Trainings

While each of the aforementioned modules–discussions, meditations, and classes–may prove beneficial to teachers (we learn constantly from one another in each of these formats), the trainings are concept-heavy, specially-designated modules that will likely appeal most strongly to teachers seeking to expand their skills as teachers and practitioners of yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra is a type of extended yogic meditation that occurs in savasana while the practitioner hovers on the edges of sleep and dream.

Practitioners at any level of experience may appreciate the training modules as much as teachers do, so long as they expect to focus primarily on literature as much as or more than a physical yoga practice.

Forthcoming Trainings

Yoga Nidra: Philosophy, Theory, and Design

Teachers and advanced students will learn how and why to create yoga nidra pathways.

Yoga nidra amplifies the contented feeling and consolidates the benefits of yoga asana and meditation practices. Nidra (“yogic sleep”) occurs in a profoundly relaxed state that strongly compares to a R.E.M. dream-stage of sleep. In such a state, one’s nervous system is pliable, resilient, and open to profound healing shifts. Nidra is so particularly potent a healing practice that the United States military has adopted a form of it to treat soldiers returning from war with PTSD. Deep healing and deep change become possible through yoga nidra.

One can self-guide a nidra practice, but the most common form of nidra practice is to enter resting meditation with a trained yoga instructor-guide who sets a narrative frame throughout the practice. The narrative frame provides a basis for the practitioner to explore and choose divergent and convergent pathways through the expansive meditation.

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Yoga Nidra, Creative Writing, Lucid Dreaming

Yoga nidra meditation bears many similarities to lucid dreaming and creative writing. It occurs within a dream-like state that borders deep sleep; it involves conscious, creative decision-making; it awakens vivid sensory imagination; it involves poetic and narrative elements; and it operates as a practice of intuitive synthesis of language, intention (sankalpa), receptivity, and intricately-detailed perception of bodily sensation, memories, emotions, and imagined states of experience. As such, nidra, like creative writing and lucid dreaming, is a deeply integrative practice.

In this series of trainings, teachers and advanced students will learn separately about each practice–yoga, writing, and dreaming–and then learn how and why to interweave them.

All people may productively pursue various means of aligning the integrative practices of yoga nidra, creative writing, and lucid dreaming. Teachers of yoga nidra may especially benefit from exploring how to align lucidity, creative writing, and yoga practice. First-hand experience in exploring and linking skill-sets in each modality can provide valuable resources to call upon when guiding others into their private nidra journeys.

Please watch the Momentasana Yoga site for news of forthcoming workshops and retreats on Yoga Nidra, Creative Writing, and Lucid Dreaming.