Podcast Ep. 3 ~ What is Yoga Nidra Meditation?

You can view this podcast episode on Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti

This episode is all about Yoga Nidra, a wonderful relaxation meditation technique developed by the great yoga adept Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga in India.

As a meditation technique, Yoga Nidra enables you to remain awake and alert as you venture into the deep sleep state. Instead of becoming unconscious, you experience an exalted state of consciousness and a deep, blissful connection to the highest Self.

To read more about how Yoga Nidra meditation activates the hidden powers within your unconscious, read Awaken the Power of Your Unconscious with Yoga Nidra.

We cover:

• How Yoga Nidra lets you systematically relax each part of your body and move your awareness to your subtle layers, emotions, and mind. As you do this, you relax and rejuvenate your whole self.
  
• The three stages of Yoga Nidra, which include recuperation from exhaustion, purification of old tensions and traumas from the unconscious mind, and the attainment of an exalted state of consciousness.
  
• The importance of Yoga Nidra for deep rest and how it can be used to overcome the negative effects of sleep disturbance and insomnia.
  
• How Yoga Nidra removes deep-seated tensions
  
• Yoga Nidra in therapy and psychotherapy
  
• How to practice Yoga Nidra using a guided MP3.

Included in this podcast is the first track from Big Shakti’s Introduction to Meditation and Yoga Nidra MP3 series.

Buy the Introduction to Meditation and Yoga Nidra MP3 series

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Podcast Transcript ~ Episode 3

Yoga Nidra is a relaxation meditation technique developed by the great yoga adept Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga in India.

The word yoga means conscious connection to Self. Nidra means sleep. Yoga Nidra means conscious connection to the deep self during sleep.

Yoga Nidra, as a meditation technique, enables you to remain awake and alert as you venture into the deep sleep state. Instead of becoming unconscious, you experience an exalted state of consciousness and a deep, blissful connection to the highest Self.

Yoga Nidra, therefore, is a yoga meditation technique that allows you to relax deeply, recharge and rejuvenate your body, mind, and spirit and awaken higher consciousness.

Yoga Nidra is an amazing yogic meditation technique that enables you to relax deeply and gain all the benefits of relaxation. It is probably the most powerful relaxation and meditation technique in the world today. This is because it combines the best of deep relaxation and meditation so that you can relax all the layers of your being, physical, energetic, mental, emotional, psychic, and spiritual.

The ultimate relaxation is spiritual relaxation. It is relaxation at the very core of your being. And this occurs when you feel connected to this part of you and develop a sense of deep trust in life and yourself, and you know that everything is OK.

Yoga Nidra has been rebadged by various groups who have tweaked the original system with small variations. Its been given different names, such as Non-Sleep Deep Relaxation, NSDR. However, the original system of Yoga Nidra as a relaxation meditation technique originated from the yoga and meditation practices developed by the great yogi Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga, India. He first began to develop the technique during the 1950s and 1960s when he was living with his guru, Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, India.

Harness the power of Yoga Nidra meditation for relaxation and healing.

Even though Yoga Nidra has an exalted level of practicing, linking you back to the highest Self in everyday life, its main use is for relaxation and healing.

While Yoga Nidra is often used to help people relax, recover from stress, and heal from illness, it has many additional benefits that can enhance your health and strengthen your life purpose.

Yoga Nidra is a powerful meditation technique where the mind remains conscious during the normally “unconscious” state associated with deep sleep. Practiced in the lying position, it is one of the most popular yoga meditation techniques because it induces a profoundly deep state of rest while you are lying down. The problem with this is that most people sleep during the practice. However, when you are exhausted, the level of rest you achieve is much deeper than normal sleep. Once you have recovered your vitality and removed exhaustion, you can then use Yoga Nidra meditation to dive deep into the mind, psyche, and spirit. Then, you can discover all the great powers and abilities that lie hidden within you.

