall health. It not only helps to lower blood pressure, but also improves circulation, heart rate, and respiration, and boosts lung capacity. Yoga helps to calm the mind, which helps to lower blood pressure.

Yoga as an exercise is excellent for your heart’s health as it does not only help with blood pressure, but also with blood glucose and cholesterol. Yoga poses to engage your muscles, which increases their sensitivity to insulin and controls blood glucose.

Taking deep breaths lower blood pressures, while meditation calms the nervous system. Most yoga sessions include meditation and reflection. It is done while lying face up with closed eyes. This makes it easy to release stuck energy and to meditate easily. Because yoga is not strenuous, it is effective for people with cardiovascular problems.

Yoga Benefits with Managing Stress

If you think yoga is not for you because you find it hard to stretch or reach your toes, you might want to try it to manage stress. Yoga benefits both our physical and mental health. The practice focuses on breathing, body+mind+spirit connections, and also helps with emotional wellbeing.

People who lift weights and engage in other forms of exercise, experience less stress. Their brain releases endorphins, which improve their mood. Yoga, on the other hand, is different because it is a combination of physical fitness and the doctrine of self-awareness and compassion.

An excellent idea associated with yoga is to refrain from judging others and yourself. It helps to eliminate stress because most of it comes from comparison and expecting too much from ourselves.

Conclusion

Yoga has been around for many years; however, it is now popular because people understand its benefits. Yoga is effective for both our physical and mental wellbeing. Yoga can be used as a main exercise; however, if you want to build muscles, include other exercises.

Ira Zunin, MD, MBA, MPH

Ira Zunin, MD, MPH, MBA offers a global, strategic perspective as to why he has made a priority of forming partnerships with insurers and employers to advance his integrative practice model for disabling pain: “We know we can spend a decade in the legislature trying to fight for one small thing. This is an opportunity to solve big problems which big payers know they have and create a lot of latitude for integrative medicine.”

Zunin’s base is his Manakai O Malama integrative center on the island of Oahu. Since it’s founding in 2002, the clinic has had over 100,000 patient visits to its array of practitioners. (See “Clinical Services” in the table). In 2005, the Zunin’s team partnered with Hawaii Medical Services Association (HMSA), the island’s Blue Cross Blue Shield carrier, and two workman’s compensation firms for an integrative pain pilot that targets a costly, disabled population .

Hawaii Blues Plan funded the pilot

“We viewed this as a chance to study a comprehensive biopsychosocial intervention,” states Zunin, an Integrator adviser.

Hawaii Blues Plan funded the pilot

“We viewed this as a chance to study a comprehensive biopsychosocial intervention,” states Zunin, an Integrator adviser. The program is family, community and group-based. Zunin adds that the approach particularly sought to “interrupt the pattern of social isolation” often found in such a population. Group process might shift the “pattern of suffering.” Working with families might increase positive secondary gains. The emphasis was on mind-body strategies which might reduce “pain-related depression that can contribute to suffering.”

Among the complementary and alternative
components included are the use of Feldenkrais and Yoga, humor, acupuncture in a
group-delivery model, and diverse mind-body therapies including a
program with elements of the mind-body stress reduction programs
developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD.

Outcomes: anxiety, disability, opiate use down

Zunin reports that “the outcomes have been great.” Among those found were:

• Quality of life Scores for the 33 who completed all of the 12 weeks improved on all standardized, subjective measures, with particular advances in diminishing anxiety.

• Disability Of the 64% who had been disabled or partially disabled in the prior 12 months, 85% returned to gainful activity or were cleared to work. 100% of those who returned to gainful activity were still “gainfully engaged” at one-year follow-up.

• Opiate use Of the 79% who had been under high level opiate analgesics during the 12 months prior, 97% had reductions in use of 25% or more, 81% of 50% or more and 50% had 100% reductions on high level opiate use. At one year follow-up, 100% of those who substantially-reduced opiates remained off of them.

Zunin, reports that these positive outcomes have led to a discussions
with HMSA to make the program a covered benefit, and with the Veteran’s
Administration about expanding the program and offering it to vets.

The carrot and stick values of the group intervention

Zunin believes that the group-method of service delivery was a significant factor in achieving these positive outcomes. “The thing about pain and extreme obesity is that they are socially isolating. So, on one side” – what Zunin called the “carrot” – “you are interrupting this pattern.” He adds that he felt that acupuncture in a group model can particularly help: “There is something energetic that occurs as a group.”

Then Zunin explains how he believes that group-focused treatment also has a “stick” dimension to it. Reflects Zunin: “The other side of the group ethic is the stick. In this population, you typically have people who have learned to manipulate one provider after another. They spot that manipulation in each other and whomp each other for it when it comes up.” In short, the counseling from a fellow-patient may be much more direct and to the point than that from the patient’s doctor.

Zunin described plans for modifying the program from lessons learned in this round. First, Zunin anticipates screening all participants at the first 4 weeks. This would give a chance to “graduate” some of the quick responders and to remove some from the program who are clearly not engaged. In both cases, costs would be saved. Zunin also anticipates producing the three 4-week sessions as “chapters” with more of a thematic continuity.

Zunin, who founded the Hawaii State Consortium for Integrative Health Care, continues to believe that pilots such as this, which analyze outcomes of whole systems of care, in partnership with insurers or other payers is the way to transform the system. Says Zunin: “The contribution I would like to see to our shared field is to lighten the path to rapid change.”

For another article on Zunin’s work, please see (Zunin on CAM-IM Clinical Services in Healthy Living “Age Targeted” Communities, April 24, 2006).

Comment: Zunin’s comments about the value of the group reminded me of the astonishingly positive outcomes of the group-focused programs delivered to Chrysler employees onsite (Chrysler Expands Group-Focused Integrative Pain Partnership with Henry Ford Health System CAM Group, July 23, 2007; and Chrysler’s Health Leaders on Their Integrative Health Pilot Projects, February 26, 2008). Zunin agreed that there may be something in the individualized nature of the experience of pain which makes it particularly susceptible to group mind-body interventions.

To the extent that this may be true, our health professional educational programs must begin to train professionals to participate in and help lead these group interventions. The training in delivering such programs is essentially, as the fundamental, economic law of clinical decision-making seems to be that practitioners of all stripes are most likely to recommend services that they, themselves are equipped to provide.

Kudos to Zunin for having the vision to put this together and see it through this round. I agree with his strategic sense that these kinds of projects are the best way to light the path to quicker uptake of integrative practices.

The name, Center for Research on Integrative Medicine in the Military, and the associated acronym, CRIMM, each sound like part of James Bond story. What is integrative medicine in this context? Might practices be integrated which could have important civilian applications?

CRIMM is one of 4 key initiatives

CRIMM exists. The center is the leading strategic initiative for one of the most influential organizations involved with integrative practice in the United States. In the last half-decade, CRIMM projects led to over a score of publications. Some 30 projects are completed, presently in progress or planned with collaborating institutions such as Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Malcolm Grow Medical Center, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Madigan Army Medical Center, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, U.S. Air Force, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

The research organization behind this work is the Samueli Institute, founded in 2001 by philanthropists Henry and Susan Samueli, and Wayne Jonas, MD. Jonas, the former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine (now NCCAM), has a long association with both Walter Reed and USUHS as well as a lengthy professional and personal interest in integrative practices. He serves as the Institute’s president and CEO. Joan Walter, JD, PA, the Institute’s vice president for military medical research, leads the military initiative.

While time will tell whether the Samueli Institute’s military-based research through CRIMM will translate into civilian uses, the Institute’s research is already shifting care in parts of the sprawling U.S. military. States Walter: “We have a number of initiatives that have gone beyond us sitting around and saying ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ if something was part of typical care. These initiatives have either been taken up and are funded through the Department of Defense (DoD) or members of the DoD at some level have said, ‘we’d like to develop this with you.'”

“Battlefield acupuncture” – a new 5-point protocol for primary care doctors

A leading area where evidence developed in Samueli Institute pilot projects is now being transformed into practice in military medicine is in the use of auricular acupuncture. The Air Force has particularly shown interest in training its physicians in a limited use of needles.

The initiative began with Samueli Institute working in cooperation with medical acupuncturist Colonel Richard Niemtzow, MD. Niemtzow developed a 5-point auricular therapy through “distilling the literature and applying critical thinking to what he was seeing in his clinical practice” said Walter. Niemtzow and another medical acupuncturist, Colonel Stephen Burns, MD delivered the treatments in the pilot projects.

Following a series of pilot studies, an Air Force leader was “sufficiently impressed,” said Walter, to wonder how they could “make the therapy more widely available.” The Institute’s next contract was to take the therapy and “manualize” it. The Samueli Institute team developed materials for doctors – mainly family practitioners – as well as explanatory materials for patients.

Colonel Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, medical acupuncturist

Why the value to the Air Force? Walter notes that acupuncture for pain can limit the need for pain medications that area often used treatments that are often used such as motrin (“Vitamin M” as it is known to soldiers) or even narcotic medications. Adds Walter: “A pilot can’t fly while on (these drugs).” Acupuncture was viewed as a treatment that might avoid the side effects of drowsiness and decreased alertness which are common wiht the use of medications. Through the program to educate other physicians in the protocol, in partnership with Anderson Air Force Base, the Institute is assisting the Air Force in evaluating whether the therapy, in hands other than Niemtzow’s and Burns, will prove as effective. Interest has also been expressed by leaders of a U.S. base in Germany.

Yoga Nidra as part of a program for traumatized soldiers

Walter notes that the uptake of acupuncture follows a typical process in which evidence is first gathered through from multiple studies and, if deemed effective, is slowly incorporated into practice. Then she adds: “Sometimes with the military what makes a treatment attractive is something that will meet a need that is calling out
for a new approach.”

The uptake of Yoga Nidra for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a case in point. Samueli Institute worked with military and clinician researchers and Richard Miller, PhD, a leading Yoga therapist and a co-founder of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Working with Miller, the Institute developed an 8-week pilot which utilized a manual and a series of CDs to support home practice. Clarifies Walter: “[Miller] Westernized it and took pains to standardize it so that high quality research was possible.”

Richard Miller, PhD – Collaborator on Yoga Nidra project

For a variety of reasons related to the scheduling of the classes and the length of the program, only 7 soldiers completed the original Yoga Nidra pilot. The limited sample results showed “a trend toward reduction of PTSD symptoms,” notes Walter, along with “help in dealing with anxiety in the soldiers return home.” Yet while hardly earth-shaking or conclusive, Yoga Nidra seemed to have no downside. It’s potential value, said Walter, “was appreciated by key military personnel.”

The outcome is significant. A Yoga Nidra module is now included in a 3-week “Specialized care program.” This multifaceted program is provided to troop returning from combat at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Deployment Health Clinical Center.

Other projects

The Samueli Institute’s work with the military has also branched in a number of additional directions, some of which are also moving toward practice.

