Yoga Nidra is an ancient practice used by yogis to enter the causal body and the dreamless sleep state ‘awake’. This means cultivating a quality of lucid awareness into a state most people experience as unconscious or devoid of presence. The derived benefits of awakening in this state are the purpose of Yoga Nidra as a practice.
Yoga Nidra is a precise means to gain entry into this very specific stage of consciousness that is the threshold into expanded awareness.
There are many useful types of relaxation practices, but they do not necessarily give access to the depth and healing potentials experienced through genuine Yoga Nidra. If they do, it is more by accident than by design. Relaxation states may give rest to the physical and mental nature but probably won’t take you deeper. Such relaxation often places people in the hypnogogic state that is the transition between waking and dreaming. It fosters lucidity more like wakeful dreaming and is used by modern day practitioners to generate auto suggestion, but this is not Yoga Nidra.
To guide Yoga Nidra effectively requires specific training and education in the various states of consciousness traversed. Yoga Nidra is not visualisation or auto suggestion. It does not seek to keep the mind engaged in the thinking, visualising or dreaming process but rather to dive deeper than surface mind to a layer of consciousness where few gain access and even fewer achieve mastery. And yet with appropriate training skill can be derived. Extensive research into the effects of Yoga Nidra document that it generates more effective release from habituated and conditioned nature than many conventional therapeutic methodologies
Yoga Nidra is a yogic practice that is referenced throughout many texts and oral traditions dating back beyond the view of historical references. Not always called Yoga Nidra, but no matter what the name, the accessed state and awakening within this liminal bridge remains the same. Once accessed, once the eye of consciousness is awakened in the deep sleep level the reach to an even finer layer of essential being is made possible.
Many modern relaxation practices are not Yoga Nidra. This article is an effort to remind us that Yoga (and its practices) is not new; it is an ancient science of consciousness. The practices of the yogic path do not necessarily benefit from the dramatic forms of adaptation and reinvention being expressed today.
The Yogic Teachings Pertaining to Yoga Nidra:
Yoga Nidra induces access to a particular state- the dreamless sleep state and the causal body while retaining lucidity.
Each night we visit this state but remain unconscious of it. The deep sleep state, or dreamless sleep state is unique in that both the body and the mind are not operative. The egoic mechanism has become attenuated, on pause or hold. Whenever we ask people to describe deep sleep, they describe it as black, unconscious, without a sense of I and void like.
The Upanshads (the end of the Vedas) are sublime yogic texts describing this state as a “gift to the one who becomes conscious within it.” The Upanishads refer to a refined layer of consciousness that is accessed, one not operative or readily opened by most people in either waking or dreaming states.
The waking state is associated with the external world and the physical body. In this state we are mostly caught in consensus reality which is largely governed by the egoic nature with all its striving, concerns, fears, aspirations and ambitions. Other states of more refined consciousness are accessible in waking state but to the untrained person the noise of the waking state, the chattering mind and world associated with it obscure highly lucid background awareness.
The dreaming state is associated with the subtle body, a vast field not confined to the physical domain or body, as evidenced by the variety of dreaming states that we experience. The subtle body, according to yogic philosophy, consists of the energetic matrix including the pranic network of non-physical channels along with the lower mind (the mind that functions with the agency of the 5 senses and 5 organs of action). This level of mind gathers information gained through the senses and stores it away. The Ahamkara (‘I maker’) and Chitta (storehouse of impressions or subconscious material) play roles in deciding how we will respond to information gathered via the senses.
The ‘I ‘maker, influenced by the impressions held in the subconscious layer, governs how information gathered by the mind will be sorted or assessed, into three categories:
‘I’ like, ‘I’ don’t like or ‘I’ am neutral.
If we think about it, if we observe our response to everything the mind entertains or engages with- we either like, don’t like or are just not interested in the content held in our awareness. We may feel attraction, aversion or nothing. If we become cognizant of this simple fact we can begin to gain a new level of subtle understanding of motivations and subsequent behaviours leading to powerful choices that can be life changing.
Sometimes our attraction or aversion has no rhyme or reason, often coupled with highly charged emotion, feeling, or reaction AND we don’t really know why. We are sometimes mystified by the strength of ‘the like’ or ‘not like’ response, the attraction or aversion toward something or a situation or a person. This is the subconscious playing in and influencing the egoic nature. The charge or intensity of attraction and aversion is evidence of the powerful latent force of impressions operative within the psyche. The power if these psychic impressions break through into our dreaming state or our waking state and cause reactions either positive or negative. This describes some of the nature of the subtle body and dreaming state. The lower mind or ‘manas’ in yogic terminology is a predominant aspect of subtle body where we get caught in our loops and patterns of reactions and responses to life events both large and small.
There is a third aspect of subtle body few develop. This is an area yogic training focuses upon that is powerful in bringing positive transformation to life experience. The “higher mind” or buddhi is an aspect of mind that can remain neutral and observant, without reverting to habituated response, if strengthened and accessed. Buddhi is associated with witness consciousness (the consciousness of essential being) and can be strengthened to take the larger, more overarching view of any given moment or situation. Buddhi can view forward, backward, within and all around. It can enable wisdom, discrimination, discernment, a higher intuitive faculty and a rationale that is not hampered or afflicted by emotionality (a product of the mind- thought mixed with energy). The buddhi as higher mind enables an unencumbered response to any given situation that may in fact at times be no response at all. It enables equipoise, stillness, detachment and the ability to act in accordance with true nature and with wisdom. It can influence a natural accord to a higher level of order and balance that informs us at the personal and transpersonal levels. It is the antidote to automatic conditioned reflexes of mind and subsequent tendencies and habits.
