Yoga Nidra!

With the Yoga Nidra session for Guernsey Mind soon approaching I thought maybe I might share an article I wrote that was published by a European yoga & health magazine about seven years ago now. This was before children so I do not reference the way in which my journey with IVF deepened my experience of yoga nidra and helped me recognise more than ever the transformative and supportive nature of this practice.

I write about it in my book, Dancing with the Moon, but yoga nidra really helped me to maintain a positive mind set when it came to my journey to motherhood and I worked a lot with the Sankalpa, “I am pregnant with a healthy baby”. I practiced Yoga nidra a lot, perhaps daily at times, during the post natal period as I found it so incredibly healing and helpful when i was depleted from C-sections and sleep deprivation.

Only now are we beginning to get more sleep, almost seven years on from having our eldest and I still practice yoga nidra a few times a week. It was helpful earlier on this year when I was initially exploring sobriety, and throughout lockdown it helped enormously in managing my angst at not being able to physically teach yoga or give hands on Reiki. It has been extremely helpful in recent months as I work through some old patterns around boundaries and self-worth.

That’s the thing with yoga nidra. It not only makes me feel better, but it actually helps to completely change things, we are potentially transformed by the practice, if we can make the time. This is the reason I am so keen to share it, not simply as a deep guided relaxation, although it is this, but because it literally transforms our mind in a more positive direction if we allow it, almost re-programmes it then. It’s quite remarkable.

Anyhow here’s the article…

When I initially started practicing Yoga almost 10 years ago now, I simply could not relax.  It was impossible.  At the end of the Yoga class when the teacher announced Savasana, I would try and find any possible excuse to leave the class early so that I could avoid the last few minutes of relaxation.  

It was not so much that I was adverse to the idea of relaxation per se, it was more so that I found relaxing so mentally uncomfortable.  There were simply too many thoughts, too many tick lists, too many things I should be doing, rather than simply lying there on the floor trying to relax.

When I first ventured out to Byron Bay in Australia to immerse myself in Yoga a year into my practice, I shall never forget my first 2 hour Yoga session (the normal length of the classes out there at that time).  While I loved every single minute of the asana practice, the problem came, however, with a 20 whole minutes of quiet relaxation at the end of the class.  Proper quiet that is, with no music, no distraction, nothing.  Those were the longest 20 minutes of my life, or so it seemed in that moment! 

Still with me attending these 2 hour sessions once or twice a day every day for a month and unable to leave the class early (many teachers will understandably discourage you from doing so), I quickly developed my own way of dealing with the mental chatter.  I imagined in my mind a train line with open trucks in which I placed each of my thoughts and then watched them pass by, one after the other, until I was able, eventually, to experience some relief from the constant background mental chatter.

Over the next year I practiced a lot of Yoga as I developed my practice both on and off the mat, qualifying as a Yoga teacher in the process.  My ability to relax improved hugely, but it wasn’t until I assisted on a teacher training course at Govinda Valley, Sydney that I discovered the joy and indeed benefit of Yoga Nidra. The relaxation became something I enjoyed rather than something that I endured at the end of a Yoga class.

I can still remember the experience of that first Yoga Nidra clearly.  There we were, the whole class of students, lying comfortably in the corpse pose, a bolster under knees and a blanket covering each of us to keep us warm as the teacher’s gentle voice soothed us into a state of cosy bliss as we relaxed each part of our body part by part, experiencing sensations and bringing awareness to the natural breath; it was a journey like no other I had experienced previously.

Time lost all meaning, what was actually 30 minutes felt like 5, and before I knew it we were back in the room, on our mats, in our bodies, feeling much more centred and grounded than I had felt at the beginning of the class.  What was also noticeable was the fact the mental chatter had eased, I had managed to drift beyond it into that wonderful state of being between being awake and asleep, the hypnotic state, where real healing takes place.  I felt brighter, lighter, rested and renewed.  

Essentially Yoga Nidra is a powerful meditation technique inducing complete physical, emotional and mental relaxation.   During Yoga Nidra one appears to be asleep but the consciousness is functioning at a deeper level of awareness so that you are prompted throughout the practice to say to yourself mentally, “I shall not sleep, I shall remain awake”.

Before beginning Yoga Nidra you make a Sankalpa, or a resolution for the practice.  The Sankalpa is an important stage of Yoga Nidra as it plants a seed in the mind encouraging healing and transformation in a positive direction.  The Sankapla is a short positive mental statement established at the beginning of the practice and said mentally to yourself in the present tense, as if it had already happened, such as “I am happy, healthy and pure light”, or “I am whole and healed”.

