Yoga Nidra, sleep in meditation
Yoga Nidra is a technique I have practised for years, long before I discovered Yoga at around 18.
Ever since I was very small I spent night after night playing with this sublime Yoga Nidra technique, which is much more than simple relaxation. It allows you to truly know your energetic architecture and to travel within your body in different forms, and far beyond; it reveals many secrets...
Here is a Yoga Nidra session for you:
Yoga Nidra with "visualisation" of the qualities of the energy centres.
First I start from the contact between the head and the floor, the famous centre at the back of the head.
It is easy to place your awareness there, since the point of contact is precise and clearly felt.
Then I enter the head: the head is a great luminous void (sky blue...)
On the out-breath this void descends into the right arm, from shoulder to hand, then the same for the left arm.
Then the right leg from buttock to toes, then the same for the left leg.
Then I become aware of what is now only emptiness (full of the void of consciousness and of energy) and of what is not yet "empty", the trunk of the body.
There, on an out-breath, I go down to the base and relax the sexual and anal areas along with the perineum.
The individual's psychology falls into the earth, and I imagine walking barefoot on rich, sweet-smelling earth (Karmendriyas: walking, and Jnanendriyas: smell). I sit in the earth and let everything heavy fall downwards and everything light rise up.
Then this "world" dissolves and everything rises up into the pelvis.
Another world, that of water. My hands take water flowing from a mountain spring and I drink this fresh water, which enters my body everywhere and purifies it. Then my naked body floats on the surface of the water; the sensation is sensual, I touch the water, and soon the water of my body merges with the water of the sea where I was floating.
The water is fresh and revives me everywhere (grasping and taste). Then everything dissolves and rises towards another world, lighter still, more subtle and therefore more powerful: the belly.
Everything relaxes: the intervertebral muscles, the abdominals, the organs in the belly come into harmony with one another. Fire burns, consumes and devours. A great fire swirls clockwise, its glow shining everywhere, children singing around the fire as on Midsummer's Eve.
The fire has burnt everything and everything rises up. We pass through the diaphragm, which relaxes, and enter the rib cage. (Assimilation, digestion, elimination, and sight)
There the back muscles, shoulder blades, shoulders, chest and plexus (sternum) relax. The rib cage becomes supple, it opens and air comes in. The wind, the clouds, the blue sky, everything is there…
The wind touches the body everywhere and intuitively I understand everything, the world and its dualities, its beauties; I am at peace with everything! (sexuality, sensuality, understanding and intelligence of the heart, sense of touch)
Then everything becomes light as a breeze and enters the throat. No more form; time, space and sound are there without being constants; space is immense, everything unknots, a sidereal void. I can hear everything human beings have said since humanity began, I can travel into the future or the past, anywhere...
Then we enter the head.
The lower and upper jaws, the teeth, the tongue and the cheeks relax.
The lips rest lightly against each other.
The nose and the tip of the nose relax.
The gaze is neutral.
The eyelids rest lightly against each other,
The forehead relaxes, and the temples too.
The forehead opens and the temples too; air enters the head, everything flows.
The ears and the scalp relax, the right and left brain come into harmony, the crown of the head opens.
Only space remains, and a white point in front.
All this is beyond time and space, nowhere.
The white point grows bigger and bigger, and everything rises high above the head, becoming a sublime white light.
Then we are the light.
We are back in our body, down to the tips of our feet, hands and hair, there in the room.
We stretch, sit up and let all of this go, letting this Yoga Nidra session take root within us
Enjoy your practice!