Steps to the Practice

OK step number one step number one is the preparation. So you want to make sure they have a great environment to do your yoga practice and that can be simply laying on your bed. I can be in a room on the floor with a mat like a yoga room like a room in your house but you want to make sure that there's not going to be interruptions during your practice. That might mean turning off your cell phone and locking your door you know hurting the family members or whoever they are that you are going to be practicing because you are diving into deeper states of consciousness and you don't want to be yanked out in the middle of that that can be traumatizing and it can even give you a headache. So the first thing is to prepare yourself wearing nice loose fitting clothing making sure the room is a good temperature and lying down on your back in a posture called Chavous and savasana is a posture where the limbs are slightly apart. Arms are next to the body but the palms are facing upward. And this is because we have so many nerve endings in the hands and we don't want them touching anything and activating all those nerve endings and bringing our attention there. So we just turn the palms up. So with this we have the spine straight the eyes closed and we're ready for the practice. So in the preparation we just let ourselves relax. We check our body position to make sure that everything is comfortable that our clothing is not going to be bothering or interrupting us and then we kind of slightly start to notice the sounds around us which allows the senses to be filled. It is said that the senses are very demanding and that if they are not filled they will seek to be filled. And once they're filled that the mind is free to then will in turn ugly. So this is what happens in Stage 1 is preparation. OK stuck Number two is the son culpa mea culpa means a result. So the resolve is a statement. It is a positive like an affirmation something that you want to be true for you and that you want to be planted in the subconscious mind in order to effect change. So it's in very poor important how you word your son Kulpa you don't want to say something as if it's not true for you and you don't want to say something negative because these words will be planted in the subconscious. So even in the textbook where it gets on page 70 instructions of saying I will awaken my spiritual potential and I will be a positive force and be able to for others I will achieve total how those are good. But you can even be better. You can say I am experiencing total health now and take it right into the present moment and own it. So you say I am successful and all I undertake because will be is still sort of putting it out in the future and it still is going to sort of tell your subconscious mind that you aren't that way yet and you're striving toward it. But when you go out with the eye and statement I am in total health now. My digestive system is working to complete harmony. I am a good communicator. I have a successful relationship. I am in the flow of abundance. Now all these positive statements are going to tell your subconscious mind that that is what is true for you and make that little switch that is going to then change all of the actions and beliefs in your mind and these things start changing without really any other effort on your part. So that's your resolve. Number two. OK step number three is rotation of body consciousness. So what this means is there's going to be the spoken verbal instruction to take your consciousness to various parts of the body. This is done in a systematic way from one part of the body moving around all of the body one side the other the back and the front and what is happening here as it's curing a relaxation of the gray matter of the brain. And it's bringing you into a relaxed state so as to then fall into brainwaves akin to the in dream and then deep sleep. So this is not a strict concentration sort of process and there's no moving of the body. You're staying in your shop and your relaxed position and for example it will start with right hand thumb first finger second finger third finger fourth finger and your job is just to move your awareness to those parts of the body so your eyes are closed you're picturing the right hand thumb when they say right hand thumb first finger when first fingers and second finger and the awareness is light. It's just like someone touching a flower down on each fingertip on each part of the body and your awareness is drawn there just for a moment and you notice it and you might say the name of the body part to yourself mentally and that's about it. It's just a rotation of body consciousness. And sometimes it's repeated twice as we get deeper into the practice. And this just assist you in deepening your state of consciousness. OK. Step four is breath awareness breath awareness is what it says breath awareness. So this is assisting in the process here or in other words taking your attention inward. So it's with a drawing of the senses by allowing you to focus on something specific and that's your breath. So there'll be various instructions depending on the depth and the length of the practice. Just from simply observe the inhale and exhale breath that can be counting backwards with the bra and all of this is to deepen your inner awareness. So again no straining no tension and it's just breath observation trying to train the mind not to wander away from the breath. But you know as we go along through the practice different thoughts and memories and things will arise just as long as you keep bringing your attention back to the instruction and trying your best to follow along. Then the practice will serve its purpose. So that is step number Step Number five is the step that we will skip that in the initial practices because it does really require going deeper and it makes the practice longer and that is that of opposite