Trauma Informed Yoga Nidra And Layers Of Being

We start with our physical body.

So notice how your body is situated.

And if you're comfortable,

If you could do one or two more things,

It would make it a little bit more comfortable,

You might do that.

And notice your whole body,

The sensations and energy in the body and the breath.

So one of the things we notice is these layers are of a thought thing.

They're not really sharp layers like a layer cake or something.

There's a lot of interplay between the layers.

So when we're working with our physical body,

We notice also that our body moves with our breath.

We notice that if we have a smooth,

Continuous diaphragmatic breath,

Then it feels calmer.

Let yourself notice that.

We'll do a little body scan as well,

Just to come into the body more deeply.

Starting with the back of the head,

The neck and shoulders,

Your upper back.

There's a lot of habits that we have in our body.

A lot of them are related to the nervous system.

With our upper back,

We're often holding our shoulders up and our ears a little,

Or we might have a lot of tension in the muscles of the upper back.

We're bracing ourselves.

Sometimes we're carrying a lot on our shoulders.

So as we come into a practice,

It can be very helpful to let your shoulders and your head be supported and be comfortable.

And as you breathe out,

Let your muscles soften a little bit more.

Notice the back of your head and neck,

Your shoulders,

And then down into your arms.

Notice the back of your upper arms and your lower arms,

Your hands.

And notice the area in behind your heart center.

There might be some sensations or energy back there,

More of the pranamaya kosha again.

And let your body be held,

Be supported by whatever is under your body.

Or if you're sitting upright,

Let your core muscles hold your body up.

Notice the back of your legs all the way down to your heels,

The soles of your feet.

And as you're noticing the back of your legs,

Notice if you're comfortable just being still.

Often when we're lying down,

We have this hypervigilance in the body and we're kind of ready for action.

So one thing we could notice is if we don't need to actually be ready for action right now,

If it's okay to rest,

Then we could allow our body to surrender into the support that's here.

And you might also do something like stretching or shaking.

If you've got a lot of energy in your body,

Arms and legs,

We don't have to jump right into stillness.

We could stretch or move.

And then notice the front of your body,

The face,

The forehead,

Eyebrows,

And eyes.

Notice the thoughts just behind the forehead and the brain.

And as we're doing this practice,

We're really trying to just pay attention to what's going on so we know what's going on,

But also to witness the thoughts that are in the mind so that we're not just really absorbed in a train of thought,

Or if we are absorbed in a train of thought that we come back and then begin to witness again.

There's always that interplay of the thoughts in the mind and our attention.

And also you might soften your forehead.

Let your eyebrows soften as well.

Notice the sensations of air in your nose.

Generally,

As we're breathing,

We breathe in through the nose,

And then sometimes we breathe out through the mouth.

We usually out through the nose unless we're doing a specific practice.

Then notice the rhythm of your breath.

If it's an even,

Continuous breath,

If you're holding your breath.

Notice how you can feel the air in the throat,

Down into the back of your mouth.

Notice the hinges of your jaw.

If you're clenching your teeth,

See if you could release.

And then notice the vocal cords just under your chin at the front of your throat.

And sometimes when we're thinking about things,

We're also sub-vocalizing.

So there's a bit of movement in the vocal cords.

If you could soften and let that come to stillness,

Let your vocal cords be still.

That often helps the activity in the mind as well.

Notice your mouth,

Your jaw,

Your throat,

Your vocal cords.

And then notice the sides of your neck,

Your shoulders,

Down into the front of your arms,

Down to the palms of your hands.

Bring your attention into the collarbones and the large muscles of your chest.

Notice if you're breathing diaphragmatically,

There's not much movement in the chest,

But there's a softening of your stomach area,

Your navel center,

Your lower belly as you breathe out.

And you might be breathing in and out kind of shallow,

Or you might wanna increase the volume a little.

Especially if you're supported through your back,

We could really allow the stomach muscles to soften.

And as you're noticing that,

Notice if that's a comfortable focus for your mind.

When we've had a lot of trauma,

We might be breathing up in our chest because we have a very tight gut,

Stomach area.

So we don't have to jump into anything.

You could just observe if it's more comfortable to focus a little bit higher up on your muscles of your chest or other muscles in your body.

We don't have to go right to the stomach.