So, the technique is effortless, enjoyable, soothing, and recuperative. As practiced today, Yoga Nidra is a technique that carries awareness deep into you, layer by layer. This process is called introversion, or pratyahara,  in Sanskrit. In this state, the mind is dissociated from the senses so that you become aware of what is going on within you. You are cut off from all the sensorial demands and all the stresses, problems, and challenges of daily life. It is like taking a holiday from your life for twenty or thirty minutes. It is during this period of pratyahara of Yoga Nidra that you can rest deeply and experience deep relaxation.

Yoga Nidra takes your awareness deep into parts of you to become aware of the tensions that often prevent you from accessing the deeper layers of your being. You become aware of the tensions that crowd into your mind, causing you worry and anxiety. As you systematically relax each part of your physical body and move your awareness to your subtle layers, emotions, and deeper mind, you will relax and rejuvenate your whole self. By tapping into your subconscious, which is the deeper part of you, you gain access to innate knowledge and wisdom that can positively transform your life. Within you lie strengths, abilities, and energies that you can use for healing and improving your life in many ways.

Practicing Yoga Nidra leads you gently into a relaxing experience of deep rest – deep rest that enlivens the body and awakens energy. Yoga Nidra takes your awareness deep into the parts of your body that you normally cannot relax due to deeply held tensions and contractions. By taking your consciousness into those parts, you can release and unblock tensions, relieving the negative effects of stress and the anxiety that goes with it. People often say they feel rested, lighter or more capable of taking on the many tasks of their day after practicing Yoga Nidra.

Yoga Nidra is the easiest and most effective way to create a bridge between conscious awareness and your subconscious mind. It is a tool for mining the strengths and talents that usually lie hidden within you, buried under old negative patterns.

The three stages of Yoga Nidra

The complete Yoga Nidra experience occurs in sequential stages:

Stage 1. Rest, recuperate, and rejuvenate – It is during this stage that most people sleep in order to remove exhaustion and revitalize themselves. When you emerge from half an hour of Yoga Nidra, you feel like you have had the equivalent of several hours of sleep.

Stage 2. Manage old patterns, undigested negative memories, emotions, and desires – Once you have rested and rejuvenated yourself, you can begin to work on all the negative mental and emotional patterns that have accumulated from negative childhood experiences and traumas and undigested memories and desires. Once this stage is mastered, you move on to the next and final stage.

Stage 3. Awaken to the experience of your deeper self and your life purpose – In this stage, you can remain aware during the deep sleep state, experience your highest Self, and cognize your reason for being, your life purpose.

In stages one and two of Yoga Nidra meditation practice, you experience relaxation, restored vitality, and psycho-emotional purification. Through the process of cultivating deep relaxation and a sense of inner control, old, outmoded patterns of feeling and thinking are released from the body-mind.

Once negative feelings and old conditioning have been released, your intuitive and creative abilities are progressively revealed through easy and enjoyable self-development. You begin to feel and intuit who you are and understand what your deeper self really wants. You are freed from feeling trapped in the superficial desires of your lower, sensory-based thinking mind and begin to access your higher, knowing, intuitive mind.

Start using Yoga Nidra to experience profound relaxation, recuperation, and healing benefits.

The need for deep rest and relaxation

In today’s frantic, high-tech world, many people find that their sleep is not completely restful. They are unable to resolve tensions, or they are unaware of how much tension they are holding and carry it into their sleep. Over time, stress and tension travel deep into the body and mind and plant the seeds of physical and psychological illness.

Disturbed sleep, sleep deprivation, and sleep disorders such as insomnia have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. Chronic sleep deprivation has been shown to greatly increase the risk of chronic degenerative illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression, increasing the chance of premature death. (See the research article on heart disease at the end of this page for more details).

The statistics are dramatic:

• More than 30% of the population suffers from insomnia.
• More than 60% of people over the age of 60 suffer from insomnia.
• 30% of people suffer from some form of insomnia during their lives.
• More than half of Americans lose sleep due to stress and/or anxiety.
• Approximately 30 million people in the U.S. (10% of the population) use prescription sleep medications.

