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I’ve been speaking concerning the life-changing advantages of relaxation and yoga nidra for nearly 15 years, and I’ve by no means wavered in my evangelizing as a result of I do know simply how highly effective this apply actually is.
Let’s journey again to the day all of it started for me: February 9, 2008. I hate to be dramatic, however that actually was ‘the day my life modified endlessly.’
I used to be residing in New Zealand and wanted a ‘break’ from my boyfriend on the time, so I went on retreat to a conventional yoga ashram. I used to be mendacity on the heated flooring of a yurt, overlooking Golden Bay, being guided into my first yoga nidra by a particularly tall, extraordinarily blonde German sannyasin (yogic monk) named Swami Marutdeva.
I had been struggling by my adolescence and early 20s with insomnia and nervousness (and this was earlier than smartphones). I had been practising meditation in a Buddhist custom for some time by this level, however the methods I’d practiced at my native Kadampa middle in Philadelphia by no means landed. I by no means felt peaceable. I all the time simply felt like I used to be sitting in a pool of my very own psychological filth for an excruciating 45 minutes at a time.
Yoga nidra was totally different, although. That very apply delivered all the good things. I felt like I melted effortlessly right into a state of what I can solely describe as bliss. Straight away, I lastly understood what was attainable by meditation. I lastly understood what it felt wish to let go—to launch all stress. To expertise a quiet thoughts. To maneuver past the thoughts. It was a full on religious expertise. And I needed extra.
I grew to become a yoga nidra junkie. It’s all I talked about. I organized my life to ensure I received my repair on a regular basis. I practiced a lot that in only a few months, I had memorized three 45 minute recordings, syllable by syllable. It utterly shifted my relationship to sleep, and supplied main reduction for my insomnia and nervousness.
I needed to go even deeper. That October, I went on retreat to spend a while on the yoga lineages’ ashram in India. After a strong religious expertise in India, I knew I needed to be within the lineage. So in I went. Over the span of 8 years, I took 2 Tantric initiations into the lineage, and spent 2 years residing and learning at an ashram as a sannyasin.
Throughout a interval at residence in New Jersey, between ashram years, I skilled a horrible trauma. I misplaced my childhood greatest good friend and subsequent door neighbor to a heroin overdose. (I deeply want he may have identified peace and obliteration of the ego by yoga nidra. It may need helped him get off heroin.)
I used to be with Rocky the day earlier than he died, and my final phrases to him had been, “I really like you Rock. Don’t you go dying on me.” The subsequent morning, on December 30, 2012, I watched him being carried out by the paramedics from my childhood bed room window.
I returned to the ashram every week after his funeral to finish my 2nd 12 months of examine. Deep in grief and affected by trauma, I skilled a brutal bout of insomnia that lasted 3 months. Yoga nidra was my secure area. It was the one means I may get rest. It was the one time I felt peaceable. It was the one factor that saved me sane, on condition that I used to be in such a state of extreme sleep deprivation and emotional ache. It additionally helped me combine the feelings and regularly launch the sensation of duty I had been holding onto since his dying.
I’ve personally skilled each single considered one of yoga nidra’s transformative benefits: reduction of stress and nervousness. Restoring my sleep and rest. Emotional therapeutic of trauma. Transformation. Letting go. Non secular oneness. Yoga nidra has helped me make sense of life. In actual fact, it’s supplied me with my life’s path.
The photograph above was taken shortly after I acquired my religious identify from Swami Satsangi Saraswati. Your religious identify represents your potential, and serves as a mantra to remind you of your highest self every time it’s spoken.
It’s no coincidence that my religious identify is Om. The mantra of yoga nidra. The image of Om 🕉 represents the 4 states of consciousness—waking, dreaming, sleeping and the fourth—pure consciousness in deep sleep—the state of yoga nidra.
So, I’m going to attempt to reside as much as my identify. I’m going to maintain on maintaining on, guiding people into relationship with yoga nidra—the apply and the state—with the hope that it’s going to remodel their lives because it did mine.
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Hilary Jackendoff is a Yoga Nidra and meditation trainer, in addition to a Trainer Coach and Human Design coach. In 2008, she started learning Tantric Yoga, then spent two years formally coaching whereas residing at an ashram in Australia. In 2019, she found Human Design and has been creating containers and training choices for de-conditioning, built-in with Yogic practices. Hilary’s work is devoted to sharing accessible instruments and grounded religious teachings to encourage self-inquiry so you possibly can launch stress and self-judgment and awaken self-love, internal ease, and pleasure.
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