Sit,Walk,Work (SW^2)
Exploring Inner Peace: Yoga Nidra for Rest and Reflection
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Hi, welcome to the Sit Walk Work Podcast, a show about paying attention. My name is Dominic, your host, and today's episode is a standalone guided meditation designed to give you an opportunity to practice pretty much wherever you are. So when you're ready, the practice will begin shortly after the following challenge. This month that's kind of been my theme, equilibrium, or balance, how do we create it when we're kind of out of balance, what are some of the things that we need to do in order to put ourselves back into balance. And so that's where I want to take us with our practice today, is to explore these ideas of how we can explore it in our yoga ninja. I rest, yoga ninja is a guided meditation, so I'll be providing you with prompts to kind of focus on in the body. And it's a somatic practice, so you'll hear me use language around feeling and sensing because you want to get that type of connection with yourself, and it might not be prevalent now, especially if you're new to this. But over time, these things started to develop, and so all I ask is you kind of bring a bit of curiosity to the practice. And with that, if you haven't already settled in, I invite you to close the eyes, and as you close the eyes, we send the signal to the body, like we're going to take our attention inwards, this powerful thing of ours that shapes our day and kind of colors, a lot of the stuff that comes up in the mind, this this attention that we use, and we're going to move it with purpose and focus today, throughout practice. As I alluded to earlier, you're going to hear various moments of silence as I guide you to one prompt, and then the next, but know that that silence is for your benefit to help you explore what we're doing and what you're learning about yourself and about that moment. And with that, just open your attention kind of wide, and I want you just to kind of take in at a very broad perspective everything that's kind of coming up. So when I say everything, I'm talking about your sensory information. So the sounds, the smells, the residual taste in your mouth, the visual field, all of the things that make up your senses, your inputs, your ability to perceive the world. And there isn't anything in particular I want you to notice, but just kind of begin to acclimate their important part of your practice as we kind of move through that. You can feel the breath moving through the body, the weight of the arms and legs and torso, and kind of what it's like to put a pause on the day. If you're like me, you might be pretty hectic up to the moment, right? Now you're asking yourself to ramp down a little, so you might also feel like a residual energy and need to move a desire to fidget. And before you kind of surrender to that, I just want you to observe it for just a small beat. And then if you need to move, move, see what happens when you rest your attention on things like that. Now, as you may notice with a little bit of time and a little bit of attention, you can start to feel how things change, everything we kind of experience from moment to moment that rides on this continuum, this wave of change, and sometimes it can feel like that wave of change is stuck in one place, but when we slow down and get a little settled, we can start to see like there's a movement here. One of the things that I'd like you to notice in this moment or consider, I should say, in this moment, is your outcome for your practice today. Like, what do you want to get out of this? And just let that question kind of settle into your body, into your mind, softly holding your attention on the idea of what your outcome for practice is today. And unlike a lot of areas in our life where we strive to find like what's the right answer, this isn't really that. There's not a right answer for what your outcome is for your practice. It's merely an acknowledgement of where you're going to consciously allow yourself to go today, whether that's to maybe rest or maybe to explore the body or the breath or feelings that come up. Any of these possibilities are available and it really can be all or none or maybe you're just going to remain curious to the moment. See what unfolds. One of the things that I'll ask is as you consider your outcome for practice, not consider it just as a thought, but consider it as something you feel. So you have to cycle between thinking and then going back to your body and feeling where that outcome lives, now this impacts your breathing and those two tie together. And now I'd like you to begin to let your attention feel the body. And what I want you to kind of try to notice is notice where the body feels most supported right now. For most of you, you're lying down so something's holding you right now. And I want you to let your attention drop into that sense of support. Most of us move through this life as if there's no one there to support and hold us. And so to feel it as you begin to settle in the weight of your arms and your legs and if you're sitting down, your sit bones really connecting to the surface beneath you, there's a tactile sense of feeling grounded and supported. And when you can begin to connect with that, you can start to feel into what we call your inner resource. It's the sense that you're going to be okay in this moment. And that sense of feeling okay. You can feel it in your body in all the ways I previously described. But there may be a time or a moment in memory that you can recall when that statement was true for you, if it doesn't feel true, that you're okay. Maybe at some point in this journey we call life, that was true for you. And at this point, maybe you reflect on that a little. The idea of the reflection is that through the power of thought and memory, we can start to feel this again, alive in ourselves. Along the way, we begin to drop off the memory because the goal isn't to be lost in your thinking mind, but more to be found in your body and to sense and feel where things started to come alive a little or started to register, that sense of okayness and feeling grounded and supported and well. You can think of this as a foundation, a space that no matter where you journey in this fastness that is your internal universe, that you can always come back to being grounded and supported. You might even choose to stay here as we begin to move further down the path. We'll begin to open up to working our way through the body in an organized manner that allows us to kind of scan and sense each part of the body, and notice what is arising or is true for that portion of ourselves. Playing with these thematics of equilibrium imbalance along the way, we start to see physically in ourselves how these things are true. So with that, bring your attention down to your right big toe, and then when I ask you to bring your attention to a specific place in the body, it's almost as if you are spotlighting that area, and when you're noticing the body, you're noticing any aliveness, any sensations