How to Yoga Nidra in 10 Easy Steps

Yoga Nidra is a very cool practice that progressively visits the 5 Koshas – or, layers of the Self – beginning with the body, then energy and breath, followed by thoughts and emotions, into our wisdom, all the way to joyfulness.

As I said in yesterday’s post on the same topic, the practice of journeying in this way has been celebrated throughout history.  All types of people – be they magic or muggle – in all sorts of cultures have required and still do require a journey at some stage of personal development.

Yoga Nidra is a path to divination, astral projection and travel, dream walking, manifesting, transcending, transforming, and healing.

Anyone can – and should – practice Yoga Nidra! Scripts and recordings can be followed for general help getting started, and are particularly useful for following an intentional-specific vision-journey, like the one I wrote and taught yesterday.

Additionally, we can learn the skills to cultivate our own un-guided (or, shall I say, “IN”-guided) Yoga Nidra practice.

A general outline of ten steps for Yoga Nidra is as follows:

1. Get extremely comfortable; dim lights, turn down or off the music, be alone & undisturbed.
2. Set a simple intention.
3. Tense and relax every body part, one after another, starting and ending with the tongue.
4. Like reciting times-tables, names of countries, or song lyrics – quickly name all the parts of the body you can think of in relatively the same order as you just relaxed them.
5. Focus all of your attention entirely on your breath.
6. Imagine each chakra while feeling the qualities of it (an easy way is to imagine the colors of the rainbow in the order “ROY G. BIV!”) and perhaps say an affirmation for each.
7. Have an emotional release, feeling and then letting go of any images or emotions that have arisen and note what your intuition says it.
8. Allow yourself to experience your innermost love, peace, and joy as you let it all go – becoming One with Everything.
9. Recall your intention.
10. Slowly wake yourself, starting by experiencing your breath, then moving your body, finally opening your eyes.