I recently returned from a 5-day Yoga Nidra training with my primary teacher. For those of you unfamiliar with Yoga Nidra, the most basic understanding is that it’s a meditation technique that has profound relaxation and healing benefits. However, this transformational practice has other far-reaching benefits.
On a deeper level, Yoga Nidra is a science that is profoundly spiritual and enables us to access and reshape deeper layers of the unconscious. Through the practice of Yoga Nidra we learn to release the constrictions of body and breath and to clear the stains of the past from our minds so that we can see more clearly who we are. It has been called The Sleep of Awakening because when the body and mind sleep, we can awaken to the Infinite. When we awaken to our higher mind, we stand amongst a fertile field of consciousness where we can tenderly plant new seeds that hold our highest intentions. In this field of consciousness there is no doubt, misconception or misperception to poison the growth of our intentions.
When practiced regularly, we begin to become more skillful at the practice and become adept at planting these seeds into consciousness. And, in time, these seeds will take root and bloom.
By the end of 5 days we’d practiced Yoga Nidra 13 times as well as several additional seated meditations. With such dedication to practice, revelations are bound to arise. I am still digesting many of my own personal insights and will share more over the next coming blogs….perhaps. But I did wanted to share an insight from a group discussion that was not my own, but struck a cord within my heart.
It is essential to make every thought, moment, and breath a masterpiece so that your life becomes a masterpiece.
Life is a canvas. We are the artists. We choose what goes on that canvas. Do we keep seeing the same images and using the same colors? Are we continuously recreating the same patterns and shapes or are we bold enough to move from the familiar and explore a new way of expression and being? In the end it is all up to us.
If we make every breath, every thought, every moment a masterpiece, our lives become a beautiful breathtaking work of art.
I myself am going to remember to take bold strokes, use more color, and create more vibrancy and relish that in every moment there is absolute beauty, even when at the same time there is suffering. I have the choice what I see, what I create, what I give and share. And so do you.
