06/10/2026
Is this the best compliment to receive as a yoga/meditation teacher? 🤣
The second week in Discover Meditation is alllll about Yoga Nidra. It's a practice of ‘yogic sleep’, usually lying down, where we turn our attention inward and move through the body, relaxing each part in turn (and other stuff but I'm trying to keep this short).
We hover around that bit in between waking and sleep - hypnagogia. You might recognise similar modern practices such as NSDR and body scan relaxations.
Some participants said they felt like they were floating on clouds, or even being hypnotised 🌀
It seems like the easy one because it's not a seated meditation like Vipassana in Week 1 and it's more or less fully guided, but it's a practice with its own specific challenges.
It's normal to feel a resistance to total rest, to the whole practice or in certain parts of the body. Because we are usually unused to rest in our daily lives, we might feel guilt, we might feel vulnerable. Jerking, fighting it consciously or unconsciously. A little panic as we 'drop in' is so normal and just part of the practice. This resistance is to be observed, non-judgementally and lightly, and then move on. By observing lightly and with curiosity, we take the power from any 'why can't I relax' 'I wish I could chill' narrative and we can continue to practice the skill.
It's an ancient yogic practice, wrapped up in Ta***ic practices like nyāsa. In some traditions, sleep is personified as the goddess Nidrā or Yoga Nidrā.
In this gorgeous rest our heart rate lowers, our blood pressure lowers, we can slip into a parasympathetic 'rest and digest' place and it can make us feel that warm and fuzzy altered state. Like some drugs. Not that we'd know 🤔💊
Charlotte xx