A Sankalpa can also be used to encourage you to let go of something in your life like smoking or overeating, focusing on the underlying feeling that leads you to smoke or to overeat such as “I love and care for myself and my body”, or “I choose to eat foods that support my health and wellbeing” or “I am relaxed and contented”.    In fact simply having the opportunity to establish a Sankalpa is powerful in itself as it gives you a focus and enhances your awareness of self.

It is actually in connecting with yourself that you come to realise all the deep seated tensions that Yoga Nidra helps you to release.  These are all the unconscious and unresolved issues that are playing a role in some of the unwanted habits and behaviour patterns you are noticing consciously.  This is the stuff that goes through your mind time and time again, the stuff you resolve to change at the beginning of each year but that “will” alone will not change.  What you need to do is get to the root of the problem and Yoga Nidra provides you with a means to do this.

With all the letting go of this “stuff”, such as trapped emotions and feelings, you become lighter and there is more energy available to be used in a more positive manner.  Plus with the power of intention in the form of Sankalpa, that which we attract into our life also changes.  It is in this way that Yoga Nidra offers us so much potential for transforming our lives in an even more positive direction than we can ever imagine.

Of course let us not forget the physiological benefits too, such as lowering of the heart rate and blood pressure, the release of lactate from the muscles that can cause anxiety and fatigue, a more restful night’s sleep and, ultimately, a calming and unwinding of the nervous system, which is basically the foundation of the body’s wellbeing.  So you see our physical health and sense of wellbeing can improve too.

Over the years Yoga Nidra has helped me in so many ways.  At times of crisis, when I have been tired and exhausted, sick and stressed, it has helped to restore, renew and heal me.  At confused times in my life when I have been unclear of the way forward then it has provided me with much needed clarity.  At other times it has helped me to let go of unhealthy addictions and behaviour patterns, the most profound was changing my relationship to myself and therefore enabling me to effortlessly let go of the need to smoke tobacco after so many years of battling with this nicotine addiction.

These days relaxation comes easily to me and I positively seek out and embrace any opportunity for Yoga Nidra for it is just such an amazing practice. In this stressful and fast paced world we live, where we can feel so disorientated and fragmented, it really helps to bring us back together and connect with ourselves again. Needless to say, I cannot promote the benefits of Yoga Nidra to you enough.

But of course you cannot benefit from merely intellectualising these things, and reading about it will not necessarily change things.  What you really need to do is make a commitment to take the time out for yourself.  Lie comfortably, cover yourself with a blanket, close your eyes and allow yourself to be guided through a Yoga Nidra session.  I doubt you will regret it, in fact you may find it a life changing experience. 

The yoga body?

“This yoga is not about gymnastics, contortionism or pushing, pulling and stretching the muscles. This yoga is about unsystematically undoing the tension in the body, so the body becomes freer and expresses an aliveness, clarity and beauty.” 

— Christine Borg

The moon, the moon, the moon…we have a super new moon on Friday and a whole heap of planetary stuff going on that is just adding to the general chaos of life lived at the moment.

The best thing I believe, would be for us all to retreat away for the rest of the month until the next full moon on October 31st has passed! Everyone is being squeezed a little, even us here on Guernsey who are fairly exempt from the covid and lockdown chaos seen elsewhere around the world.

I’ve talked to a few people who are all responsible for managing others and they all say it is a complete nightmare with anxiety and insecurity and depression running high and people sick and off work worrying about their potential covid symptoms and others just fussing, there’s a lot of fussing going on.

I’ve been questioning where yoga fits in all this because in theory it should have prepared us for this. Yoga teaches us how to be able to stay centred in the midst of uncertainty and wobbly times. It is a spiritual practice that helps to cease the fluctuations of the mind. Yet I have a sneaky feeling that much of the yoga that has been passed to us in the West is not really the yoga that the ancient rishis talked about and Patanjali codified in his Yoga Sutras.

I feel a bit peeved about this as many of you know, about the way yoga has become little more than an exercise class when it can be so much more than this if we allow it - if we allow ourselves to get out of our tiny little minds and see the world differently. The trouble is our education and society has conditioned us in such a way that it is difficult to see life differently, to let go of the rational mind as it has become and to access other parts of it that are not at all interested in what is right or wrong, but in something far more sacred and special and different altogether that cannot even be spoken of because it has a whole different language and vocabulary that is beyond our rational mind.

It’s even difficult to imagine this and I know that some who have come to class recently are challenged because the yoga that I practice and teach is one that is less driven or determined by the rational mind and therefore is not as rigid as it might once have been. Not to say that rational yoga is not without its benefits. It got me this far and I have definitely let go of many of the samskaras, the negative patterns and grooves in my mind that were there when I started, and I have managed to release the memory of trauma form my body so that i am able to enjoy greater intimacy in my relationships with others and with myself, and there has been a complete shift in the way I live my life.