• Dietary Supplements Through 2007 and into 2008 the Institute worked closely with the US Army Institution of Environmental Medicine and with the Institute of Medicine on issues related to dietary supplement use in the military. In 2008, Samueli Institute is partnering with Rand Corporation on clarifying management strategies for the military around dietary supplements.

• Chiropractic Two feasibility studies on manual/manipulative therapy for lower back pain have been engaged.

• “Reset”-resiliency
  

  The
  concept with “reset” is an analogy to a computer, Walter
  explains. Additionally, the military already has a reset program for the care and maintenance of heavy equipment when it comes out of hte field. All equipment is refurbished and reconstituted, because it is understood that it has sustained major wear and tear. Similarly, soldiers may return from combat having been exposed to extreme conditions and may be,
  effectively, overloaded. A two stage initiative is being redeveloped to provide both pre-deployment and post-deployment “reset and skills training program.”
  

Walter reflects on the “reset” program: “We know that troops have been exposed to things that will trigger a stress reaction, depending on the soldier’s resiliency. The question of course is: Shouldn’t we think about every soldier needing skills and strategies to deal with this effectively?”



An Elephant in the Room

The stated purpose of the Samueli Institute’s CRIMM initiative is “support our troops through research, education and advocacy related to Complementary and Integrative Medicine.” The core areas of identified interest are pain and chronic disease symptoms, stress and post traumatic stress disorder and a third, “human performance optimization.”

Walters notes that “the ethics of the (latter) is the elephant in the room” for the CRIMM initiative. Is it aligned with medical values and the Hippocratic Oath to participate in making an individual a better warrior? And on the other hand, do we not owe a duty to our soldiers to provide them with the best tools and approaches to keep them functioning and healthy amidst the challenges they face? A recent Samueli Institute meeting which I had the privilege to attend included a lively discussion on this topic.

Steps toward Translation into Civilian Practice


Clearly, the focal areas of the Samueli Institute’s agenda have civilian applications. Walter notes that the Air Force sponsors of the acupuncture trials, for instance, recently approved Samueli Institute to submit an abstract of the findings for the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting. Walter explains: “We think there could be a tremendous value in a public health setting.” She imagines an individual coming into a community clinic with a complaint which could respond to the “quick acupuncture technique” the Institute has been researching.

Walter reflects: “In every contract with the military, we are asked to describe the military relevance as well as the public relevance. Might it be useful in the work environment? For care-givers? For traders on the stock exchange?”

Given the emerging upheavals in the U.S. medical system, and the economy’s present challenges to Wall Street’s warrior, the use of therapies approved in battle conditions may be more appropriate than any of us would like to admit.

Comment: Thinking about the Samueli Institute’s CRIMM initiative has me reflecting on some of the anti-war origins of the “alternative medicine” movement back in early 1970s. The era prompted many who viewed the West as the aggressor in a war, who heard propaganda in the U.S. which often demonized the Vietnamese and Chinese, to explore the somewhat romanticized, peaceful gifts of the East: Buddhism, meditation, the mind-body connection, acupuncture and Oriental medicine. These they brought home, and in time, through work, research and profession building, laid down the building blocks of the integrative health movement. And here we are seeing that success now being translated into changes in military medical practices. For the movement, comfort in living with paradox is likely a sign of maturity. Walter is correct in observing that the elephant remains in the room.

The practice of these eight limbs can take up a copious amount of time of one’s daily life. Since yoga and the Vedas out of which it grew are life affirmative, the Vedic Seer Vamana presented Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, a practice for householders-people with family and a job or business-in which the eight limbs were practiced simultaneously, not sequentially. Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is a presentation of Ashtanga Yoga, designed for urban people with time constraints.

Ashtanga Yoga employs a multitude of techniques, such as postures, breathing, concentration and meditation exercises. We could call it the yoga of techniques.

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga differs from other forms of yoga in that it is dynamic, whereas most forms are static.

The benefits may be grouped into four categories: physical, emotional, mental and intellectual benefits. The physical benefits consist of making the body free of disease, making it light and strong so that it can be a suitable vehicle on the path to freedom. Through yoga the body is made to absorb and retain prana, which extends the life span.

The emotional benefits consist briefly in being able to not be a slave to one’s emotions but to remain the witness. Most of our suffering is caused by emotions. These emotions may become unbearable by identifying with them and often may cause negative results if we follow their urge. It’s important to know the difference between emotions and feelings.

A feeling is an authentic sensation arising in the present moment such as love.

An emotion is a reliving of a previously imprinted condition.

For example because we have been hurt in the past we are acting in the present moment not out of love but out of jealousy or fear. Whenever we are emoting, we are in the past; whenever we are feeling, we are in the present. Yoga makes you feel more intensely because it removes layers of old conditioning.

The mind is seen in yoga as a computer, which analyses sensory data. It projects all objects cognised in the past onto a present object that needs to be identified. If it achieves what it believes to be sufficient congruency it signals that it has ‘re-cognized’ the object as one of the objects previously cognised.

This is the whole tragedy of the human being. Mind is an application, which projects past onto the future. As long as one is in the sway of the mind, one is, according to yoga, a living corpse. … Recognizing oneself as the immortal, infinite consciousness is to be alive for the first time.

Intellect, similar to the egoic body/mind and the world of objects, is something that grows and evolves as opposed to consciousness/awareness/self, which exists in an eternal state of perfection. Everything that grows and evolves however is, according to yoga, made up of the various combinations of the three elementary particles (guna) of nature (prakrti), which we may call mass (tamas), energy (rajas) and information/intelligence (sattva).

An intellect with a preponderance to tamas is too dull to recognize the truth, whereas the intellect with a preponderance to rajas contains to much frenzy to penetrate to the truth. It is only the intellect, which has been made sattvic through the practice of higher yoga, visualization, meditation and samadhi that is capable of seeing the world as it really is (prajna).

In practicing yoga, we need to have an undogmatic openness, and a questioning, examining attitude to make progress. Yoga is rather a science (vidya), than a religion. The process of yoga is the pursuit of knowledge and its aim is the attainment thereof. Firstly, we gain knowledge of external objects and our own body, mind, egoity and intellect and only once that is faultless, do we progress to knowledge of the self.

The wide range of yogic breathing exercises is collectively referred to as pranayama. Pranayama is a compound noun, consisting of prana and ayama. The Sanskrit term prana denotes life force. Since life force is thought to have an air-like quality it is sometimes translated as inner or subtle breath. In some contexts prana simply means breath or even air. The full term pranayama means extension of prana. Extension of prana stands for life extension in a qualitative and quantitative sense. It is thought to not only increase the life span but also increase vitality.

The reason why breathing exercises are given such importance in yoga is that it is thought that the pulsating or oscillating of prana happens simultaneously with the movements of the mind (chitta vrtti). The practice of pranayama therefore is the study and exercise of one’s breath to a point where it is appeased and does not agitate the mind.

The basic yogic breathing exercise is ujjayi pranayama (victorious extending of the breath). It is practiced by producing a gentle hissing sound through slightly contracting/closing the epiglottis as one breathes. The epiglottis is believed to function as a valve and by half-closing it the body is pumped up with prana (life force).

The various asanas (postures) are used to become aware of all areas of the body. Where awareness goes-according to the traditional teaching-there goes life force. Chronic diseases are believed to develop where awareness is permanently lacking. The yogi learns to breathe into all parts of the body, an act that is equivalent to evenly spreading the prana throughout the body.

Yoga uses actively both the abdomen and the thorax to breathe. To describe this method of breathing D. Coulter has suggested the term ‘thoraco-diaphragmatic breathing.’ The intercostals are here exercised through actively exhaling. The air is literally pumped out of the lungs until all that remains is the respiratory rest volume, the amount of air left after a full exhalation. The aim is to breathe more deeply so as to increase vitality. The way to achieve this is not by inhaling as much as possible but by first exhaling completely in order to create space for the new inhalation.

Yogic tradition gives two vital reasons for wanting to increase breath volume. Firstly, by increasing our inhalation we increase the amount of oxygen supplied. Secondly, by increasing our exhalation we more efficiently exhale toxins, including mental, emotional, physical toxins, and environmental toxins.

Yoga sees these toxins to be held and stored in the body in ‘stale’ areas where there is only a small amount of oxygen, often around the joints or in adipose tissue. The build-up of these toxins-a literal energetic dying of certain body areas long before the death of the entire organism-is thought to eventually lead to chronic disease. By breathing deeply, exhaling accumulated toxins and inhaling oxygen, the yogi attempts to return the body to its original state of health.

Based on the book Ashtanga Yoga: Practice & Philosophy © 2007 Gregor Maehle. Printed with permission of New World Library, http://www.newworldlibrary.com

In this chapter, the author provides a brief overview of his personal and professional experiences using Yoga Nidra as a psychospiritual tool for self exploration. The 12 step process of Yoga Nidra is explained along with an overview of the core constituents of Yoga Nidra, which include awareness, listening, welcoming, the perspective of the opposites, disidentification, immanence and transcendence. A case study is provided that elucidates the use the use of Yoga Nidra during psychotherapy and selected readings are provided for further studies.

When a person dwells on the pleasures of the senses, attraction for them arises within the mind. From attraction arises desire, the lust of possession, and this leads to passion, and anger.

From passion and anger comes confusion of mind, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty. From this loss comes ruin of reason, and the ruin of reason leads man to destruction.

But the soul that moves in the world of the senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony, free from attraction and aversion, finds rest in quietness.

In this quietness falls down the burden of all sorrows, for when the heart has found quietness, wisdom has also found peace.

There is no wisdom for a person without harmony, and without harmony there is no contemplation. Without contemplation there cannot be peace, and without peace can there be joy?

Bhagavad Gita 2:62-66

Personal Experience

I first became acquainted with the practice of Yoga Nidra during my initial yoga lesson in 1970. As I lay on the floor our instructor led us through a guided body meditation, which I later learned was a form of Yoga Nidra. I drove home that evening a freedom from all conflict. I felt radiantly joyful and attuned with the universe-that my self, the universe and everything in my life was perfect just as it was.

I experienced my self as a witnessing presence that was both in my body as well as aware of my body. For the first time in my life I realized that I was not separate, but part of the mystery of life. While these experiences slowly faded over the next few days, they left behind a longing to fully embody this radical understanding and to seek out a greater knowledge of the process of Yoga Nidra.

During the subsequent years I have investigated this process through many avenues including readings into the nondual tantric wisdom traditions from which the practices of Yoga Nidra are derived, countless personal experiments with the processes of Yoga Nidra as well as my experience in leading hundreds of students and clients in the process of Yoga Nidra during innumerable Yoga classes, meditation retreats and psychotherapy sessions.

I continue to be impressed with the simplicity of the process of Yoga Nidra and how it can lead to profound transformation and radical awakening. Yoga Nidra evokes the truth over and again that awareness pervades everywhere, sees everything and is intimately involved in and part of every thing. My first-hand experience through this practice is that we are not separate from awareness or life, but integrally part of everything. And awareness, when it is fully embraced, is like the mother’s caress.