that are present, as well as their opposites. To mean that maybe when you focus here, you notice nothing at all. And then we'll begin to move from that right big toe out a little bit wider to feel the rest of the toes on the right foot, to feel the bottom of your right foot, the center of it, the top of it, noticing if sensations begin to arise, as the space widens into the right ankle, up the right leg to the calf and to the shin, into the right, the upper part of the right leg, so your quad and your hamstrings, all the way into your right hip. And now with this space running from the toes of your right foot to your right hip, notice that when your attention is there, you can still sense the left side of the body and the upper part of your torso, but it feels very pointed, just in the place that you're holding your attention, and you might feel pulsing here, or you might feel the lightness, the texture of the blanket or anything that's covering your body, your clothing, and you can sense that these things are kind of individualized, then you can feel just the heaviness, the denseness of your leg, supported, rounded, secure, rooted like the earth. And we allow our attention to continue moving up the right side of the body, into the torso, so you start with the right half of your belly, the right side of your chest, your right shoulder, upper and lower back. The upper part of your right arm, down through your right elbow, right forearm, wrist, center of your right palm, all the fingers on your right hand. And now our space has gotten wider, so you have your right leg, your right hip, the right side of your belly and chest, and your right arm is all now just a continuum of sensation. So you can let your attention kind of follow this wave, maybe you feel something in your toe, then something in your hand, then something in your chest. You might even sense and feel the left side wanting to get in on the party. And don't worry, we're not going to really fight against that, but just kind of notice it with a bit of curiosity and come back to sensing what's happening here on the right side of the body. Each breath allowing a little bit more tension to soften and release to let the weight of that right arm relax, let the fingers and the hand open a bit. Let the softness of your attention soften any tension that's present. And you're in our journey up the right side, we come to the right side of the neck, the right side of your jaw, your right eye, your right ear, inner and outer parts of your ear. As we move up the body, we start to feel the more subtler parts of ourselves, the things that often don't get our attention. And if you haven't done so, make sure your attention path has broadened. So that it includes everything happening on the right side of your body, with that kind of imaginary line running down the middle, separating what's happening on the left from what's happening on the right, and then we'll begin to move our attention through the left side, starting at the left big toe. So as if you were just moving your spotlight softly from the right, letting it dim ever so slightly and get much brighter on the left, you feel your attention drop into your left big toe. A spotlight begins to move out wider to include all of the toes on the left foot, the bottom of the left foot, the top of it, the whole left foot, a new part of the landscape that is your body. Coming into the left ankle, we move into the left calf and shin, dip over the valley of the knee, and let our attention arrive into the upper part of our left leg and our left hip, before we stop and kind of survey the entire sensations present in the left leg, allowing it to feel supported, held, heavy and relaxed. Everything where the mind tries to force you to think you should feel something, and then turn back to just feeling. As your attention moves up the left side of your torso, so the left side of your belly, the left side of your chest, the upper part of the left shoulder, feeling the back side so that would be the left shoulder blade and the lower part, the left side of the low back. Coming into the upper part of the left arm, down into the left forearm, wrist, hand and fingers. Letting the attention rest here now, feel the sensations running from the left toes to the left fingers. Letting the attention move up now, the left side of the neck. Into the left jaw, into the left eye, left side of your forehead, your left ear, inner and outer lobes. And now we get to bring our attention to its entirety. See one of the things that we forget when we kind of play with this idea of balance is that we think that there is a separate side, like we move through the body here from right to left, yet it's still the whole body. And so with that, your attention now kind of fills everything in the space from the toes to the crown of the head, dropping the illusion of separateness, reminding it that it is always has been just the body of sensation. So openly and freely, we let it move from right to left, from up to down, all the way around, noticing when the mind starts to create like and dislike in the moment, parts that you want to stay with, things that you want to go away, but I'll ask you to soften that and just let yourself be with the sensations in the moment and see their change. As you observe yourself from the seat of the witness, you can see the space that allows for everything to unfold in this moment. Even with the foundation of that sense of groundedness, that sense of okayness, underlining this moment, feel the lightness of your breath moving here in contrast to the density of your body. As if it was water moving across the surface with each inhale and each exhale, there's this natural rising and falling sensation present with each breath you take. And breath is our most, it's our primary example of this idea of balance, for when it's in balance, you almost don't even notice what it's doing for you. It's so seamless, it's only when things kind of get out of rhythm that our attention starts to notice, which is why we bring your attention here now so that you can begin to explore it. So begin to let your attention rest in the center of your heart, the space that kind of holds those at that left and right side, right, as you come to your sternum where your heart is. I want you to imagine that your next in breath is coming from this place, so you're breathing into your heart space, you're letting your attention rest here by focusing on breathing into your heart space because so much of our day can be lost in our head, we often forget that we can go to our heart to consult, to help us move through the things that are coming up within us. And I want you to try to find a rhythm that, as you breathe into the heart, you're going back, and then in the exhale you just almost softly let it sigh out. You find this breathe into the heart, this soft little conscious sigh you take, and if you can settle into that exhale you can feel it kind of wash over you and work its way into your resting arms and legs and torso, and if you were kind of exploring the conscious