And if it does feel comfortable to focus on your stomach area,

Then you could allow those muscles to soften as you're breathing out.

We come now through the front of your legs,

The large muscles of your legs,

The thighs,

Down through your lower legs and your feet.

Be aware of the front of your body from head to toes.

And notice now,

Just after this few minutes,

What is it like to be aware of your body?

So our body has a real persistence in letting us know what's going on.

So if you're feeling uncomfortable or if there's pain in your body,

Especially,

Or if your feet are throbbing because they're really tired or something like that,

Then our attention is going to be drawn there.

So we're not trying to make something be different.

We're really just witnessing,

The subjective witness,

What is going on in our body right now.

Movement of our body with our breath,

Sensations,

Sensations to bring our body into our awareness,

What's happening in your body right now.

And then in the interior space of the body,

Notice that we have a space that the body is occupying and that it's not really empty space.

There's often a lot going on in that space.

And as we're disconnected from our body,

We might not be aware so much about what's going on in our body.

And then as we come into more of that awareness,

We might notice,

Hmm,

Just putting my attention in my heart area,

I'm noticing there's a heaviness there.

Or I'm noticing there's some kind of pain in my body.

Sometimes that's physical.

And sometimes we have a sense that it's not so much physical as emotional,

Energetic.

Do a scan now through your body and notice any sensations or energy that you're aware of in that space your body is occupying.

And this is really our unconscious mind communicating with us a lot of the time.

If you're noticing maybe your shoulders up around your ears a little,

Or you have a lot of tension in some part of your body,

It's not there often because of physical,

It's there because of something emotional.

There's some kind of sensation or energy there.

And that energy and the associated thoughts is often why we try to escape out of our body.

We don't want to pay attention because we feel anxious or it's uncomfortable or scary.

And one of the lovely things about doing a somatic awareness practice is we get to know our body,

The sensations,

And we get to be more comfortable being aware of that.

What are the sensations,

The energy in your body right now?

And what's your sense of prana?

So we're in the pranamaya kosha now,

The sensations,

The energy,

Some of that related to the breath.

What's your sense of your life force right now?

Do you feel connected,

Alive?

Do you feel kind of numb?

When you're paying attention to the energy in your body from head to toes,

Do you feel alive?

Can you sense that energy?

What's going on there?

And this is so related to the physical body.

For instance,

If we're tired,

We're out of juice.

We don't have a lot of vitality.

If we've been holding our breath or breathing really shallow,

We might not have enough oxygen to really perk up our brain and let our body function well.

We might be exhausted from worry.

So a lot of that could be mental as well.

Let's stay with that for a moment.

What's your sense of prana,

Of life force right now?

And then bringing our focus into not going away from the body or the pranamaya kosha,

But just bring it more focus into observing thoughts for a moment.

What are the thoughts that have been going through your mind?

But also as you're focusing on the lower level of the mind,

Let yourself be the observer.

So there might be some stillness or silence at first.

We'll give it a couple of minutes to see what is the mind trying to tell you right now?

What are you absorbed in,

In your thought stream?

If you get into a train of thought,

As soon as you notice,

Just bring yourself back.

You might stay a little bit in touch with your breath,

With your body,

Soften your forehead maybe.

And then as we're moving a little bit more into the vijnanamaya kosha,

The higher level of the mind,

The wisdom,

The intuition layer,

See if you could allow your body,

Your breath,

And the lower level of mind to be there,

But not be focusing on them.

So if there's a lot of movement in the thought layer,

Let your mind or your attention go a little bit deeper.

Let that move into the background,

The thoughts in the mind.

And notice your body,

The sensations,

Your heart,

Your breath.

Let yourself be aware of all of that.

And also be aware of the deeper layer of the mind,

The higher mind.

And we all know the experience of being caught up in a train of thought,

Especially if it's a catastrophic thinking or ruminating.

So see if you could allow that to be something that you're observing if that's happening.

But we also all know the experience of stillness,

Of not being so caught up in that layer of thought.

If you have a visual mind,

You might already be sensing into that light at the center.

We've relaxed the body a bit,

We've focused on the breath and the thoughts in the lower level of the mind.

Now turn your awareness to the center,

To your being,

To that light at the center.

And let your awareness be fully absorbed in the Anandamaya Kosha,

The layer of bliss.