As we describe our troubles into awareness, awareness reaches out and receives our troubles with utmost attention, tenderness and love. As we steep in the caress of awareness, we are encouraged to describe even more of what troubles us. In this describing, everything empties out into awareness and our troubles dissolve because they are formed out of false beliefs. As we describe our self into the caress of awareness, our sense of separation dissolves and our true underlying nature as nondual joy that is independent of cause spontaneously arises.

I have witnessed clients in the depths of despair and suffering suddenly give way to great joy even as they continue to experience their grief. When we recognize our nondual nature in the midst of travail, we find we can handle life as it is. We don’t have to change circumstance or self. When we recognize that we are not separate our underlying nature, which is causeless joy, emerges.

The perfume that arises from such insight lingers in the body and mind even as the residues of separation remain. Our underlying nondual nature is always present, even when it goes unrecognized. But once glimpsed, it leaves behind the unmistakable perfume that stimulates an even greater longing to come back from our misperception of separation and suffering to our ground of nondual awareness, which is forever perfect just as it is.

Awareness

Clients present in psychotherapy with some situation, experience, memory, emotion, sensation or life circumstance that they are having difficulty being with. As therapists we enjoin our clients to explore their resistance to being with these events. And this exploration unfolds in the awareness of both the client and the therapist. Awareness may be described as the perfect agent, agency and container in which all psycho-spiritual healing unfolds.

Awareness, which may be liked to space, pervades everywhere, contains all things, sees all things, judges nothing, is nondual in that it encompasses all duality and is free of separation. Nondual awareness may therefore be said to be an agency of welcoming as awareness has no stake in anything being other than as it is. It is this welcoming attribute of awareness that enables psychotherapy to work.

During therapy, clients are entreated to fully describe their experiences into awareness. As clients relinquish trying to change themselves and enter into the process of describing the ‘what is’ of their experience, resistances dissolve and unsought resolutions spontaneously appear to what at first may have appeared as hopeless or irresolvable conflicts. All this unfolds in awareness.

Awareness forms the space in which all activity unfolds. Thoughts, emotions, sensations, conflicts and traumas all arise, unfold and have their resolution in awareness. Awareness is therefore a perfect holding environment wherein all is contained. Because it is without judgement, awareness is, in fact, a perfect holding environment for awareness is always present, never rejects, and therefore welcomes all that arises.

Awareness is without sentiment, and is perfect love and compassion in that it contains no idealization wherein projections can unfold completely and be seen for what they are. Awareness, therefore underlies the therapist’s ability to be a therapeutic holding environment for the client. The therapist’s awareness enables clients to completely unfold their stories of conflict, pain and trauma, work through their projections and uncover the resolutions appropriate to each life circumstance. Nondual awareness may therefore be viewed as a perfect container in which the client finds their freedom.

Awareness is also a passive-active healing agent because awareness is full of compassion and love in that it holds and allows everything, judges nothing, perfectly mirrors projection and allows clients to unfold their stories without neither client nor therapist needing to be other than they are. When clients, through proper therapeutic guidance, are oriented to and learn to stabilize their attention in the compassionate and non-judging ground of awareness, and as they are able to fully describe their experiences into awareness, right and appropriate action to each life circumstance is always revealed. Awareness is therefore the active healing agent behind all insights in psychotherapy.

Listening

Psychotherapy entails the art of listening. True listening is free of direction. It is open without preconception. It is the ability of therapists to listen, without agenda or judgement, that enables clients to completely explore and reveal the hidden and disregarded aspects of themselves.

From the perspective of listening, clients contain both the presenting dilemma and its solution. In listening all issues and their solutions find resolution in awareness for listening is an aspect of awareness. In non-directional listening, as in all-pervading awareness, the deep movements of body sensation, energy, feeling, emotion, belief and imagery have the freedom to completely unfold without prejudice of preconceived beliefs of how things should be.

Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra (yoga = living in and as nondual awareness; nidra = sleep), is an ancient tantric process that reflects this perspective of awareness as the container, agency and agent of healing. Yoga Nidra provides not only a framework for how transformation and healing unfolds but provides the client with a process for healing their presenting issues as well as an opportunity for them to experience their fundamental nature as nondual awareness.

The word ‘yoga’ means the abiding action of living in and not-separate from nondual awareness. Nidra, in the application of Yoga Nidra, refers to our ability to remain awake as, and not separate from, nondual awareness even in the midst of the circumstances of life.

During Yoga Nidra the client is supported by the therapist to describe their presenting issue and listen to and welcome into awareness all of the attending body sensations, energetic movements, emotions, beliefs and images until an appropriate resolution is revealed. In supported non-directional listening and welcoming, resistance to what is dissolves and the client finds him/her self vulnerably open in their expansive nondual awareness in which healing spontaneously unfolds.

Disidentification from the structures that give rise to suffering, which include sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, images and the sense of being a separate ego-I, occurs spontaneously during the process of Yoga Nidra. When clients are supported in welcoming the both their pain and its opposite, their shadow material and its opposite, their projection and its opposite, healing unfolds spontaneously and naturally in the passive-active container of nondual awareness.

The Perspective of the Opposites

Much of the transformative power of Yoga Nidra lies in its recognition and capitalization of the play of opposites. When we live in the experience of being a separate ego-I we live fixed in an attitude of having to negotiate with existence. The separative ego-I is governed by the law of opposites in which all that is seen as positive is held captive by its opposite. Where there is darkness there is light. Where there is good, there is evil. What we create we destroy and what we destroy is recreated.

But opposites are never separate. They are actually complimentary polarities arising within a unified field of awareness. When a movement arises, its opposite always co-arises. Neither is separate from the other and neither is separate from awareness. Darkness cannot exist without light and good cannot exist without evil. Pain cannot exist without pleasure and conflict cannot exist without its opposite, resolution. And none of these exist separate from the field of awareness in which they arise.

Duality, which is made up of the complimentarity of opposites, is a fact of life and exists within the unified field of awareness. Duality co-arises with the body, mind and senses for whatever exists in space-time, in duration, forms the very fabric that makes up the world of duality. But duality does not imply dualism.

Dualism arises when the unified field of awareness is apparently split by the mind into an observing subject and an observed object. In Dualism this split is believed, by the mind, to be real. Subject is perceived to be separate from the object and both are perceived to be separate from awareness. The split into dualism is the product of a divided mind, which does not experience itself as existing within and as part of unified awareness. In dualism, the mind perceives itself to be a distinct and separate ego-I.

Interestingly, suffering, conflict and striving to be other than we are co-arise with the experience of feeling separate. Both are projections of the divided mind. Suffering and the feeling of separation always co-arise-they exist one with the other. Neither can exist without the other being present. This is one underlying explanation why Yoga Nidra can be such an effective tool for both client and therapist.

The therapist educated in Yoga Nidra is oriented to the understanding that clients suffer because they feel separate. It is not the job of the therapist to talk the client out of feeling separate. Clients are convinced that they are separate and that they are suffering and need to find a resolution to their problem.

It is the job of the therapist to help the client describe their pain and feeling of separation as if it is all that exists because the therapist understands that when the pain of suffering and its associated experiences are fully described into awareness, unsought resolutions spontaneously arise. Mere describing often evokes resolution. However, at other times, clients appear unable to move beyond their conflict and sense of separation because their descriptions are incomplete.

At these junctures, the therapist enables the client by exploring the opposite movements to the client’s experience and descriptions by assisting the client to embody the opposites of their experiences. By moving back and forth between opposite sensations, emotions, images, thoughts, memories or beliefs and then by allowing both experiences to stabilize in awareness, unexpected synthesis occurs spontaneously and the client discovers unrealized truths about their previous experiences that had been overlooked due to their experiencing only one half of the equation.

The Ego-I

The ego-I is the product of a divided mind that has split into a ‘me’ subject that is separate from an ‘other’ object. The divided mind does not accept the interdependence of the opposites for this would mean the end of its apparently separative existence. Instead, the ego imagines a dualistic split between the opposites which, in-turn, gives rise to conflict, attachment and aversion. Splitting, conflict, attachment and aversion all co-arise. They are mutually interdependent facets of a single movement. From this perspective any attempt to eliminate one pole of opposition only creates further conflict.

Therapy based on the premise that clients need to change begins and ends in conflict. This way of seeing is based in the divided mind and therapy ultimately fails when it emphasizes the need for the client to somehow be other than he/she is. It is in welcoming all that we are-pain and the joy, conflict and its opposite, projection and its opposite-that are we able to go beyond the pairs of opposites into a true resolution of what is ailing us.

Identification and Disidentification

The inherent tendency of the mind is to identify with whatever thought is currently present. And the main underlying thought is the belief in being a separate ego-I. This belief gives birth to reaction and defense, attraction and aversion. The ego-I reacts to each situation by expressing “I should” or “I shouldn’t”. Neither of these reactions is welcoming of what is actually arising. Guilt and remorse always co-arise with the tyranny of the should. Guilt and remorse are secondary reactions to the primary reaction of the belief of separation, which is based on a refusing of welcoming the truth of the moment.

Immanence and Transcendence

The sense of ‘I-ness’ is both immanent and transcendent. We experience our self immanently living as, and therefore not separate from, our name and form. But we also experience our self transcendentally aware of, and therefore distinct from, any experience. We live immanently in and as our lived bodily experience and we exist transcendently, as the awareness which is aware of bodily experience. Both are true simultaneously. Immanence and transcendence are paired opposites that mutually co-arise.

When the transcendent quality of ‘I-ness’ remains hidden, immanence is all that is experienced and changes in the status quo of our life are experienced as fearful and threatening. We feel limited when we live only the immanent dimension of life. Fear limits life, but also signals us that we are refusing one half of the equation. In order to heal suffering we must recover our transcendental nature as nondual awareness.

While identification gives rise to separation and suffering, disidentification heals separation and suffering. Disidentification constitutes the ability to experience any and all states, contents and psychic events without reactive defenses. Disidentification is not dissociation, but the willingness to experience what is without any attempt to change or make it different. Dissociation is a refusing to be with what is. In disidentification we are immanently open to experiencing what is, while being transcendentally aware of each experience.

Relevant Sutras

Various spiritual texts affirm the process of disidentification with the pairs of opposites as a way of healing the sense of separation and its consequent retinue of suffering. For instance, Maharshi Patañjali states in his Yoga Sutras:

I.12 abhy¡sa vair¡gy¡bhy¡ tan nirodha?
By approach and relinquishment and experiencing the pairs of opposites, suffering ceases.

II.33 vitarka b¡dhane pratipakßa bh¡vana
When distress arises, ride opposing thoughts back into non-dual awareness.

II.35 ahi s¡ prati߆h¡y¡ tat sa nidhau vaira ty¡ga?
By reversing instability into stability, from refusing into non-refusing, hostility is relinquished.

II.48 tato dvandv¡ ‘nabhigh¡ta?
Through disidentification the pairs of opposites cease their noxious effect.

III.6 tasya bhmißu viniyoga?
By reversing the pairs of opposites stability and the release of suffering is quickly achieved.