feelings also known as feelings and sensations in your textbook. So if you look on page 71 it will save feelings and sensations but it's basically asking you to feel different opposite experiences like hot cold heavy light. You know filling squash filling expansive sad and happy. And this is all training you to be able to conjure an emotion or a sensation at will. So it's a great practice for training the mind. And it can be pretty intense. Like when you conjure feelings of sadness and you really have to go in and and and bring this feelings up things that have made you sense this is also polling from memory from subconscious and then you're being trained to feel the opposite thing as well. So this is the step. Like I said that we will experience later on as we get deeper into the practices and that is the opposite feel OK. We are on Step number six now and it's visualization. So visualization is the place where we specifically give rapid images at first especially in the preliminary practices the beginner practice is just rapid images. These will be universal images so images that are recognized by everyone no matter who you are. You have some association with all of these images and we do that because it will associate with every different person or different memory or something in your mind. Then you have you know if I say red rose each and every one of us have some sort of memory some sort of picture in our mind of what red rose means or full moon. We all have a picture in our mind a memory of an experience during a full moon. Something about that picture of that image. So these images are working to fish into that subconscious and pull out any painful or difficult to process materials so that we can really clear that space out. And what I love about this particular part of the practice because it can go from rapid images now into like stories or scenes where you're asked to visualize this really sharpens your ability to visualize which is an inner tool sharpening tools of the inner eye or the third eye. The pineal gland that in space where we're able to access dream states and eventually you know possibly other roles. But at first the visualization might not be easy for you and that's OK because the more you practice the better you get at it. I know that when I first started I could not do it at all. I felt like an idiot. I couldn't visualize I I would think about it. And I have a thought about it but I couldn't actually get a picture to happen behind my eyes. You know that was in alignment with what was saying but now I can very very vividly. So over time you will develop your capacity to visualize. But one great thing about visualization practice is that you know like once you have unloaded your subconscious mind then it's like you have this you know all of the tools that were gifted. As we awake and evolve and you know get smarter it's like we keep accumulating tools. This practice allows you to unload. So as you're clearing out the inner space you have this kind of like empty canvas. You have this space which is the universe sees is a void a vacuum a place now where you can draw in something new but there's not very many practices out there that unburden us. And yoga teacher is one of those practices especially during the visualization. OK step seven is again a repeating of the central part or the resolve. So the same is step number two. It's now going to be repeated three times in the same exact wording as you did at the beginning and with as much feeling and potency as you can muster during this stage you will be in the deepest state of the yoga Nidre. So it will be suggested to you to repeat and conjure those words again. And this is where we're pushing that seed that we planted initially fairly shallow. Now we're pushing in deep into the sub and our unconscious mind so it can affect change a very important step. And finally we come to the conclusion of the practice step number eight. So the ending of the practice we're basically going to lead ourselves back out of the yogini Nidre and it's in a reverse order as the way you went in. So each yoga teacher will be set ups. You know the same but with slightly different wording and slightly different Pratyahara practices. Withdrawal of the senses. Practices and you know if we start with an attention on the sounds and so forth and then attention on you know parts of the body then we'll reverse that on the way out. So it's going to help you at the beginning the preparation gets you into the organ drama and the ending brings you back out. So you come back to consciousness. The conscious mind here are conscious all the time but waking state you're going to come back to waking state in a safe and effective manner. And it's suggested to do this slowly you don't want to just open your eyes and wake up at the end and you don't want to just jump up or move the body quickly because you know it's just like if you were in deep sleep and you got started you know it's you're entering dream and deep sleep state so you want to be aware of that. And even if you are conscious which you are learning to be conscious in those states you want to respect the transition time coming out of those states. So go ahead and allow yourself to do it slowly. You know I recommend that you you know go through the coming out practices that are given and then you even take longer and keep your eyes closed. Maybe you wiggle your fingers and toes your head from side to side all the while your eyes are still closed. Take a few deep breaths maybe stretch the body and then you know before I open my eyes I like to practice ponys which is just rubbing their hands together creating that warm friction and then placing those warmed hands over my closed eyes breathing in and allowing that Prochnow the energy that's built up in the hands to go into the eyes and it really helps in the transition out of the yoga teacher practice. So those are the eight steps.