Thursday, September 9, 2010

yoga nidra for real

okay, I'm finally back with the story.
you must realize that this is all my interpretation of someone else's explanation of his interpretation of a concept . . . so you must not pick apart what I have to say. please just accept it as information that came into my brain then was tweaked by all of my inner workings and is now being relayed to you through my quirky style of writing and relating.
enough qualifiers.
I was introduced to yoga nidra the other evening as it being just one more form of yoga. remember yoga itself is a way of life, and the "yoga" I often refer to here is a physical practice which is just one manifestation of the concept of yoga.
yoga nidra is a relaxation which involves meditation or visualization work, and in its true form is very deep and can lead to great insight. it is sometimes called sleep yoga, as its practitioners can become so still and deeply meditative that they may appear to be sleeping.
what our speaker the other evening referred to, though, was a lighter form with greater emphasis on visualizations. he spoke about using this form to work on enhancing performance, and strengthening our ability to endure what our body goes through during these long-term physical activities we undertake.
this is what I loved and grabbed onto: he discussed limiting beliefs, and learning to reconfigure them.
he discussed developing the ability to visualize yourself at your peak, on your best ride ever, the feelings, the experience, the awareness of how you experienced such a time. then he also talked about visualizing yourself at a difficult, trying, challenging time, and focusing on the awareness of those feelings, that experience and how it felt. next came the activity of switching back and forth between those two visualizations, experiencing both, and learning to hold onto the fact that it is you, this powerful being, that is larger than either experience and able to have an awareness of both.
this is powerful.
I have been working on visualizing myself, and working on dissolving some of my limiting beliefs, and I am quite excited about it all.
it's always good to get a little refresher course in how to be your best, for as much reading, studying, and practicing as we do, we still tend to fall into those little self-defeating ruts that run in every direction, all over out there in the real world.
I feel powerful, I feel capable and strong and ready to experience the excited energy of lotoja this saturday. I will have a great ride, and although I have a few personal goals I'd love to reach, I will reach jackson a healthy, happy, empowered being no matter what transpires between the start and the end.
I plan to take saturday the 11th off from posting here, so, once again,
see you on the flip side!
(sure hope they don't try to give us hangers again... I'll be sure to let you know.)

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