The Dimensions of Yoga Nidra

Seven dimensions that make up each experience, conflict or life circumstance can be explored during the process of Yoga Nidra. These dimensions include sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts/beliefs, images, pleasure/joy and the sense of ego-I separation that accompanies the experience being described. As each of these levels is welcomed into awareness through exploration and description, disidentification naturally unfolds and we increasingly rest in our natural disposition as the nondual awareness that is equally aware of as well as participates in, each level of experience.

The process of Yoga Nidra can unfold in as many as 12 stages.

1. • Intention
     The client is invited to describe the presenting issue and to affirm his/her intention to participate in the process of Yoga Nidra. This affirmation includes the intention to describe, experience, listen and welcome into awareness whatever arises rather than trying to fix or change the presenting issue.

1. • Negative and Positive Beliefs
     The client is asked to affirm both a statement of negative belief that is believed to be true about his/her self in relationship to the presenting issue, and its opposite as a positive statement about his/her self if the negative belief were no longer true.

• • Sensation
    With the help of the therapist, the client rotates attention through body sensations that arise in relationship with the presenting issue, first in one part of the body and then in an opposing location. For instance, if there is sensation of contraction in the abdomen, the abdomen is split into opposites, i.e., left and right sides, front and back, bottom and top, inside and outside and sensation is systematically enlivened first into one half, then in the other.

1. • Breath
     After sensing the body, attention moves with the breath into each of the opposing areas where sensation is being experienced in relationship to the presenting issue (or where it has moved as the process of Yoga Nidra unfolds) to further enliven the attendant body sensations. This stage evokes a letting go of concepts about the issue and facilitates the deepening of an energetic relationship with the underlying sensations associated with the issue.

1. • Feeling
     Opposing feelings, such as heavy-light, comfort-discomfort, tense-relaxed that have to do with the presenting issue are welcomed into awareness by first locating and then rotating attention through each feeling and its opposite.

1. • Emotion
     Opposing emotions that have to do with the presenting issue such as sad-happy, angry-calm, resignation-accepting are welcomed into awareness and attention is rotated through these opposites of emotion.

1. • Thought/Belief
     Opposing thoughts and beliefs having to do with the presenting issue are welcomed into awareness and attention is rotated through these opposites.

1. • Imagery
     Opposing images and memories having to do with the presenting issue are welcomed into awareness and attention is rotated through these opposites.

1. • Peace/Pleasure/Joy
     Opposing experiences of pleasure-pain, joy-sadness or peace-upset having to do with the presenting issue are welcomed into awareness and attention is rotated through these opposites..

1. • Separation
     Opposing experiences of separation-oneness, isolation-relationship or abandonment-closeness, which have to do with the presenting issue are welcomed into awareness and attention is rotated through these opposites.

Affirmation

1. The original beliefs that were present at the beginning of the process of Yoga Nidra are welcomed into awareness and explored to see how or in what form they appear in this present moment.

Completion

1. New insights are integrated into awareness with the emphasis upon the embodiment, across all levels (including sensation, feeling, emotion, belief, joy and I-ness) of the insights rather than merely upon their intellectual fortitude.

Readings

Miller, Richard C., Ph.D., The Yoga Nidra Workbook, Anahata Press, 1985.

Miller, Richard C., Ph.D., The Principles and Practice of Yoga Nidra Audio Tape Set, Anahata Press, 1990.

Niranjanananda, Swami, Prana, Pranayama, Prana Vidya, Bihar School of Yoga, 1994.

Satyananda, Swami, Yoga Nidra, Bihar School of Yoga, India 1976.

Satyananda, Swami, Meditation from the Tantras, Bihar School of Yoga, 1974.

Awakening from the Dream of Me

Awakening from the dream of me reveals the paradox that there is no other even as other appears to be. Everything is made of the same substance. Call it Presence, Awareness, God, Consciousness or Love; these are one and the same. I, you, we are exquisite expressions of Presence, which manifests as sensation, emotion, thought… the each and everything. Upon awakening from the dream of separation we are able to exclaim as have all the yogis and yoginis down through the ages, “I am the Absolute Impersonal Presence which is constantly expressing Itself through all that exists.”

Presence, Intimacy and Community

The focus of my work in yoga has emerged from the realization that we all are longing for intimate oneness with Presence. Our longing comes from the Self, which is looking for Itself, God calling Itself back home. Oneness with Presence is the freedom that we are all longing for.

You may believe, as I once did, that you are unworthy, nobody. Every action I engaged in to be somebody was a defense against feeling self-judgment. All my actions to prove myself to be somebody failed before they began because they were born in conflict. Over the years I learned the art of yoic meditative self-inquiry, to invite self-judgment in for tea and dialogue, where I made a momentous discovery. My fear of being unworthy turned out to be a messenger who was all along trying to inform me that I am nobody because there is no other.

Culture and conditioning had taught me to turn a deaf ear on this momentous understanding. I had fallen into the trance of being a separate me. But now I understood that there is no other. I am alone. I am nobody. Self-judgment denies the fact that there is no separation, except as a projection of the mind. Tea and conversation opened me to unbounded Love and living the Presence that I am, that we all are.

These days, during retreats and private interviews, I help people explore and deconstruct their stories of separation that prevent the realization of oneness with Presence. We engage in self-inquiry during meditation, face-to-face co-meditation and when we gather together as a community. We inquire into the reality of our projected beliefs about self and other. As these beliefs deconstruct, illusory boundaries of separation dissolve.

As the process of deconstruction and dissolution unfolds, the body-mind begins to awaken as a witness to both the movements of consciousness as well as to its unborn, innate true nature. Awakening as a witness marks the prelude to the ego’s spontaneous collapse into Being witnessing Presence.

In awakening as witnessing Presence we realize the sweet paradox that our true nature is unbounded Being undisturbed by the movements of life and simultaneously that all of the experiences of life-joy and sadness, pain and pleasure-arise within and are not separate from unbounded Presence.

This is enlightenment of the whole body, in which everything is realized to be the Self and the entire universe its body. In awakening to Presence we behold with wonder, delight and astonishment the living truth that everything is a perfect expression of the Oneness that we are.

Yoga is a way of living life, a series of continuous micro-practices that lead us back to everyday existence, radically transforming our ordinary life where each moment is meditation in action, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Daily life is the domain of our practice where we neither renounce nor separate from anything whatsoever. Presence then emerges in each act of life: walking, talking, breathing, gesturing, sensing, emoting, and thinking. Yoga restores our senses to their natural functioning, awakens us from the dream of me and leads to liberation within life, where each activity flows from and is realized to be not separate from Presence.

There is only Awareness.¹ All experiences arise in and are not separate from Awareness for Awareness and its objects are always one, not two.

Separation is a feeling that arises in Awareness and is not separate from Awareness. Identification occurs when the feeling of separation is misperceived by the mind as a statement of fact.

Projection

When the belief of separation is projected outward the notion arises that all objects are also separate. Projection, identification and the belief of separation are based on misperception for there is only Awareness.

The function of the mind is to split that, which is one into two. The split mind gives rise to the notion of separation. The mind perceives two where there is only one.

Introjective Identification

When the uninformed mind experiences projection, it internalizes the projection as an introject. The mind then identifies with this introject in a process we call introjective identification. In projection we believe another is like our self. In introjective identification we believe we are like another.

Projective Identification

Projective identification is a process that occurs when, by the force of another’s projection, we introject their projection, believing it to be our own. For instance when someone is unable to be with their anger they project it into you. You mistake their feeling of anger as belonging to you and project it back towards them. Then they become upset because you are angry with them when all the time it is they who are angry with their own self!

Projection, introjective identification and projective identification are all founded on the misperception of separation created by the function of the split mind. But these are movements in Awareness and therefore are not separate from Awareness.

Healing

The feeling of separation arises in Awareness. The impulse to heal and the healing of this misperception similarly arises in Awareness. The feeling of separation, the need to heal separation and the healing separation are one movement. They co-arise. They are not separate movements. An apparently separate ‘I’ is healing an apparent wound of separation.

When ultimate healing occurs the myth of separation is realized to be a myth. In this timeless moment the realization unfolds that there is only Awareness. Then, self and all objects are realized to be Awareness. All healing ultimately leads to this understanding that there is only Awareness.

Progressive Healing

Because the notion of separation is a misperception in the mind, ultimately all healing entails dispelling false mental beliefs. But mental beliefs are stored in the body as reactive sensation, emotion and imagery. Therefore healing often appears to progressively proceed from the physical to the mental.

The Six Koshas

The process of healing is conceptually formulated in the theory of the six Koshas, or levels separation.

1. 1. The physical body-Anamaya
   2. The energy body-Pranamaya
   3. The body of feeling and emotion-Manomaya
   4. The body of intellect-Vijñânamaya
   5. The body of joy-Anandamaya
   6. The body of ego-I-Asmitamaya
   7. Our Natural Condition-Sahaj

1. The physical body – Anamaya Kosha

The physical body is an intelligent community of interconnected and inseparable parts sustained by life force, or Prana. As such the physical body is a microcosm of the macrocosm, containing within it all the other koshas.

The body is made up of the five elements-earth, water, fire, air and space with each body system related to a particular element, i.e. the skeletal system is related to earth, the circulatory and immune systems to water, the respiratory system to air, the digestive system to fire, and the central nervous system to space.

The body is experienced through hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, feeling and thinking. But, primarily the body is known through feeling. The body is a feeling-object unfolding as sensation in Awareness. The body as a concept is built up within the thinking mind and is conditioned through memory, reaction and compensation.

When we feel separate, we live conceptually as the body, which has defined boundaries. Through active inquiry we come to realize that the body is a projection in us.

The body is a percept, not a concept. Sensing the body dissolves its objective solidity as the earth element, revealing the other elements of water, fire, air and space each of which, in turn, dissolves into its prior cause until the body dissolves totally into its non-objectivenature as Awareness. Body sensing purifies the objectified body of its conditioned nature to reveal its true radiant transparency.

Hatha Yoga is the science of inquiring into the substance and reality of the physical body. Asana, supported by pranayama and visualization, is one tool we use to investigate the reality of the physical body.

2. The energy body – Pranamaya Kosha

Prana (with a capital ‘P’) is the life force that animates the universe and gives life to the physical body. Prana is not separate from Awareness, which is the source of prana as well as the body. Prana is therefore a projection of Awareness.

Prana as the enlivening principle of the body is divided into five functions, or airs, as described in the Chandogya Upanishad (II.13.6).

Apana governs and regulates the eliminative system. Its field of activity is from the navel to the soles of the feet and it is represented by the element of earth. Its nature is heavy and it is related to exhalation, which has a downward feeling of movement to it as well as an upward movement in the diaphragm.

Samana governs and regulates the digestive system. Its field of activity is from the heart to the navel and is represented by the element of water. Its nature is cool and it is related to circular movement in the abdomen.

Prana (with a small ‘p’) governs and regulates the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. It field of activity is from the mouth to the heart and it is represented by the element of fire. Its nature is light and it is related to inhalation, which has an upward feeling of movement to it as well as a downward movement in the diaphragm.