size as a part of the practice, let that settle and kind of notice how the heart feels. And in addition to what the heart is feeling, where are you feeling in this moment? This isn't a question meant to kind of pull you into the space of thinking, but to get you to observe what's coming up, what's naturally arising from the conditions that have been set in the practice today. And notice that there's no right or wrong answer to the inquiries you're making, but rather an opportunity to learn about that continuum. So if you find yourself meeting a challenging thought or something kind of that you might be ruminating on. So would it be like if you let in its opposite just a little bit, to sense and feel that for a moment? Just like as you move between sensing the right and left sides of the body, it's the same thing with these very subtle feelings or emotions that might be present. You can kind of let your attention move between feeling where things feel good in the body or maybe where they feel a little tense or whatever the opposite of good is for you. Think it, feel it, see it and work your way through it. After some of us we can feel everything and for others maybe not so much, but over time as we explore, even inviting these contrasts in, we start to find the middle, the point of mediation, where our preferences can slide back a little and we can be with whatever is kind of happening, through how practice you've witnessed your body in a very tactile manner and your breath and how they have come together to create the tone or feelings that might be present and let your attention witness the space that all of this is kind of unfolded in, and as we zoom out and we take this kind of wider perspective about our moments, you can see that there's a lot of space for things to happen, for the sensations of your body, for the movement of your breath and the churning of your feelings, and as you observe and have observed those things, so too is your commentary about them all, your thoughts about everything from the practice to the things existing outside of the practice to the memories from long ago, moving energetically through you the way your breath has moved through you, the way your sensations have moved through you. So if you haven't already noticed the thoughts that are coming up in the moment right now, letting them be what they are, letting any judgement or desire to judge them soften a little, and notice what happens if you don't grab them, if you don't make them true or turn them into any declarations, but you let them move. You might consider it's the way you're thinking now supportive of your original outcome for what you want out of your practice today, and what would it be like to choose an opposite way of thinking in this moment? And if you find that maybe there's a very prevalent thought that you're ruminating on or it's causing you some type of challenge, or what would happen if you went to your heart and consulted a little bit, took a breath in there and asked for a little bit of compassion, a little bit of love, a little bit of softness, as a way of inviting an opposite into that way of thinking. So, thank you. [end of transcript] [end of transcript] [end of transcript] [end of transcript] [end of transcript] And as you observe this exploration of thinking, keep your attention wide enough to also feel what these various concepts are doing real time to you in the moment. Seeing yourself open your attention to the joy that is present. And when I say that statement, I mean it in some of the subtlest of ways. We often think that our happiness, our joy comes in these very grand gestures, which it does lie there, but in a more practical manner. There are softer subtletive things unfolding moment to moment than we can be grateful or joyful about. As a means of putting more balance in from being in our head, but actually being in our heart space, we can start to open our attention to the gratitude present in this moment. For being grateful for being able to practice today, to something you did for yourself or for others that was kind. The thing about your human experience is that even if you haven't done anything relevant or recent, you can go back in time, go back in memory and recall the time when these things were true and bring that forward. Just as a teaching tool to help you learn to feel that gratitude in this moment. You can even cycle the feeling of gratitude through the heart with each breath in and each breath out. Noticing how the mind reacts to these concepts of giving yourself gratitude or welcoming gratitude, and if you find a sense of resistance there. You can think about the love and the gratitude and the joy you would wish for someone who's important to you or some being that's important to you as a method for feeling this gratitude in the moment. Thank you. And you can allow any sensations of joy or gratitude that you feel to kind of move backwards through the practice, bringing that with you into the thoughts, the memories, the things that kind of arose or might be arising in this moment. To noticing how you feel in the practice right now. Back into the breath that's rising, falling, that joy and gratitude that the breath has returned again and again and to the body that has allowed you to make it this far in life to open you up to this moment all the way back to the sense of being held, grounded, exported and okay, this is if your joy and gratitude can wrap the entire practice and experience and hold. As we come to this portion of the practice. We can begin to take stock to the fact that what we call awareness, the space of it, the space in which you've kind of witnessed and observed your moment to moment experience unfold. This is enough to hold the various changing elements of each and every one of us and yet it's still spacious enough and it's something about that spaciousness that brings its own soft subtle steadiness with it, that it's a part of us that isn't changing even in the mist and the sea of change, it is still the same and invites you to see if you can connect to that element of your experience. Remembering that no matter where you are, in time you can always find your way back with a bit of attention and focus, slowing down slightly you can come back to this unchanging part of yourself that is always present at each moment. You can put yourself back in balance, it simply requires your attention. [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] As we begin to close out your practice today, you begin to let yourself come out of the yoga ninja as you open your eyes and take in visually the rest of the world, something to consider, the rules of the exploration don't change, just the space does, just gets a bit wider, just more noise, and so, but we're always playing in the same space. Thank you for listening to today's episode, I invite you to check out my sub-stack where we are building a community of like-minded individuals to discuss all topics related to the idea of paying attention, I hope to see you there, but until then, with meta may you be well. [BLANK_AUDIO]