And the Vijnanamaya Kosha,

The layer of the higher mind,

Our intuition and wisdom,

Our knowing.

And let's rest there.

And notice how our attention moves among the layers.

If suddenly we get an itch in our toe or something,

We're gonna bring our attention into the body.

Or maybe we notice,

Oh,

I could take a deeper breath.

Maybe my body's starting to soften and I'm sighing.

We could take a deeper breath,

Let ourselves soften and settle.

And then we'll go back to the center.

Often our lower level of the mind will start to get more still.

There's less compulsion to the thoughts in the mind.

And we're able to witness and stay as an observer,

Not get so caught up.

And as that happens,

Often those thoughts start to diminish.

They're not as frequent or as compelling.

Keep bringing your awareness to your being,

The light of your true self in the center.

How that light radiates out into the mind.

Let your mind come into stillness.

Notice when your mind goes someplace else.

Notice if you're focused again on your body or if you're focused on what you have to do tomorrow or next week or.

.

.

The mind has a very loose conception of time.

It often doesn't stay in the present moment,

Part of the function of that layer of the mind.

And notice how it feels when your mind gets quiet.

What's happening in your body then?

Often the breath and the body softens.

And if you have a lot of hypervigilance right now,

It's probably something you have to keep bringing yourself back into awareness of your being,

Of the light,

Because there's a lot of draw towards the thoughts in the mind,

The lower level of the mind.

And then when we have alarming thoughts,

We often start to hold our breath.

Our body tightens up.

To hold the awareness of the being and the five koshas all together,

Just watch the interplay there for a few more minutes.

Now we're going to move into a practice of yoga nidra.

So as we go into this,

We're doing a simple form of yoga nidra.

So just continue to bring your awareness of the stillness in the mind and of the awareness of all of the layers.

But now we're going to focus the mind in a bit of a different way.

So bring your awareness to your eyebrow center,

Your ajna chakra in behind the forehead.

And imagine that you're breathing in and out through your eyebrow center.

So it's the energy center right in that location,

Just behind the forehead,

Just above your eyebrows.

It's not really in the brain,

It's a chakra.

Just imagine that you're breathing in and out through that energy center.

And then bring your awareness to your throat center,

Vishuddhi chakra.

The visual at the throat center is often a full moon.

Imagine that you're breathing in and out through the throat center.

Let your body be relaxed,

Your breath smooth.

Let your awareness be right in the throat center in the vishuddhi chakra.

All of your other thoughts moving way to the background.

And then bring your awareness into your heart center,

The anahata chakra.

So not to think about that location,

But to actually bring your awareness to that location.

And then some awareness of the breath.

And so you're breathing in and out through your heart center.

And then let go of all thoughts.

Let your mind rest without thought.

A little bit of awareness of breath,

If you like.

And even that,

Let that dissipate.

Bring your awareness completely into the stillness in the heart chakra.

Let your mind rest.

Let your mind be awake and alert.

And let your brainwaves come to stillness.

Let all thoughts be way in the background.

And let your mind focus completely on resting in the heart chakra.

And if you've drifted off to sleep or into a train of thought,

Just come back.

Take a moment to breathe in and out through the heart chakra and then come into the stillness.

And as we come towards the end of the practice,

If you're really deep into the stillness and if you wanted to stay there,

That would be fine.

Otherwise,

Bring your awareness back to your breath as though you're breathing in and out through your heart chakra.

And then let your awareness start to flow from the heart chakra as though you're breathing in from the heart chakra through the throat chakra to the eyebrow chakra.

Exhale from your eyebrow center back through to the heart.

Take your time.

Let your awareness flow with your breath.

Continue to let your mind be still,

Awake and alert.

And there's some movement now in the mind as you follow that flow of breath.

Energy from the eyebrow center to the heart center and back.

And then start to allow that energy flow to come from your eyebrow center to the base of your nose and back.

Again,

Coordinating with the breath,

Allow your mind to be still.

And beginning to notice the physical sensations as well as the energy flow.

If you're lying down,

You might want to turn over onto your left side and focus your attention on the nostril on the right side.

At the right side of your body,

You wake up a little.

We're gonna take a couple of minutes to come out of the practice.

So take your time.

You might bring some awareness back into your physical body,

Maybe move your fingers and your toes.

Notice what's happening in your mind.

And also notice what was your experience during the practice.