Udana governs and regulates eating, drinking and speaking. Its field of activity is the throat and it is represented by the element of air, which moves throughout the body.

Vyana governs and regulates prana into the limbs. Its field of activity is throughout the body and is represented by the element of space. Its nature is spaciousness throughout the body.

The energy body is regulated through asana, pranayama. Each asana and pranayama is related to and influences a particular vayu. Through pranayama we open to the subtle body, which brings a sense of transparency to subtle layers of conditioning and the reactive mind².

3. The body of feeling and emotion – Manomaya Kosha

The body of feeling and emotion is related to the mind. When there is a stimulus the mind often reacts with a conditioned response dependent upon residues of memory.

Through purification, the body/mind is released from its conditioning. There are many levels of purification-body, senses, speech and mind. However, purification is not in the becoming process, as it has nothing to do with getting better. Neither obtaining nor giving up brings us to what we are for we already are being what we are searching to become-non-objectified Awareness.

As the body purifies it loses its solidity, becoming translucent, then transparent. Here the body expands into its energetic presence. When we work at the level of the energy body feelings and emotions are released, which, when welcomed into Awareness further release our transparency. Transparency relieves the attitude of being a doer for in transparency there is only perceiving, only feeling.

In working with the body of emotion we open completely to the play of opposites. Anger and serenity, sadness and happiness, sorrow and joy are each welcomed in turn. No emotion is left repressed. When emotion is welcomed and not refused, when nothing is left rejected in the psyche, and then we live in accepting without psychological resignation. Then, feeling and emotion point back to Awareness in which they arise. The reactive mind dissolves and each situation unfolds with its appropriate and spontaneous response. Emotion and feeling are there realized to be pointers to, and not separate from, nondual Awareness.

4. The body of intellect and imagery – Vijñânamaya Kosha

Inquiry into the body of intellect and imagery reveals concepts, beliefs and memories, which underlie separation and suffering. Beliefs spontaneously deconstruct when they are completely described into Awareness without any movement for them to be other than they are. Deconstruction leads to disidentification, which reveals the underlying unitive Awareness in which all beliefs have their home ground.

As each belief deconstructs, its paired opposite, which was contained within the psyche, is also released and integration of mind unfolds. Greater transparency is revealed, which relieves the attitude of being a perceiver.

5. The body of joy – Anandamaya Kosha

Purification of false beliefs reveals greater transparency to our true nature as Awareness. One signpost of being at the threshold of our nondual nature is the breaking through of uncaused joy. As we live freely in this joy,associated identifications are further purified. Living for long periods in the body of joy, as in all the koshas, brings us to the threshold of our true nature. At this point outgoing attention, which has been absorbed in the process of revealing and purification is turned back onto itself. The observer becomes the observed.

6. The body of ego-I – Asmitamaya Kosha

Five koshas are normally described in the classical literature. A sixth Kosha deals with the subtle witness and sense of separation that is always present in the previous five koshas, even when the body of joy is fully expanded.

When the first five koshas deconstruct, all of the outgoing energy that has been invested in them turns in upon itself. Here the perceiver becomes perceived and an infinite regression is set in motion. The perceiver becomes the perceived over and again until there is total collapse of the mind with all of its subtle forms of ego-I separateness. This collapse unfolds spontaneously for there is no separate ego-I that can make it happen. When the ego-I totally collapses, there is only perceiving, for no ‘I’ image is possible in perceiving.

The ‘I’ image, like the body, is built up of memory. The ‘I’ image arises in perceiving. Once seen, the ‘I’ image, like the body, dissolves in Awareness. Neither have a separate existence apart from Awareness, their home ground.

In perceiving we move free of memory. In this there is spontaneous purification without anticipation toward gain. In this there is spontaneous giving up of what we are not and a being of what we are. What has appeared as progression is revealed to have only been description for there can be no prescription to come to what we are.

Whatever we come to is an object of perception. But what we are is not an object. What we are reveals itself when all striving to become is relinquished. When we are not, Awareness is. When we are, Awareness is not. In being Awareness, there is neither perceiver nor perceived. This is liberation from separation and suffering, Yoga in its ultimate expression. Liberation is living in the beauty of our absence. In this there is no seer and nothing seen. Everything is made of the same substance, vast, spacious unqualified Awareness, unfathomable to the mind.

7. Sahaj – Our Natural Condition

As the Koshas are completely explored they empty into their underlying cause, Awareness, and separation and suffering dissolve. Physical healing may or may not concurrently unfold, but everything is in place. Right and appropriate actions in response to what remains in body and mind spontaneously arise. There is no reaction or defense, only right action spontaneously arising and appropriate to each situation. Situation and its response are one movement, not two. They are complimentarities within the field of nondual Awareness.

1. Awareness, Consciousness, Presence, Being and God are interchangeable concepts.

2. Here we may use the energy system of the chakras as well as the nadis of ida and pingala.

These structures include the physical body, the energy body, the sensation, feeling and emotional bodies, the bodies of thought and imagery, and the bodies of bliss and personal ego identity. We have come to believe that these bodies are solid and real structures.

During Yoga Nidra we investigate the reality of these beliefs in order that we may go beyond what we have learned as second-hand information. Our objective is to develop an in-depth first-hand experience as to the structure and reality of our actual identity.

During the process of Yoga Nidra we also investigate the ground of awareness in which these bodies and beliefs are arising. Yoga Nidra is an inquiry into the actual substance and nature that everything is made of. Its aim is to answer the ultimate question as to the nature of our intrinsic, spiritual identity.

Yoga Nidra asks: “Are we separate, finite entities, or are we something which is infinite and eternal? And if we are can we know ourselves as that, not intellectually, but as a fully embodied and every moment actual experience?”

The investigation that occurs during Yoga Nidra inevitably leads to the deconstruction and disidentification of our basic core beliefs about who we take ourselves to be. As our beliefs and assumptions dissolve, we glimpse our essential Nature as Presence and come to the first-hand conviction that we are not the limited, finite creatures that we mistakenly take ourselves to be.

We find, instead, that we are a Vastness unfathomable to the mind; a joyous Beingness that is always present, even in the midst of the greatest difficulty. This is the supreme understanding that Yoga Nidra invites us to realize.

Yoga Nidra Defined

The word Yoga, from which we derive our English terms yoke and union, may be translated as “the joining together of two things that have never been separate.” The aim of Yoga is for us to realize that we are inseparably unified with the Vastness that everything in the Universe is made up of. And Yoga Nidra is a process that helps us understand that it is the mind, through its learned misperception, that keeps the belief of separation alive and prevents us from realizing our Divine nature.

The term “nidra,” from the Sanskrit, means ‘sleep.’ From the perspective of Yoga Nidra, we are asleep when we perceive the world to be made up of solid and separate objects. When we dream, we take the dream images to be real. When we wake-up, these dream objects are recognized to be empty of substance and we realize that all along they were only fabrications of the mind. During waking consciousness, we take our thought images and the ‘so-called’ solid objects of the world to be as real as the dream images are when we are asleep. We are convinced that waking thoughts and objects are real and we never question the validity of this belief. In fact, the thoughts and objects that appear to us in the waking state are as empty as dream images. And Yoga Nidra is a process whereby we explore and discover the truth of this fact.

In the context of Yoga Nidra then, the yogi is one who, whether asleep or awake, understands the fundamental nature of Reality. He and she embody the understanding that all things are inherently One, that there is only Consciousness, there is only God. There is no separation anywhere, under any circumstance, except as a mental conceptualization. Everything is made of the same substance.

So Yoga Nidra is a play on words. It means the “sleep of the yogi” but implies that the yogi is one who is wide-awake to the real Truth or Reality of life.

Pratyahara

Yoga Nidra may also be described as the practice of pratyahara. Pratyahara is classically defined as the process of withdrawing the mind from distracting sensory impressions such as sounds, smells, sights and thoughts so that the mind abides in a calm and undisturbed state of silent witnessing.

The image of a turtle with its head drawn inside its shell represents this classical process of blocking out the sensory impressions of the world. But I think of pratyahara somewhat differently from this classical perspective. I view pratyahara as the transcending of, rather than the withdrawing from, sensory impressions.

When we are in a room with a loudly ticking clock, there is really no necessity of withdrawing away from, or trying to block out, the ticking sound. If we are open to hearing the sound without resistance, if we don’t fight the sound, or try to get rid of it, the body/mind accommodates to the sound, transcends it, and goes beyond the sensation. The sound no longer disturbs.

We find in this illustration the powerful law of awareness. Whatever we are willing to be with, we go beyond. Any sensory impression that is allowed to be in awareness without either the movement of repression or expression, dissolves back into the ever-present background of awareness and disappears. Whatever is allowed to simply be, as it is, in awareness, dissolves. It is no longer troublesome. And this truth pertains to any sensory experience be it the movement of a sound, an image, a taste, a sensation, a smell or a thought.

Why is this so? We mistakenly assume a sensory impression is a phenomenon separate from ourselves as the perceiver of the impression. We hear the sound of the ticking clock as if it were outside ourselves. But the fact is sensory impressions are not separate from the mind that perceives them.

Perceiving is a unified field of awareness. The perceiver is not separate from what is being perceived. At the moment of perception, there is only perceiving. The idea of being a perceiver who is separate from the sound perceived arises as a mental formulation after the fact. You can experience this for yourself. Stop reading for a moment and hear the sounds that are around you.

Now listen again and inspect the moment that sound is perceived. In this timeless moment of perceiving you are not present as the listener. There is only listening. Now go ahead and listen to the sounds again.

In the actual moment of perceiving, there is only perceiving. We cannot perceive and think simultaneously. The mind can attend to one or the other. At the moment of perceiving there is only perceiving. At the moment of thinking there is only thinking. The thinker arises only after the fact of thinking. When we are not, perceiving is, thinking is. When perceiving is, when thinking is, we are not.

When we refuse or resist a sensory impression, such as the sound of the ticking clock, we are, in a manner of speaking, refusing ourselves because, ultimately we are made of the same substance as the impression that is being perceived.

Trying to block out a sound is a movement born in conflict. We are trying to get rid of something that is ultimately ourself. We may be able to repress the sound, but we cannot, ultimately, get rid of it.

We may be able to suppress various aspects of ourself such as emotions, thoughts or negative attitudes and beliefs we hold to be true about ourselves, but we cannot get rid of them. Better that we consciously allow them to be as they are. Our true Nature begins to shine as radiant and unperturbable joyfulness only when we accept and welcome all that is.

Like our body/mind, every impression, every sound and every thought is born, grows, decays and dies. And these movements all takes place within and against a background of awareness. This process of growth, decay and death is very quick for a perception. It is a longer process for the body and longer still for a mountain or a universe.

When we do not refuse this natural process of life, whatever arises eventually dissolves back into its home-ground of awareness. Any refusing only strengthens that which is being resisted. Trying to withdraw from anything ultimately fails. It is only in our being with things as they are that we are able to go beyond them and find our Ultimate Nature as the ground of Silence, Being, or Awareness, in which all things have their birth, their growth, their decay and their death.

