Scroll toward the bottom to listen to the excerpt from the Yoga Nidra teacher training, the story about Shiva and Shakti: The Greatest Love Story of All Time.
I just landed back in Salt Lake City after teaching a 30-hour Yoga Nidra training in Hong Kong. I’m totally jet lagged and feel like I’m walking around in the twilight zone but I was so happy I went.
The studio that hosted me, Yoga Room Hong Kong, was so gracious and good to me. The students who took the training were amazingly receptive, bright, and contributed with brilliant questions and comments. The students took me to lunch a few times and we all really connected over piles and piles of dim sum. It was a real thrill to be back in Hong Kong and I can’t wait until I get to come back.
I love teaching live Yoga Nidra teacher trainings in part because each one changes based on the attendees who come. Every person has a different perspective, need, and approach to Yoga Nidra and that changes the feeling and direction of each training.
I also love teaching Yoga Nidra teacher trainings like this because it allows me to go deep into the fascinating subject of Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. Invariably as I teach the concepts and techniques to people, always new and exciting aspects of these truths are revealed.
One of the things that really popped to the surface for me in this training was how Yoga Nidra can be so many things or can be used for so many benefits. On one hand, Yoga Nidra is a very accessible and effective tool to help people lower stress, sleep better, and understand and manage emotions. On another level, Yoga Nidra is quite possibly the most effective and enjoyable pathway to waking up to one’s highest spiritual potential I have ever encountered.
So how does Yoga Nidra help a person, “wake up?”
A simple truth that Yoga Nidra explores in its gentle model of illumination is how relaxation and layered Awareness aids us learn to welcome, recognize, and witness every object that life gives us and that all objects are pointers to ultimate Truth. Yoga Nidra facilitates an easy change of our mind state, one of deep relaxation, as we welcome, recognize, and witness objects coming and going through our Awareness. Regularly practicing changing our mind state in Yoga Nidra provides a pathway for upward stage development of consciousness. One develops in stage consciousness and typically does not return back to lower stages of consciousness. In other words, it is difficult to “un-know” or “un-experience” your true magnificence of Being.
There are three stages to human consciousness: simple singularity, differentiation (this or that consciousness), and grand singularity or what I call Both/And consciousness. When we are born, we come from Source (everything, the grand Oneness) and naturally feel that everything is part of me. Then, it’s natural for humans to eventually develop into the differentiation stage where they soon experience themselves and the world as separate objects. This is the world of this vs that, have vs have not, etc. This is the state of consciousness that most of the world lives in currently. Through practices like Yoga Nidra, we develop a way to learn how to return back to the place of singularity but in a stage of consciousness that sees that I am both myself AND everything simultaneously in our Both/And consciousness. We return to the state of singularity but no longer from a place of naïveté, but rather from a place of wisdom, an up-leveling of consciousness that is fundamentally greater than where we began. This is the stage of grand singularity. And to think that such conscious evolution can all come as the result of a skillfully guided nap! I believe that this journey from a lower state of consciousness into our expanded and illuminated Both/And nature is both natural and inevitable.
So what? What’s the practical application of “waking up?” Why does that matter for every-day kind of people?
Part of what’s so compelling about living life in a higher stage of consciousness is how it changes our relationship to life and those around us. Our typical default consciousness, while sometimes subtle (and sometimes not so subtle), is generally rooted in a you vs. me framework, which depletes our energy through duality, struggle, and resistance. It makes life more difficult and less fulfilling across most measures. But elevating our consciousness through the practice of Yoga Nidra enables what I’m calling our Both/And stage, or grand singularity consciousness, where life becomes so much easier, effortless, and energized. In this stage of consciousness, there’s no more resistance to what is, everything comes into flow, and problems morph into opportunities and even seem to resolve themselves. In Both/And consciousness, every moment fulfills our purpose, affords us perspective, and ignites us with passion. I believe “waking up” refers to our ability to realize our potential for Both/And consciousness and to live inside not outside of a day-to-day human existence, in a life that is mindful rather than mindless.
There are innumerable religious symbols and stories, mythical pointers, and collective narratives throughout history that ultimately illustrate our own rise into our illuminated stage of consciousness. One of my favorite myths that illuminate this truth is one I love to tell regarding Shiva and Shakti. I’m including an audio recording excerpt of my latest training which gives you a fly-on-the-wall approach to what we explore in my Yoga Nidra training with the hopes that you’ll join me for my training that’s happening in just ONE week, August 17–20, in Salt Lake City, Utah. In this excerpt, I share a beautiful story that illuminates our rise from singular consciousness, through dual consciousness, and being reborn into Both/And consciousness.
I invite you to listen and then to respond with your own thoughts as well as any other stories you may have encountered that also reflect this same mode of waking up. I call this story: Shiva and Shakti: The Greatest Love Story of All Time.
May we all wake up to the truth that we are all One and may we learn to unite in a fearless friendship, understanding that we are all tied for first place in the human race.
Thank you for being on my team and I am also on yours.
Namaste,
