What to Expect on Your First Yoga Retreat
Arriving somewhere you have never been, to do something you have never done, with people you have never met. Here is what the first few days actually look like.
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Yoga Nidra and the Art of Conscious Sleep
Lying still with your eyes closed while somebody talks. It sounds like the easiest practice in yoga. It is not.
Yoga nidra is systematic rotation of awareness through the body, held at the border between waking and sleep. The posture is savasana and the instruction is simply to stay awake. Almost everybody fails at this for the first several weeks, which is fine.
Why it is not a relaxation recording
The structure matters. A full practice moves through a resolve, a rotation of consciousness, breath awareness, pairs of opposite sensations, and visualisation, before returning to the resolve. Each stage does something specific, and the sequence is not decorative.
Thirty minutes of yoga nidra is traditionally said to rest the system as deeply as several hours of sleep. Whether or not you accept the arithmetic, the effect is hard to miss.
The resolve
A sankalpa is a short statement, made at the beginning and repeated at the end, kept in the same words over months. It is made at the point where the mind is most receptive, which is why it sits where it does in the sequence rather than at the start of the class.
- Keep it short, positive and in the present tense
- Use exactly the same wording every time
- Do not change it because you have grown bored of it
- Give it months, not weeks
If you fall asleep
You will. The practice is not wasted; it simply becomes rest rather than yoga nidra. Practise sitting slightly propped, earlier in the day, and it resolves itself.