During Yoga Nidra, we intentionally locate and investigate sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts and images. We go into them. We explore them. We bring them into consciousness. As these impressions are allowed to float freely in awareness, without our trying to repress or express them, they arise and fade away into the background, no longer bothersome to the mind because the mind has no intention to refuse or deny their existence.

This approach to pratyahara is a process of elimination whereby unconscious material is allowed to surface into awareness, into consciousness. When repressed material arises without personal reaction, it dissolves into its home-ground and is no longer problematic. Impressions, experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions are problematic only because we refuse them. We judge our experience and try to control what we perceive.

In Yoga Nidra we realize that everything is made of the same substance. Refusing anything is refusing who we are. Refusing only creates chaos, conflict, war and suffering in the world and within ourselves. Whatever we refuse we repress into the unconscious and whatever lives in the unconscious gets projected out into the world. If we reject our anger and violence then we project anger and violence into the world. When we are angry that we are being judged it is only because we are already judging ourselves. You see, no one ever hurt us. We are only always hurting ourselves.

Embodying this understanding is powerfully transformative. When we shift from trying to change ourselves to being non-judgmentally aware, magic happens, for anything that is placed in awareness, transforms.

Awareness is like fire. Fire purifies, and awareness purifies. Fire doesn’t judge. It simply burns away the impurities of what is placed within its presence. And awareness is simple presence, presence to what is.

During Yoga Nidra we continually rest in and abide as the fire of awareness. This is an act of being open that comes from the tremendous insight that every way we have tried to change ourselves up to this point has totally failed. In this moment of resting in the fire of awareness the mind gives up and we are open to the unknown, listening without goal or intention.

But don’t misperceive that ‘being with’ or witnessing is a passive process. It is dynamically active. Being with an emotion may mean the resurgence of long forgotten memories, or the upheaval of strong cathartic feelings. But all the while these foreground activities are in process we find ourselves as a multidimensional listening. In this there is accepting rather than our usual and customary process of rejecting what we deem ‘bad’ while emphasizing and expressing what we prefer as “as good as”.

Accepting

We are often engaged in acts of self-hatred. In these moments we do not like ourselves as we are or life as it is. This is a form of self-loathing. Whenever we wish our experience to be other than it is we fight with reality. And when we fight with reality we always lose.

What we need is to be with things as they are. Life is just as it is and we are just as we are. When we relinquish all attempts to change the world and ourselves, when we cease trying to re-make the world and ourselves according to our mental images and beliefs about how we think things should be, transformation occurs.

This transformation brings forward our native disposition as spontaneous accepting and we live in harmony with ourselves and with what life brings. In this there is self-love and love for life just the way it is.

When we live in accepting at first we emphasize the objects that we are accepting. These objects include other people and situations, our emotions, our memories and our thoughts and images. But as we live in accepting the state of accepting is emphasized.

We live in accepting for its own sake because of the joy and freedom we feel. Then we are seized by the intuition to turn and investigate the ‘who’ that is living this accepting. In this the who-we-are-as-the-acceptor is emphasized. And in a spontaneous moment of relaxation, ourself as the acceptor dissolves into Being accepting where there is only accepting.

In this timeless moment we realize that our very nature is accepting which is Consciousness, God or Divine Presence. We are now being who we really are. Then, when we look upon the world through these eyes of accepting, we realize that everything is made of the same substance as Accepting. In this there is no self and there is no other. There is only non-conceptual Oneness. There is only Consciousness. There is only God. And this is the ultimate realization of Yoga Nidra.

Foundational Stages

There are a number of foundational stages that make up the structure of Yoga Nidra. Each stage emphasizes a different body-sheath or kosha as they are referred to in Yoga. These sheaths include, as we mentioned before, the physical body, the energy body, the bodies of sensation, emotion, thought and imagery, and the bodies of bliss and ego identity.

Each kosha may be likened to a territory we travel to during the process of Yoga Nidra. Upon arrival, we explore and map out the territory of each kosha – – getting to know it, so to speak. We have no agenda in our exploration other than being with the various sensations, images, thoughts, etc., that we encounter as we explore. This perspective of having no agenda is an important consideration to understand and contains within it a profound spiritual paradox that we must reconcile.

The aim of Yoga Nidra is for us to discover who we are. But who we are is not an object that we, as a separate experiencer, can discover. We can never see ourselves as we would an object that appears separate from us. We can only be who we are for our Essential Essence is non-objective Presence or Awareness.

When practicing Yoga Nidra it is easy to be confused that there is something we are trying to obtain or do. But anything that we obtain is not who we are as it remains a fragile object in our awareness. So Yoga Nidra is not in the becoming process.

Yoga Nidra can never take us, through striving, to what we are. When we strive we are actually going away from who we are. Striving keeps us fixed in a mental image that prevents us from being who we are.

Each kosha represents a way our mind has turned what is actually a non-conceptual Unity into a conceptual, objectified perception. But all objects that are beheld in awareness ultimately dissolve as they return to their original nature as Presence. And Presence is what we are. With each dissolving of what we thought we were, we come to what we are. With a mind oriented in the understanding that what we are is not an object, each kosha is welcomed just as it is.

When we live in this attitude of welcoming, the solidity of each kosha deconstructs, and we spontaneously disidentify from each body-sheath. As koshas dissolve we realize our natural ground of being which is non-objective, Pure Presence.

Intention

In the first stage of Yoga Nidra we assert our intention to enter into the practice of Yoga Nidra. We acknowledge that we will give the practice our undivided attention. This intention sets the direction and tone of our practice. Our intention is to remain focused and undistracted throughout each session. Yoga Nidra is therefore connected to mindfulness training, training the mind to return to its natural state of one-pointedness.

Our mind is currently many-pointed. It appears to be going in many directions at once, moving from thought to thought and from object to object. Our constantly changing mind sees a constantly changing universe comprised of innumerable separate objects. This constantly shifting mind is distracted, pre-occupied and identified with the pairs of opposites like attraction and repulsion, pleasure and pain and satisfaction and dissatisfaction. These pre-occupations reinforce our sense of duality and provoke feelings of separation, isolation and alienation. From the perspective of Yoga Nidra the many-pointed mind is the cause of suffering.

On the other hand the process of Yoga Nidra evokes the natural one-pointed foundation of the mind. One-pointedness exposes the Unity underlying the changing nature of the mind. And Unity awareness dissolves the misperception of dualistic thinking.

With the disappearance of duality the underlying background of peace, joy, and serenity breaks through into our everyday living. And with the dawning of Unity Consciousness, we intuitively realize that the apparent multiplicities of the world are, in actuality, expressions of the underlying Unity Consciousness.

It is important to establish a firm intention at the beginning of our practice. As we enter deeply into the process of Yoga Nidra we come close to the state of deep sleep. Dream-like images, sensations, thoughts and emotions spontaneously appear. When our attention wanders we identify with these movements and unconsciously fall asleep.

Our forthright intention at the beginning of Yoga Nidra affirms our aim to witness these mental dream fragments rather than falling into an unconscious sleep with them. So we set the intention right from the start, to remain alert and aware even while hovering at the edge of sleep consciousness.

During Yoga Nidra we witness the body/mind while having the experience that our body is actually asleep. This is the paradoxical process of being awake while asleep that Yoga Nidra invokes. This can be a strange experience at first. But this orients us as the witnessing Presence.

Our true nature is Presence. And Presence is always present, aware and awake whether during waking, dreaming or dreamless sleep. When the body falls asleep, the mind identifies itself as a dreamer. When the body is awake the mind identifies itself as the waking doer.

In our identification with the waking and dreaming ego-I, the fact that Presence is present is missed. The mind is caught up in the foreground movements while the background remains uninspected. As the mind’s identification with being a waking and sleeping doer dissolves witnessing consciousness becomes more apparently present.

We find ourselves being the witness that is always aware and always awake. When objects are present there is witnessing of these objects. When objects are absent, as in dreamless sleep, witnessing is still present, but with nothing to witness but itself. This is why, upon waking from dreamless sleep, we are able to report that we had a wonderful sleep.

As witnessing moves into the foreground we identify ourselves with and as the witness. But we still feel separate from what is being witnessed. But as this identification deepens this stance of being separate collapses and we find ourselves being witnessing.

In being witnessing there is no separation between the perceiver and what is being perceived. There is only perceiving, there is only witnessing. In being witnessing we openly live our true nature as Unity Consciousness knowingly knows itself whether during waking or sleeping consciousness. This is the culmination of the process of Yoga Nidra.

So our initial intention during the first stage of Yoga Nidra is very important. Self-inquiry demands undivided attention and total interest. The consistent practice of Yoga Nidra develops mental clarity and the ability to remain one-pointed. So we begin with the intention to remain focused, to be present, in each and every moment.

Prayer and Affirmation

After we have acknowledged our intention we move onto the next stage of Yoga Nidra. Here we evoke the heart-felt prayers that are living inside of us. These are prayers we hold about loved ones or ourselves. They may be prayers about health, healing, gratitude, compassion or enlightenment.

We acknowledge and bring these prayers into clear detail in the forefront of our conscious mind. As we ponder them, we bring them into the present tense. We don’t hold our prayers for the future.

The future never comes. When the future arrives we will still be standing in the present moment. When we were standing in the past we were likewise, standing in the present moment. We are always living in the present moment. When we think of the future we are thinking about the future in the present moment. The same can be said for the past.

So we phrase our prayers in the present tense. Instead of saying “I will be healthy,” “I will gain enlightenment,” or “my friend will be cured of disease,” we say “I am healthy,” “I now rest in enlightenment,” or “my friend is healed and healthy.” The future will never arrive. There is only now. When the future comes, it will be the present moment. So we always set our prayers in the reality that they are already true, now.

Then, once our prayers are acknowledged, we set them aside. We come back to them at the end of our practice of Yoga Nidra when we are in a disposition of complete openness. In openness our prayers are not future events, but present moment actualities. Living our prayers as actual facts opens them to their full potential and power.

Bodily Rotation of Consciousness

Now that our intentions and prayers are in place, we begin the next stage of yoga Nidra by systematically rotating consciousness through the Anamaya Kosha’s the physical body sheath. Our objective here is to re-awaken the body into its pristine natural state of infinite expansion that has no center or periphery.

While we presently experience our physical body as defined by boundaries it is actually a vibrational expanse radiating into infinity. But this is not likely our present lived-experience. In fact, we are numb to many of the physical sensations that are present in our body. This is one reason why disease processes go undetected for months or even years before they erupt to the surface of our awareness

When we are unable to perceive the subtle on-going sensations that our bodies are constantly offering up, we must wait for the grosser impressions to emerge into consciousness. Unfortunately, by the time we recognize these grosser symptoms it may be more difficult to bring forward the healing that is necessary for a speedy recovery.

As we attune to the subtle resonances of the body through the processes of Yoga Nidra we become sensitive and creative caretakers of these beautiful temples we call our bodies.

