Beloved Reader!
Beaming Love to you! Here we are, as one month rolls to a close and March greets us with its promises of spring. Despite some recent serious winter weather, I’ve actually come to love February. And yes, that’s a first for me… I relish the earlier sunrises and later sunsets; they feel like daily miracles... Did you know that every day offers us two more minutes of daylight? A gentle and steady progression towards Spring Equinox, and on to Summer Solstice. Delight.
In last month’s newsletter, I told you that I would report back on my progress with a daily personal Yoga Nidra. I am quite sure that my newfound appreciation of February is a direct result of deeper rest. I feel calmer and I feel more positive. About everything.
Now I won’t lie and say it’s always been easy. Any commitment has its ups and downs, and there are many temptations to skip a day (or many days) and to slip back into familiar old territory. Luckily, I know from Yoga that success comes with daily practice, done with devotion over an extended period of time. Yoga is a relationship, a union of all parts of oneself (body, mind, emotions, history). And like any relationship, it is a mixture of honeymoon period, dry times, hard work, grace, doubt, rekindling and balance. (I imagine that you might be able to add a few more to this list too.) Yet it is perseverance that counts most of all. Some days, it may not look or feel as though much is happening, but with hindsight, one notices that there has indeed been a gentle evolution in a positive direction. This has been proven to me before, and I have faith in this system.
January, my first month, was full of enthusiasm and aha moments. February, not so much. I started to fall asleep through many of my nidra sessions, and some of them felt downright blah. But this didn’t worry me, and that alone is a shift! In the past, I’ve tended to jump into negative self-talk the moment something stalled….
Now, it amazes me how a practice like yoga nidra is able to get right to the root of even the longest-seated tensions, and can loosen them up and send them on their way. I experience a profound balancing and healing effect on my nervous system, that decades of yoga, dance, Reiki, psychotherapy, self-reflection and meditation were not quite able to reach. Am I profoundly grateful for all of these modalities? YES YES YES! They are all brilliant allies, and I don’t know where I would be without them in my life. And they have brought me to where I am today.
What I see now, is that there has been an unconscious part of me driving how I do everything (including healing modalities), and how I see the world and my place in it. Never good enough, striving for perfection, pushing my body, craving attention, feeling not-good-enough…. these all stem from fear, anxiety and programming. In my case, my family of origin vibrated on this neurological level all the time. These were the messages I regularly received. Add these to the messages that society sends to women, and it stands to reason that all of this material embedded itself into my cellular inheritance.
What interests me now, is that I no longer feel a need to keep telling that story to myself any more. For many, many years I felt like a victim and felt unsupported within myself.
What I know now, is that a nervous system can be unwound, and that history’s legacy can be rewritten.
We can know things intellectually, but what really counts is when we know them all the way down into our bones and cells. Two months into my exploration, I am more relaxed, and am okay with letting go of perfectionism. I am less reactive and less judgemental. This is a big deal. This world feels like a safer place. I feel grateful. And I look forward to continuing to learn and heal through yoga nidra.
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Please scroll down to find a small gift from me to you. It is a brief (8 minute) guided visualization to support you to unwind and rest. My guru recommended short practices for busy people, because this is both achievable and beneficial.
Full disclosure: I’ve wanted to start offering audio resources for a long time, but up until now I’ve been too afraid… of not being perfect, lol!
Also below, you will find information about a workshop on rest, and about weekly live yoga nidra classes.
As always, sending Love to you! And beaming sweet, soothing rest to your nervous system and to your soul.
~ Karusia Nirmala
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