But something still needed to change, and into my life this practice appeared that has been confronting and challenging and asks me to go deeper than I could have ever imagined and as difficult as this has been at times with the increased vulnerability and the need to let go of my notion of that which I thought was right (and many of my judgements along the way) there is something that keeps me attentive and engaged.

There have been a few times when I have thought, “to hell with it, what is this yoga anyway if it is not just postures for the sake of posture” and practiced in the old way and yet it feels so dead, so forced, so insincere and unkind to my body and to my soul. I lose my awareness drifting off, and while I might still rest at the end of the session, and there may be a sense of euphoria of moving energy and breath, the mind is not so free and calm and light, and the soul, hmm, the soul does not have as much expression, or room for expression as it might like.

Is this yoga?

It’s something I keep pondering on. We all have to start somewhere and anything that begins to tame the mind can only ever be a good thing. But when do we know that we need to move on? When do we know that we have gotten ourselves stuck? A student mentioned this week about taking a friend to class and knowing that he had a yoga body and that he would be good at getting into the advanced poses. Does that make him a yogi I wonder? If so are all the gymnasts in the world yogis?

I don’t think so. But I do believe that this is the illusion sold to the west and reinforced by all the many yoga images we are fed these days. Would a photo of someone attentively moving and connecting with that which cannot be named but is accessible though the body really help to sell anything? Maybe not, and yet to me it is the most beautiful thing, when you see someone moving in a way that encapsulates the ease of being in their own skin, or being in their own nature, of not denying this, of not pushing, pulling or forcing, of having no ambition beyond being their true self.

For the last few years I have been inspired by Christine Borg’s video called “Moving with Attention”, which is just beautiful and motivates me to practice in a way that allows more of my own nature, and to teach in a way that allows more of my student’s own nature too, that might make me appear to know very little, but allows me to access parts of the mind that at times makes me feel mad, but I know also makes me feel very alive and very much in my nature in a way that I haven’t felt in all my 17 years of daily yoga practice.

Just watch this, and right to the end too! http://www.christineborgyoga.com/practice/ It might just inspire you too!

This is what the moon is bringing up for me, this need to keep listening in and living from that space regardless of how difficult it can be because it means that life is often lived differently from the majority and that can trigger feelings of vulnerability and a little insecurity too, because there is nothing concrete to hold onto anymore…only more uncertainty in a life that is lived less and less in the right/wrong. Yet there is no other way, not when you have began and if madness and quirkiness is the result, then mad and quirky I shall become!

As Vanda Scaravelli said, ‘Yoga must not be practised to control the body: it is the opposite, it must bring freedom to the body, all the freedom it needs.’

Happy new moon!

Butterflies and community

We might not have made it to Sark last weekend, but we were lucky to get there this weekend instead and what a special weekend it was too.

I love Sark and its beautiful skies and this weekend was no exception, I often just stopped and stared, mesmerised! We managed a few beautiful swims too and the butterflies were just amazing! This morning the path was just lined with butterfly after butterfly, even E was taken away by it. 

 Butterflies seem to be the theme today in a strange kind of way. I’ve been thinking a lot this weekend about community and about yoga and Reiki and teaching and about the bigger picture. It’s easy to lose sight of this in the drama of life, and get sucked up in the minutia of the ‘me’ culture that permeates society and forget that we are all in this together.

Yoga and Reiki saved my life and I was so passionate about these practices that I threw myself into them, and this led to me qualifying as a teacher, simply because I wanted to learn as much as I could and share what I had learned with as many people as possible for the greater good.

When I set up Beinspired, I hoped that this might encourage a sense of community where people could discover, embrace and share their own uniqueness without fear of prejudice and have fun as they experience the benefits of yoga and Reiki for themselves. I’m hopeful that Beinspired has achieved some of this, certainly we have had some fun over the years.

Over the years I have tried to do fundraising for the community, and his year E and I have set up our Plant A Tree Project where we hope to help grow more trees on Guernsey. Plus we financially support projects in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Greece so that we can try and positively impact on the wider global community.

 However I have been thinking that it needs to be developed further, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I got a little bit of clarity walking back up Dixcart Valley on my own today. There is something quite magical about that valley as there is about Sark generally and I was grateful for the time on my own this morning to immerse myself in it. 

I’ve just got this sense that even in yoga and Reiki, in our quest to be someone, we can almost sabotage it’s potential benefits to humanity and to the planet generally because rather than pull together we can pull apart, doing our own thing.