A beautiful analogy is the sun. It lights up the sky and our world. So much transpires each day by its rising and setting and yet the sun remains as itself, as illuminating light, while the world of the individual and collective goes through all its life scenarios and dramas unaware of the light that is intrinsic to day. The light is not diminished but it can be obscured. Light is there even behind clouds and in the shadows of the valleys and yet may appear to be concealed. Buddhi is like the sun within the mind. If we can access buddhi we gain right knowledge and can live accordingly. When we operate from buddhi our feeling nature deepens, it becomes pure and transpersonal (beyond the purely personal domain of me and I). Qualities such as compassion, empathy and clear seeing are awakened. Emotional Intelligence - EQ expands into spiritual intelligence - SQ.
This is all the terrain of subtle body. If we observe dreams, they reflect the layered nature of the subtle realm. Random erratic dreams that have no coherent thread or story are sets of impressions arising in the mind. This is lower mind material tossing itself out. The vast amount of impressions caught by the senses but not processed in waking state flood forth to relieve the mind of its congestion. There is the story dream, or dream with a plot and a stage, where an event unfolds, and the subtle senses are operative. In this layer of dreaming we may not know we are dreaming until we awaken, or a higher aspect of consciousness may awaken within the dream and we become lucid. There are several layers to lucidity in the dream state- 1. I know I am dreaming, 2. I know I am dreaming and can change the outcomes and story of the dream, 3. both of the previous and one step further- I know I am dreaming, I can change the dream but it is just a dream so why bother, it does not matter. Sometimes the dream may bring qualities of healing or may be prophetic and far seeing. These may be dreams of higher mind (Buddhi) seeking to awaken us toward something more essential and of greater value in life.
There is so much material caught and also cascading through the subtle body and dreaming state that we can become both exhausted and lost within it. Many remain here without transcending this realm, fascinated by all the phenomenon that keeps us caught in egoic nature. Many who use substances and hallucinogens also remain caught in the vast worlds of the subtle domain. It is easy to become lost and confused in this realm. Even after death this domain catches the untrained mind.
The great gift of Yoga Nidra is to guide us through this multi layered and illusory domain of our consciousness in such a way we do not get trapped by it. Just as the express train passes right through the many stops along the way, the well trained yogi moves straight to the destination without getting distracted.
Lucid consciousness can guide intelligence beyond overidentification with the physical body and physical world, even beyond the subtle body and its dreaming consciousness. Lucid consciousness can also issue forth a mastery in all states giving rise to one of the great statements that describes yoga as ‘Skill in Action’.
Yoga Nidra training finds the pathway through all levels of mind and guides us to the causal body and dreamless sleep state. Once this state is reached the training is to awaken, to become the lucid witness while gaining direct experience of the vast, blissful all-knowing nature of this layer of being. In this layer rest “the seeds of impressions” or roots of material caught and operative within the psyche. By literally awakening here in the causal realm all the cluttered and irrelevant data can be reduced. The powerful charges these impressions carry, and their capacity to influence our lives in non-beneficial ways, can be reduced or neutralised simply by becoming present to them by remaining conscious within causal body and state. No engagement, no analysis is necessary or useful- just by the agency of total pure presence, open non-relational awareness, the power of the seeds of our impressions can be neutralised.
The importance and value of this function cannot be overstated. It is the power held within these seeds that governs our responses. These responses manifest as mind states such as anxiety, fear, dread, depression, trauma, numbness, overwhelm, anger, frustration, over sensitivity and emotionality, envy, hatred, possessiveness, judgement, self-preservation etc. The list is very long.
If we have a practice that gives us access to causal body and dreamless sleep state, and we can be trained to awaken here while the body mind and particularly the egoic nature remain neutralised, we can gain the capacity to radically alter our lives. We heal. We can find peace. We can awaken Buddhi. We can call the lucidity and consciousness gained in this state through to all other states. We can caste the light of real intelligence and wisdom upon our own path.
And even more importantly, in the causal state the veil of disconnection we experience to our essential nature is so thin, so tenuous that we can, with lucidity, peel away the last veil and enter into the greatest of all states- the state accessed in deep meditation and absorption. The state of Turiya is the supra- conscious awareness which is the very seat and source of essential being. This layer of being is neither born nor dies. It is transcendent and immanent, it is accessible, but highly obscured to most in life. Yoga Nidra is therefore a powerful practice in training to facilitate and gain access to essential consciousness. As a practice it gives easier access then to natural depth in meditation. Yoga Nidra trains the presence that enables deepening past the layers of non-essential nature, the layers of conditioned mind. It teaches the seeker not to fight with the mind but to know its nature and become witness to that nature. The mind clears and becomes a more refined tool and instrument for our own evolution. One learns to penetrate to stillness, silence and the most sublime quintessential and abiding peace.
By means of Yoga Nidra, skilled practitioners seek to access Turiya, not just when in meditation or absorbed samadhi states, but in all variations of consciousness- encompassing waking, dreaming and deep sleep. They seek lucidity in all states. Yoga Nidra is a powerful practice that guides us beyond mind and in fact turns mind upon itself where its obscuring nature is dissolved to reveal the inner Light that is perennially Bright, with eyes closed or open.
Yoga Nidra is a sublime practice for the times in which we live. The chaos of the world environment elicits tension, fear and frustration. Yoga Nidra gives both deep soulful rest and renewal as well heightened perception and capacity to effect individual and collective change and balance.
Yoga Nidra is one of the many great gifts the yogic tradition shares for the upliftment of humanity.
Interested delving deeper into this specialised area of training? Find out more here