For instance, take a moment and feel the sensations that constitute various areas of your body such as your mouth…your ears…your eyes…your scalp…your shoulders…your hands…your abdomen…your legs…and your feet. While some of these areas are easily experienced, others may be only faintly perceived. Yoga Nidra invites us to re-awaken these buried sensations and bring them blazingly to the forefront of consciousness.

When we rotate awareness through the body we begin and end in a particular order. We begin in the mouth and end in the feet. The areas we primarily work with are richly supplied with nerve fibers and reflex to the sensory cortex in the brain.

If you were to see a picture of the sensory cortex mapped onto the human body, a homunculus or “little person” with enlarged features would appear. When you look at the picture you see that the tongue, mouth, lips, face, hands, genitals and feet are enlarged to a greater extent than the torso, arms or legs.

So during bodily rotation of consciousness we begin with the tongue and move to the throat, mouth, and lips, and on into the hands, down through the pelvis and into the feet. As we move through the physical body we simultaneously travel through the brain by way of the sensory cortex.

This method of rotating consciousness through the physical body insures a quick and profound relaxation in the body and brain. And when we rotate consciousness through the body over and over again, practice after practice, we create pathways of conscious awareness.

This process re-awakens the native disposition of the physical body as an expansive vibration. Where once we experienced the hand as a dense mass of sensation bounded by the walls of the skin, now we experience the hand as a vast field extending outwardly and inwardly in all directions into infinity.

We find that the body is a vastness unfathomable to the mind, unlimited by conceptual boundaries. And we realize that this is the truth concerning all objects. All objects are radiating energies without distinct boundaries. Everything, taken together, is One radiating pulsation, vibrating from itself into itself.

Vitarka, Vichara, Ananda, Asmita

During Yoga Nidra we pay attention only to the naturally occurring phenomena in the body/mind. We invent nothing. We deny nothing. We have no agenda other than exploring and mapping the territory we are investigating.

From this perspective, Yoga Nidra is not a strategy of self-improvement. We are simply observing the natural attributes of the body/mind. Listening and welcoming are our tools and Yoga Nidra is our path. In this attitude of listening and welcoming we are simply open to what is without intention. Since we have no goal, we are open to openness itself.

Usually our attention is oriented toward gross objects and movements in the world. We rarely stop to consider the deep energies that animate the movements of the universe. Yoga Nidra is the instrument that we use to explore these energies.

The sage Patanjali explains this exploration in his treatise entitled The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. In the seventeenth sutra of the first chapter Patanjali asserts, ‘Vitarka, Vichara, Ananda, Asmita’. He proposes a fourfold process of observation. Vitarka represents the grosser aspects of an object and how we conceptualize objects through names and images. Vichara represents the subtle energies that animate the grosser nature of objects. Ananda represents the subtle currents of joy and bliss that we experience when we enter into deep meditation with any object. And Asmita represents the refined experiences of identity, which arise as we probe into the deepest recesses of what an object, including ourselves, is made up of.

For instance, with respect to Vitarka, when we first observe our body we relate to it through the images we have about it, all the ways the body has or has not served us. These are mental concepts and are not the actual body just as the name ‘rose’ or the memories we may have about a particular flower are concepts but not the actual flower.

We must be able to see and understand these mental images if we are to go beyond them to a deeper level of relating with ourselves or any object.

During Yoga Nidra, we allow these mental concepts and body images, which I call residues, to arise just as they are. We do not fight with them or try to go beyond them to something ‘better.’ When these concepts and images are allowed to arise naturally, they bubble up and dissolve in awareness just like bubbles rising to the surface of a lake.

What is important is that we don’t get involved with them. We neither express or repress them. As these images are observed they dissolve and we move naturally to subtler levels of attention. In Yoga Nidra we proceed through a natural progression moving from gross sensations (vitarka) to very refined levels of energy (vichara). For instance, we move from rotating consciousness through the Anamaya kosha, with its emphasis on gross body sensation, to being aware of the Pranamaya kosha, with its emphasis on the subtle movements of energy in the body.

The Energy Body

As we rotate consciousness through the Anamaya Kosha, the physical body expands multi-dimensionally. We become aware that this sensorial field is part of a subtler pranic or energy body that lies behind and animates the physical body.

The breath is intimately linked to this deeper, pranic body. So as we begin to focus attention into the breath we move gracefully and naturally into the next stage of Yoga Nidra, the exploration of the Pranamaya Kosha or “energy body”.

We explore the Pranamaya Kosha by first joining with and following the breath. We take note that the body is always breathing itself and we attentively observe the natural action and movement of the breath. We do not try to change or alter the breath in any way. We simply note the spontaneously arising breath. By attending to the breathing body we become conscious of the subtle energies that animate the breath and the physical body.

While attending to the Pranamaya Kosha, we follow the breath back and forth. We also spend time counting each breath. Counting is an important exercise. It is a form of mindfulness training. When you methodically place your attention on counting the breaths, you will, at first, find yourself being distracted and you will have to start the count again. You will begin again and once more, you will lose your count. And this will occur over and over again. But you will discover that the counting is sharpening your ability to focus.

With practice you will find yourself wide-awake and alert. And this alertness will allow you to appreciate the subtle movements of energy, which make up the Pranamaya Kosha energy body. I encourage you to persevere in this art of counting, as it is a helpful practice in developing the one-pointedness required to progress into the deeper practices of Yoga Nidra.

While working with the Pranamaya Kosha we also synchronize body sensing with the breath. For instance we perform Nadi Shodhana pranayama, alternate nostril breathing, but we don’t use our fingers to control the flow of breath through the nose. Instead, we mentally feel the breath flowing through each nostril.

We perform one exhalation and inhalation focusing on the sensations in one nostril and on one side of the body, and we perform the next exhalation and inhalation focusing on the opposite nostril and the sensation in the other side of the body. In this way we integrate the sensation of the body, the feeling-movement of the breath and the awareness of the energy that animates the breath.

The Bodies of Feeling and Emotion

As we experience the energetic movements uncovered by the breath, deeper components of feeling and emotion begin to surface into awareness. These signal that we have entered the domain governed by the Manomaya Kosha.

Here we attend to the naturally arising pairs of opposites such as heaviness and lightness, comfort and discomfort, happiness and sadness, anger and equanimity, and pain and pleasure. And as we explore the Manomaya Kosha we intentionally invoke these plays of opposites.

The ego-mind moves linearly. It focuses in one direction or it focuses in another direction, but it cannot move simultaneously in two directions at once.

For instance, in this moment be aware of the space out in front of your body. You probably take yourself as a ‘someone’ who is attending in this linear direction. But watch what happens to your sense of being a doer if I ask you to be simultaneously aware of the space out in front of and behind the back of your body. The mind becomes silent and the sense of being a doer drops away while you experience yourself expanding in a multidimensional spaciousness. The thinking mind has to stop when we invite it to be simultaneously open in different directions. And when the mind is quiet we taste our spacious, non-linear nature.

As we explore the Manomaya Kosha we play in the field of opposite movements where we first go in one direction, then in the opposite direction, and then we merge the two directions together as one movement.

First we invite different feelings into awareness. We may, for instance, cultivate the positive feeling of comfort. Then we locate its opposite in the body, a feeling of discomfort. Then we swing back and forth between these two feelings going first to comfort, then to discomfort and back again until we are able to experience both simultaneously. We do this with feelings of warmth and coldness, lightness and heaviness, pleasure and pain, and many other naturally occurring feelings. Then we move on to play in the opposites of emotion. Here we deliberately explore the entire range of emotions over many practice periods of Yoga Nidra. We may take the emotion of equanimity and then explore its opposite of agitation or anger. Or we may choose the emotion of joy and then find its opposite in sadness or despair.

As you become familiar with the process of Yoga Nidra you will want to tailor the practice specifically to your individual needs.

For instance, while preparing to work in the Manomaya Kosha you pick several emotions that you are having difficulty experiencing as well as several that you enjoy. You pair the opposites to each of these emotions and work with them during this stage of the practice.

I invite you to eventually make the practice of Yoga Nidra your own so that you move beyond these tapes into a deeper exploration that is specific to your needs. You may wish to acquire The Principles and Practice of Yoga Nidra Workbook that provides the guidelines for adapting the process of Yoga Nidra to fit your requirements.

While working with the Manomaya Kosha, we also explore where specific emotions are experienced in particular areas of the body. Here we utilize traditional symbols such as the chakras.

For instance, the first chakra, which is located at the base or seat of the perineum, is associated with feelings of safety, security, groundedness and physical energy. The opposites are found in the feelings of insecurity, ungroundedness and fear. During our Yoga Nidra practice in the Manomaya Kosha, we move back and forth between the positive feelings of safety, security, groundedness and energy and their opposites of insecurity, fear, ungroundedness and lethargy while probing for sensations in the area of the perineum and lower sacrum.

Why do we want to work with the pairs of opposites? Repressed and unresolved feelings and emotions, stored in the unconscious, give rise to physical and mental unrest. There may be many feelings and emotions that we do not want to be with. We refuse them when they come uninvited into our environment. When they arise we move away, often with a great deal of reactivity, defensiveness and unconsciousness.

The process of Yoga Nidra helps us reclaim these pockets of repression and aversion. Then, when these so-called ‘negative’ emotions rise up, we are able to welcome them. We are able to be with them rather than refuse them. We are open to perceiving and feeling them. We are not afraid of feeling afraid. We are not afraid of feeling insecure or unsafe. Then we see that when emotions and feelings arise just as they are they move naturally through the stages of birth, growth, decay, and death and always dissolve back into their homeground of awareness.

We realize that these are only passing phenomena. They are natural movements in our body/mind. No longer afraid, we find a new ground of equanimity that is present whether strong emotions are present or absent. The natural ground of equanimity, which is our birthright, breaks through into our everyday waking and dreaming consciousness. Fearlessness pervades our psychological life. We are no longer afraid of fear and we are open to feeling whatever is present. Repression and aversion no longer control our lives and we live with a sense of ease and relaxation. Judgement looses its grip and our natural personality blossoms.

The Sheath of Intellect and Pure Mind

As we explore the pairs of opposites in the realms of feeling and emotion, images and scenes, even entire stories, spontaneously arise in our mind’s eye. Now we have arrived at the Vijnanamaya Kosha, the sheath of intellect and pure mind.

Here personal and archetypal images emerge that are associated with unconscious forces below the level of the conscious mind. The images that arise vary across a wide spectrum from very positive memories, thoughts and symbols to very dark and negative ones. We may see a moon, a sun, waves on an infinite ocean, or images that evoke fond and loving memories. Or we may envision images of chaos, destruction and death. As before, we intentionally move back and forth between these positive and negative images and play with the pairs of opposites

These images that unfold are based on themes that live in our unconscious. These may be personal themes, images that represent values from the family or culture we have grown up in, or they may be archetypal collective and cross-cultural images. And as before, we intentionally conjure up and pair the opposites–scenes and images that we detest with scenes that make us peaceful. As in all the koshas during the process of Yoga Nidra, we learn to welcome all the experiences that life brings.