It’s a tricky one to explain, but I have noticed that in my own life even though there are now more yoga teachers teaching yoga and Reiki practitioners channelling Reiki, which can only be a good thing for humanity and the planet, I have a certain resistance to it.

I question whether what is being taught is truly yoga, albeit appreciating that every new teacher has to start somewhere, just as I wonder whether Reiki is being diluted because people are seeing it now as a career choice rather than a calling. Yet who am I to pull someone up for their motivation in doing the work that they do? if income generation is the only motivator for teaching yoga and Reiki, does this make it any less spiritual or helpful than someone who wants to share to promote peace as a primary motivation?

It’s something I have questioned all weekend, because I can see that even in the holistic world which is meant to be all caring and sharing, we often lack a cohesive sense of community as people compete for business accolade, financial gain and a sense of being good. We can’t help it, this is our conditioning, the need to be someone and be recognised for it. It makes us feel better about ourselves and eases our inherent insecurity.

I can see how I might feed into this from time to time, losing sense of the bigger picture and the role we each have to play as part of the whole. It’s a bit like the butterfly effect, this idea that the small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system – the concept of the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon. In reality a single act like the butterfly flapping its wings cannot cause a typhoon but a small event can serve as a catalyst…

In theory each time someone gives/receives Reiki and/or practices yoga their vibration increases, which raises the vibration of the planet. So really it doesn’t matter who is doing the teaching or the practising or the giving, the important thing is that someone is doing it. 

If we truly wish to live as a community and help humanity and the planet to heal then this is all that needs to take place; the teaching, the receiving and the practising, and it really doesn’t altogether matter who does which of these!

So it is that my moment of clarity today found me wanting to establish a list of Reiki practitioners with whom people might receive a treatment, and yoga teachers who might help students to develop their practice. Simple really. So that it isn’t about me, not really, it’s about all of us, and about community, about coming together and about the bigger picture. Let’s see!

Tonight after yoga one of my students shared a stunning photo of two butterflies that she had taken. I thought this rather appropriate given my ponderings and my interactions with butterflies this weekend. I’m also aware that the butterfly is about transformation, and I know that this process if occurring too, as it brings with it a slight contraction, which is uncomfortable but also – perhaps for the greater good. Let’s see on that too!

La Gran’Mère du Chimquière

Oh my goodness, this most beautiful gift and addition to my altar arrived into my life today, totally unexpectedly and I have been smiling ever since.

This was a gift from a special friend who knows me much better than I realised and knew what I was missing when even I didn’t.

Last week, as you know if you have been reading this blog regularly, I went to see La Gran’Mère du Chimquière because I felt things were a little shaky and wobbly with the moon and I wanted some of her strength and support to help me see it through to the other side of the full moon. It’s been a bit like going through the mill, break down to break through, always the process is uncomfortable, but heck, how else would we grow!

I managed a trip to the fairy cave yesterday, felt the need to just go and be held by that space, and the ancients, always there to support if you feel the need and are able to heed the call. We sort of just ended up there, if anything it was E’s call, he was insistent we visit Lihou island even though it was far too windy to walk with the children far. But it got me in the cave and I’m grateful for that and the ancients because it did positively shift something.

I could feel it all lifting yesterday evening and talk of the new came in which got my heart fluttering and I awoke this morning with the clarity I had been searching these last six months or so. It’s always an utter relied when the light floods back in again, and yet funny it should happen on the waning moon and the decline into winter, Samhain not too far away now, so maybe actually it’s perfect.

It was certainly perfect timing for her to come into my life today. I hadn’t even realised she had arrived until I was just about to go out to the beach and there she was by the front door, delivered and I wasn’t even aware of it ensconced in my yoga practice upstairs instead. I was overwhelmed by her. Of course I took it as a sign but I also took it as a reminder of the goodness in life and that everything is just as it needs to be. With that I positively skipped to the beach for a swim.

Thank you Kristin for being so thoughtful, kind and generous, and thank you La Gran’Mère du Chimquière for being in my life.

Love x

Insecurity and safety

The squeeze keeps going, into the vulnerable places that we try to ignore. I’ve known it needed exploring but it was always possible to put it on the back burner, keep busy, pop it in the shadows, hope it might resolve itself without too much effort on my part. Those of you doing the work will know what i mean. You’ll also know that you cannot help it to resolve without going to those vulnerable places; it’s the natural lore!

It needs expression, release, a voice, a way of being digested, expelled.

I’m always, always blown away by how it works, the coincidences and the synchronicities, the seemingly small things that the universe sends in to help us feel the uncomfortableness of staying stuck and yet the uncomfortableness of finding our voice and speaking what needs to be said. Urgh.