Many people try to sleep with their minds still switched on. This is like putting your car into the garage and keeping the engine on. Overthinking is a symptom of stress and worry. Unchecked, it can become an unconscious habit that undermines your health and happiness. Learning how to turn off excessive thinking and worry is the key to getting deep, restful sleep – and practicing Yoga Nidra is one of the easiest ways to eliminate worry, rumination, and tension.

Yoga Nidra is a practice that enables you to experience deep rest so that you can recharge and rejuvenate yourself. By removing longstanding tensions, you will also improve your capacity to sleep deeply and peacefully. Although it does not replace normal sleep, 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra is the equivalent of 3 to 4 hours of unconscious sleep.

Removing deep-seated tensions

Tensions block awareness and energy. Yoga Nidra meditation releases blocked energy that is trapped within the body-mind – often frozen by anxiety and worry.

Releasing energy during relaxation rebalances and harmonizes the body and the deeper mind, promoting healing and positive growth.

Removing tensions also allows you to penetrate your awareness into the unconscious areas of yourself. You become aware of and can connect to your inner abilities and potential, which expands your inherent sense of self.

Yoga Nidra meditation in therapy

Yoga Nidra is a yoga meditation technique that can be used in therapy to help people recuperate from exhaustion and illness. It can be applied as both a primary therapeutic tool and as an adjunctive treatment for many acute and chronic physical and psychological disease conditions.

How do you practice Yoga Nidra meditation?

Listening to the calming Big Shakti Yoga Nidra MP3 relaxation guide systematically relaxes each part of your physical body. You move your awareness effortlessly through the physical parts of the body, deeply relaxing those parts. Without consciously trying, more subtle layers of your mind also relax, resulting in very deep rest.

Script of the first track on the Introduction to Meditation and Yoga Nidra MP3 series

The practices on this CD will teach you how to relax deeply and how to meditate. Although relaxation and meditation go hand in hand, they are two different skills that we can learn to improve the quality of our lives.

Relaxation is the capacity to release tension from different parts of the body and mind. For example, we can practice physical relaxation or mental and emotional relaxation. We can also use relaxation to develop a calm attitude towards life and ourselves. By practicing deep relaxation, we become a relaxed person; we integrate relaxation into the very fiber of our being.

Meditation is primarily a process in which we cultivate awareness. Awareness is our knowing, feeling, and experiencing capacity. Awareness is vital if we want to live happy, creative, and fulfilled lives. To be unaware is to live a dull and ignorant life.

Relaxation of the body and the mind is a side effect of meditation. Health and well-being are also side effects.  As we cultivate awareness through meditation, we learn to locate tensions and effectively deal with them. Highly developed awareness drives us to explore more creative and intelligent ways of living. Relaxation and health result from this more aware approach to life.

Meditation is one of the most powerful methods of inducing a deeply relaxed state. When we focus our awareness on a certain part of the body and feel into that part, we become sensitive to what is going on in that area. Awareness is the key because it allows us to observe how tensions are building within us and how to identify the causes of these tensions.

Meditation empowers us to respond to life’s varying circumstances with more knowledge, inner strength, and sensitivity. A number of potent methods are used to dissolve tensions.

Perhaps the simplest and most powerful method of reducing tensions is to use the breath. Conscious inhalation stretches the tissues of the body slightly. Conscious exhalation relaxes the tissues. Conscious breathing induces a very peaceful and pleasurable state of being. The gentle rhythm of a slow, relaxed breath is soothing to the mind. It has a powerful effect on the whole nervous system.

The meditations on this CD are designed to help you to develop a relaxed inner poise, approach life from a more relaxed, open place, and bring more joy and deeper fulfillment into your being. The Introduction to Meditation technique is usually performed in the sitting position. It combines simple and effective relaxation and meditation techniques. As you move your awareness through the various parts of your body, you will be guided to feel the state you are in at that time. You will then use the breath to create positive feelings that automatically remove tensions.