While exploring the Vijnanamaya Kosha we also work with color and sound. Different colors evoke different feelings, emotions, sensations and memories and sound vibrates different parts of the body. Each memory, emotion or sensation, as well as each body part or organ, represents a particular energetic configuration. Each of these configurations may be viewed as made up of vibrating particles or waves along the spectrum of energy.

Color and sound are also energetic patterns along such a spectrum. Each body organ, sensation, image, emotion, thought and memory may be thought of as being composed of sound and color.

For instance, the liver is a mass of particles vibrating at a particular wavelength of color and sound pattern. Alter this pattern and the liver moves either into a state of disease, or into a more optimal pattern of health.

This is why various approaches to healing place tremendous emphasis upon sound and color as means for healing the body/mind. In Yoga Nidra we take advantage of this understanding and work intentionally with the different wavelengths of color and sound during different phases of our practice.

While working at the level of the Vijnanamaya Kosha, we also work with mental concepts that represent various qualities such as authenticity, essence, peace, joy or value. Each of these qualities engenders different sensations in our body/mind.

For instance, we may non-verbally repeat the word ‘kindness’ and embody the sensations that the word ‘kindness’ evokes. Or we invoke the concept of personal will and engender the sensations of intention and willfulness. Or we call forth and embody the concept of transpersonal will by surrendering to the feelings engendered by the phrase, “Not my will, but Thy will be done”.

As we explore the various images, colors, sounds and concepts that arise in the Vijnanamaya Kosha deep residues hidden in the unconscious are liberated and rise into awareness. As these residues move out of the unconscious and dissolve in the fire of awareness feelings of peace, stillness and joy manifest in the body/mind.

The Sheath of Joy and Bliss

The spontaneous arising of joy signals that we are moving into the territory of the Anandamaya Kosha, the sheath of joy and bliss. As we travel through the Anandamaya Kosha, we intentionally summon up images and memories that support these sensations of joy, peace and bliss.

Memories help invoke these sensations into the body/mind. But then we detach the memory from the experience of joy and remain only with the embodied sensations.

Joy is native to the body. It is the inherent disposition of the body/mind. Joy is not dependent upon a situation or an object for its existence. However, our cultural conditioning informs us otherwise. We have been taught that happiness is dependent upon our having some experience. But joy is our birthright and is always present. It is not dependent upon the presence of an experience or an object. We miss experiencing joy and peace because we are distracted by the thinking mind. We are looking for some experience to bring us happiness and we miss seeing that joy and happiness are already always present.

During Yoga Nidra we take time to live fully and consciously in joy devoid of any object. Then joy permeates the body as our moment-to-moment waking and dreaming experience.

The Sheath of Pure I-Ness

As we live for long periods in the experience of joy we understand that joy is not dependent upon an experience. It is the underlying condition of the body/mind. But this joy is still an experience, something that is in the body/mind and in our awareness. Just like body sensations, the movement of the breath, feelings and emotions, images, colors, sounds and thoughts, joy is an object that we are aware of.

At this critical juncture of Yoga Nidra we stand at the threshold of the Asmitamaya Kosha, the sheath of pure ‘I-ness’, where the many-pointed mind no longer veils the pure light of awakened mind. At this stage of Yoga Nidra we ponder the nature and identity of the “I” that witnesses and experiences all the varied sensations, energies, feelings, emotions, thoughts and images.

In this moment our attention makes the ‘Great Turn’. Attention turns back upon itself and inquires into the very nature of this witnessing-I. When awareness turns upon itself, when the one who is welcoming turns and welcomes itself, a tremendous collapse occurs. We move from being a witness, from being a welcomer, to being witnessing, and being welcoming. We collapse from being a ‘someone’ who is aware into being awareness.

Up to this moment we have been a beer and a doer. But now these collapse and we find ourselves simply abiding as Being and Doing, here and now with things just as they are. In this timeless moment there is only being. Only doing. Only hearing. Only seeing. There is no beer, no doer, no hearer, no seer.

The Sanskrit word, ‘asmita’ symbolizes the ego-I, our sense of personal identity. Personal identity is your belief that you are a separate individual. That you are separate from me and all of the other ‘so-called’ objects of the world. As we investigate the Asmitamaya Kosha we explore this belief and inquire, “Is it true? Are we actually a ‘someone’ separate from all the other ‘someone’s?”

Ultimately Yoga Nidra raises the questions, “Who am I? What am I? Who is another? And, What is another?” We explore the physical body through the Anamaya Kosha and we realize that it is not solid. It is infinitely spacious and open, without center or periphery. We explore the energy body through the Pranamaya Kosha and find that the body is an expanded energetic presence. We explore our emotions, feelings and thoughts through the Manomaya and Vijnanamaya Koshas and realize that they are only passing phenomena upon a background of awareness. And we open into a vastness of joy in the Anandamaya Kosha and realize that joy is not dependent upon any experience.

And now, at the level of the Asmitamaya Kosha, we investigate the vital question of who is the one who is experiencing all these movements? Who is aware of the body sensations, of the flow of energy? And who is aware of the emotions, thoughts and images? Now, in the domain of the Asmitamaya Kosha we begin a deep, non-conceptual Self-inquiry into the question of who is this ‘I’ who is aware.

We investigate by feeling into the body location of this sense of ‘I-ness’. We sub-vocally repeat the word “I-I” and attempt to feel where this word resonates as a body sensation. The verbal statement, “I-I”, has a physical location. This location may at first be experienced behind the eyes in the head. But as the sensations evoked by the non-verbal sound of “I-I” continue to be experienced, we find that the sensation revealed by the vibration of “I-I” drops into the heart region. Not the physical heart, but a location in the chest to the right of the heart.

If you look at a traditional map of the chakras the symbol for the heart is made up of two triangles in the shape of a six-pointed star. When you inspect closely you find a smaller six-pointed star beneath this larger star. This small star is referred to as the seat of personal identity, the seat of thought or the seat of ‘I-am-ness’. The energy that gives rise to thinking rises out of this body location.

Thinking does not originate in the brain. It originates in and slightly below the heart. Energy pulses upward out of the heart and strikes the brain to become thoughts and images in the mind.

As we explore the Asmitamaya Kosha we trace the feeling of ‘I-am-ness’, back into its origin in the heart. Then we locate the very essence that is present before the concept of being an “I” arises, before the mind is struck and divides the world into separate objects. And before thought arises, before energy moves out of the heart, we investigate the essence of who is observing all of this.

At this juncture we are involved in an infinite regression. We are an observer who is observing ourself. We have split into both an observer and an observed. We have positioned ourselves as an observer who is observing itself as an object. This is an infinite regression of awareness witnessing itself. And this position is a logical absurdity.

When we fully investigate this situation the entire structure collapses and we find ourselves no longer in the position of being a witness observing itself. Instead, we are transformed into being witnessing where there is no longer a witness or an object that is being witnessed. There is just witnessing. Subject and object collapse into each other. In this there is timelessness and only seeing, but no one who is seeing. There is only hearing, but no hearer. The mind may attempt to re-establish its domain by trying to re-evoke the feeling of being a ‘somebody’ that is witnessing or hearing. But if we keep exploring the fabric of this mental movement, the mind continues to collapse into its deeper ground of simple beingness, simple Presence.

Here we reach the culmination of Yoga Nidra. It has brought us to the very foundation of who we are as non-dual awareness or Pure Presence.

Beyond the Asmitamaya Kosha

Non-conceptual Presence is undifferentiated. It is the Is-ness or Suchness of this moment. It is our ground of being. When we live in and as Presence we feel no sense of separation.

At the end of Yoga Nidra we open our eyes with this understanding and now look back upon a world that we had thought was composed of separate objects. We see that there is no division anywhere. Separation is only the product of a split-mind. We understand that everything is made of the same substance. We may call this substance God, Spirit, Awareness, Consciousness or Presence. But we realize that the objects we are looking at are made of the same substance as that which is looking at them. There is no separation between the one who is looking and that which is being looked at.

In this moment we are the Unity of all that exists. We live a co-merged reality where we simultaneously experience that the things of the world, while appearing separate, are actually extensions of the Unified field of Consciousness, God, Presence or Awareness.

Everything is made of the same substance, the so-called external objects of the world as well as the subtle inner objects like thoughts, images, sensations and emotions. From this perspective there is no need to repress anything.

Why would we want to get away from anything when we are only refusing what we are? We see that the very substance of our emotion, our thoughts, our body sensations, our desires, our fears, everything, is made of the same substance. It is all non-conceptual Divine Consciousness or God. The split-mind that has divided the world into two is healed through this tremendous insight.

Now everything is understood to be the undivided One. Now everything is welcomed. Even our reactions and judgments are welcomed because they are understood to be expressions of the very substance of what-we-are as Consciousness.

We understand that the personal ‘I’ that we thought was an independent entity is made of the same substance as Consciousness. We realize that there is no personal self, separate from anything else. Our sense of separate identity collapses we know ourselves as the essence of what everything is as pure Presence or Beingness.

Understanding and embodying the realization that we are non-conceptual Presence is the culmination of Yoga Nidra.

The Many Faces of Yoga Nidra

There are many ways that we can practice Yoga Nidra. It can be done quickly in a matter of a few minutes, or we may proceed slowly and diligently, spending an hour to two hours thoroughly exploring each of the koshas or domains of existence.

I recommend finding a practice and stabilizing in it for a period of time. Practice  until you stabilize in your understanding of the different components of Yoga Nidra. Then begin experimenting with your own practice, utilizing the different formats of Yoga Nidra.

In your practice choose one approach to bodily rotation of consciousness and one breathing exercise. Pick one or two pairs of opposites of sensation, emotion, thought, image and concept, one or two memories that evoke the presence of joy, and one approach to the exploration of personal identity.

Proceed slowly and dig one well deeply. The practice of Yoga Nidra takes us beyond the practice of Yoga Nidra so that in every moment we are feeling, sensing, intuiting and knowing our true nature as Undivided Presence.

I also recommend the use of Yoga Nidra whenever you go into sleep and whenever you are waking up. Waking and dreaming are a continuum of consciousness. The mind only pretends that they are separate states. When we are awake the mind assumes the waking state is real. When we dream the mind assumes the dream state is real. Both waking and dreaming involve the presence of objects that are beheld in awareness. And our mind is conditioned to divert its attention into these foreground objects and away from the background awareness that is always awake as witnessing Presence.

Awareness or Presence is the background behind all movements of waking and sleeping. And Yoga Nidra teaches us to be who-we-are as Awareness during waking and sleeping without being distracted by the presence or absence of any object. For Awareness needs no intermediary to know Itself. It knows Itself. And the culmination of Yoga Nidra is Awareness knowingly knowing Itself.

Yoga Nidra invokes the sleep of the yogi where we are awake as Awareness during all states of consciousness. In this there is the understanding that we are non-separate Awareness, the substance that everything is made of. This is the realization and the fulfillment of Yoga Nidra.