It’s all good though. Today I’m very aware that it’s a beautiful world, really it is, however awful we may feel or however challenged or squeezed, really it is a beautiful world and it will support us and meet us as we need to be met. Everything is perfectly ordered in our lives, we just need to notice it.

This is the message that i received today and if you are reading this then you might relate to it too:

“Perfectionists often have conditional self-esteem: They like themselves when they are on top and dislike themselves when things don't go their way. Can you learn to like yourself even when you are not doing well? Focus on inner qualities like your character, sincerity, or good values, rather than just on what grades you get, how much you get paid, or how many people like you. “

This my friends is what underlays my current healing. This feeling is not a very pleasant feeling, laid down in childhood, the insecurity one feels from not living up to one’s idea of perfectionism, which I believe it underpinned by the need to keep safe.

I felt like I had found the missing part of the jigsaw puzzle when I read this:

“Some of us have very high standards for everything we do. You may want the highest grades, the best job, the perfect figure, the most beautifully decorated apartment or house, neat and polite kids, or the ideal partner. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always turn out exactly the way we want, even if we work extra hard. There is a piece of the outcome that is at least to some degree out of our control. Bosses may be critical, jobs may be scarce, partners may resist commitment, or you may have genes that make it difficult to be skinny. If you are constantly disappointed and blaming yourself for being anything less than perfect, you will start to feel insecure and unworthy. While trying your best and working hard can give you an advantage, other aspects of perfectionism that are unhealthy. Beating up on yourself and constantly worrying about not being good enough can lead to depression and anxiety, eating disorders, or chronic fatigue.” Psychology Online.

It’s always such a relief when we see more clearly into the shadows and make sense of that which we have been trying to understand for a good old while now. I’ve written a third book as many of you know, about my journey with depression and eating disorder to a point, the two are so interlinked it’s difficult sometimes to separate them; they feed into each other. I’ve been trying to explore the root of all of this, to understand more of what caused it all to begin. I had known on some level, but this substantiates it in a way that had not been so visible previously.

It feels like an ending in many respects. Kali came into my life the other day, the Goddess of endings and new beginnings, of death ultimately, and it all make perfect sense. We need to the ending, the dying, the letting go, the grieving and the sorrow. Like a fire we combust that which is no longer needed into ash, and this can be added to the soil in which we grow new seeds. It is all a cycle.

Our inherent feelings of safety on this planet are all being tested right now, Covid has tested the habits and patterns that we have created in our lives to give us a sense of feeling safe, whether that is real or imagined. The rug has been pulled from under our feet and we are trying to find our grounding again, clutching at anything which makes us feel safe, even if it is just imagined. We are all being squeezed, to heal those wounds which prevent us from feeling inherently safe in our connection to the universe, to God, to a higher power, however you want to define ‘it’.

It’s not easy though, because we have to go to those vulnerable places. I see this in yoga. We know, the ancient texts tell us, that yoga can help to cease the fluctuations of the mind, can help to ease our suffering, but even then, even knowing this, it can be too confronting for many to go there in the first place. We might try, we might like to stretch the body, build strength, take a few photos for instagram, but something stops us letting the practice take us deeper, into the shadows, to the spirit, to the heart of yoga.

It’s a shame and while I’m delighted that yoga has become more mainstream with increasing numbers of people teaching yoga now, and some with very few years of practice or experience, it doesn't matter because it is spreading yoga out into the world. But, my concern is that what is being taught is no more than an exercise class, that lacks the potential of yoga, so that many are buying into the idea that they are practising yoga but are able to remain unaffected by it, so that yoga is diluted and not allowed it’s expression either.

But i have to trust in that, because if I don’t then I can feel the frustration creep in, especially when i hear about rising levels of depression and anxiety and increasing use of medication to create feelings of safety and security, to try to mask the inherent feelings of insecurity. There is another way. It’s not easy, but it is worth it when you get there. A whole new world awaits, that you could never have imagined, when you find that place within yourself, your centre maybe, that helps you to access your inner strength and sense of security, challenged as it might be from time to time.

Just for today, we let go of all that is in our way. Just for today, we allow ourselves to go to those tricky places. Just for today we hug ourselves and remind ourselves how beautiful we are inside and out. Just for today we celebrate our perfections and our imperfections in equal measure. Just for today we acknowledge our vulnerability and we’re OK with that, rejoice in it even, because we have to go there to pop through teh other side, into a more compassionate level of being, more connected, more trusting. Then the feelings of safety arise naturally. We are safe, we are safe, we are safe.