By practicing the Introduction to Meditation every day, you will prevent the build-up of tension and become more aware of how to stay relaxed under a variety of conditions. This technique can be practiced in the morning before work to sharpen your mind and before sleep so that you rest more deeply and wake refreshed. You can also practice anytime you feel the need to relax. (Pause)

Yoga Nidra is one of the most powerful forms of deep relaxation as it is a meditation technique performed in the lying position. Nidra means sleep, and yoga means union. The practice of yoga nidra is the union of our awareness to the process of sleeping. It allows us to relax the deep, often unconscious parts of our personality, for example, our incessant drives and desires. In the practice of yoga nidra, the body sleeps, but the mind stays awake and aware. In this way, we consciously direct our own process of relaxation and rejuvenation.

In Yoga Nidra, the process of deep relaxation begins in the physical body and works gradually and progressively into the mind, creating a deep sense of relaxation and peace. We spread this feeling all the way into the unconscious parts of our mind so that at the end of the practice, we feel deeply refreshed, alert, and peaceful. Because Yoga Nidra relaxes the unconscious mind, it can be much more effective than normal sleep. In normal sleep, the unconscious mind can become very active, as in dreams, and can even cause tension. For example, we may grind our teeth. We can wake from sleep feeling tense rather than refreshed.

Yoga nidra is not only a way of relaxing but is also a powerful method of strengthening our mind and willpower. Yoga nidra uses a resolve to engage the power of the subconscious mind. The resolve is called a ‘sankalpa’ in Sanskrit. The sankalpa is a short, positive statement of intent that reflects something we want to achieve in life. It channels our energy toward achieving our life goals. The sankalpa is not made to achieve the little things of life. Rather it is made to achieve the bigger things in life. For example, you might make a resolve such as, “I will become stronger, calmer, and more aware,” “I will regain my health,” or “I will successfully complete my studies,” or something else that you really, truly want. This powerful process strengthens willpower by focusing the energy that is normally trapped in conflicting desires and complex mental patterns.

It is important to think carefully before deciding on a sankalpa. And it often takes time to know what it is that we really want from life. So take your time to think about this. Once you have made up your mind, once you know what your sankalpa is, stay with that one sankalpa until it comes to pass. (Pause)

The effects of Yoga Nidra usually occur in two stages. The initial aim of yoga nidra is to recuperate from deep stresses and exhaustion. It may be difficult to stay awake during the practice if you are tired. And although it is not ideal to sleep, you may sometimes doze off. This is a normal response, and in fact, the rest derived from this very light, sleepy state will erase exhaustion. Over time, as you recover your energy, you will find that it becomes easier and easier to remain awake.

Once we have removed exhaustion and recuperated our energy, we can use Yoga Nidra to develop powerful internal awareness and great mental strength. If we can stay awake during the practice, we can explore the internal dimensions of our being and uncover the positive qualities within us. We remove deeply held physical, mental, emotional, and psychic tensions.

Yoga Nidra can be performed anytime or anywhere when you have the time and the space. Once you know the technique, you can practice it for 10, 20, or 30 minutes, as time allows. Practice it any time you are tired, for example, when you wake up, before or after lunch, or after work. Some people use the initial stages of yoga nidra to help themselves to go to sleep. Experiment for yourself.

You are about to learn two simple and powerful relaxation-meditation techniques that become easier the more you practice. And every time you use these techniques, you will find it easier to relax and meditate. And once you have practiced a few times, you will be able to bring relaxation and awareness into your everyday life. You will then be able to relax whenever you want to, any time, anywhere, with your eyes open or closed. You will also easily induce a more relaxed state even during stressful and busy times. You will learn to do this during unpleasant experiences or during a so-called negative situation or emotion. All you need to do is to remember to use the technique. In this way, you will handle all the situations in your life much more successfully and creatively.

Read more

To read more about how Yoga Nidra meditation activates the hidden powers within your unconscious, read our blog post, Awaken the Power of Your Unconscious with Yoga Nidra.

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