Of all the things we can do to nourish ourselves, sleep is perhaps the most vital. Alongside food and hydration, sleep is the thing that helps us to function at our best, with clarity and confidence. So vital is it, that lack of sleep can slow us down and make life harder. And severe tiredness can also begin to affect our decision-making abilities, our self-esteem, our courage, our grip on reality and our mental health.
Getting enough rest, and good quality sleep, then, should be a crucial part of our toolkit if we are to live and act effectively, with conviction, and integrity. At our best, moving joyfully towards our potential.
At its most fundamental, Yoga Nidra is the practice of sleep. As Tracee Stanley, the world-renowned practitioner of Yoga Nidra, states in her book, Radiant Rest: “rest is vital to thriving.”
But there is more to Yoga Nidra than simply catching some good quality zees. Through deep relaxation we gain access to a deeper part of ourselves that is beyond the cognitive mind, beyond language and all its cultural trappings, and beyond all the baggage that we carry with us. Normally we only experience this part of ourselves while we sleep, and so we don’t remember it when we awake. At best there is, perhaps, a vague sense of it when we rise from our slumber, or maybe we glimpse something profound during a particularly deep meditation.
But with Yoga Nidra we are presented with both a process and a state of consciousness that allows us to remain aware while we are in this state. Known as hypnogogia, it not only allows us to come face-to-face with the void that lies deep inside ourselves, transcending duality and connecting us with the infinite universe of which we are so profoundly a part, but it also offers access to our deep intrinsic and ancient wisdom, returning with insights and clarity otherwise impossible to access.
The practical, spiritual and valuable benefits of a practice like this are nothing new. It is an ancient knowledge that has even influenced the greatest modern thinkers. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, was said to take regular naps throughout the day, clutching a large metal ball in each hand. As he feel asleep the balls would fall from his hands waking him up, and he would immediately note down any ideas or visions that he had seen in the semi-conscious dreamscape that lies between sleep and awakeness, before they evaporated from memory.
Perhaps this is where the idea for the lightbulb came from.
Practices such as this can offer us rich, nourishing rest. And they can also offer us guidance from the deepest part of ourselves, something Tracee Stanley refers to as “a connection to our inner knowing.”
Surely, getting to know ourselves so intimately, gaining access to our own profound knowledge – the light of our souls – that evades us during thinking hours, can only serve to heal our relationships with both ourselves and our day-to-day reality. And more than this, to move us towards our ultimate state of being. That is, a sense of meaning and purpose to why we are here at all.
As Tracee puts it: “Yoga Nidra is a healing salve for the world” and in this conversation she gives me a beginners guide to this powerful and useful practice, which can help us to show up as the best of ourselves, into a reality that is aligned with who we really are.
Useful links:
www.traceeyoga.com
www.radiantrest.com
