General Guidelines For Practicing Yog Nidra

1 - Kirti Tarang Pande

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Mandala Courtesy: Bhavana Agarawal, Instructor, Home Yogis' Home

1. Yog Nidra is usually practiced for 1 or 2 ghatika, i.e. 20 or 40 minutes.
2. Light and loose clothes should be worn for the practice.
3. There are separate Yog Nidra practices for – therapy, learning and for spiritual progress.
4. The practice rooms should be quiet, well ventilated, the temperature should be neither hot nor cold, and semi dark.
5. Television, music, mobile and other forms of distractions should be turned off before starting this practice.
6. Shavasana is the recommended posture for Yog Nidra. This minimizes touch sensations by eliminating contact between the limbs of the body. Fingertips are extremely sensitive organs of tactile sensations, therefore palms are turned upwards. In order to, eliminate the sight stimuli, eyes are kept shut.
7. During the meditation, the instructions should be followed with gentle awareness. Please do not concentrate or hold your breathe.
8. Staying awake is the most important aspect of Yog Nidra.
9. While focusing of sound, no sensory impressions are to be forcibly excluded. Thoughts should not be forcibly excluded. On application of force, just like a wild horse, mind too gets disturbed and restless. The best way out is- not to accept or reject any sensory impression or thought. If sensory impressions are coming, allow them to come, if thoughts are coming let them come, just don’t pay any attention to them. After sometime, mind loses interests in external world and automatically becomes quiet. This methid of calming the mind is called Antar Mouna. It prepares the consciousness to practice Yog Nidra.


Want to know more? Read...

1. Nyasa Tantra and Yog Nidra
2. What is Yog Nidra
3. How to stay awake during Yog Nidra?

On unrelated note, suggested reading:

1. Orgasm and Yoga



2. Yoga Kit for Surviving Heartbreak

Is Karma Really A Bitch?

Endless Knot symbolizing Karmic Cycle

My best-friend calls Karma an 'enigmatic bitch'.

I don't thing she's the only one. It's quite a trend these days. 

Is Karma really a bitch or is it just a victim of bad PR?

(Before you read further if you want to take a moment to revise what Karma is Click Here for Yogic Definition of Karma

Coming back to the bitchiness of Karma; let me share something from my childhood;

I once read Melanippe of Euripides from Greek Mythology, and it had a fragment that said:

“Dream you that man’s misdeeds fly up to Heaven

And, then some hand inscribes the record of them 

Upon God’s tablet; and God, reading them,

Deals the world justice? Nay, the vault of Heaven

Could not find room to write the crimes of earth,

Nor God himself avail to punish them:

Justice is here on earth, had ye but eyes.”

This verse stuck with me, because it offered the simplest explanation on how law of Karma functions- 

Karma is not external to the individual. The judge isn’t without but within. 

This means that Karma isn't a single entity who can be bitchy & vindictive, but it's a system. A system, which is already hacked in our favor:

Whatever is happening in my life is a product of my Karma/action-> So I am the one who controls my life because-> I can control my Karma & hence its consequences!

Isn’t it absolutely awesome & empowering?

That's why I don't think Karma is a bitch, because:

 Law of Karma gives me hope: For if I am what I have made myself, I may make myself what I will. I am the creator of my experiences, so I have the power to create the experiences that I desire.

If I do something wrong (in this birth or past) it’s not like I am doomed till eternity, there’s a way I can redeem myself.

This Endless Knot of Samsara has an end-point & it's a happy ending :)