Episode 2
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to the Gentle Revolution podcast. This is episode two of this freshly birth podcast. The gentle revolution is. Hopefully it's lots of things. I've been talking to a lot of people over the last few weeks about it. And it has been in my, range of consciousness for a long period of time.
In fact, I think I. Registered the domain name, gentle revolution. over a decade ago and it's been bubbling away there. Other things have happened. In that time. And I really do hope that. Now it is a thing that the time has come. I feel like I've got a lot of energy for the moment. As many of, you know, I've for the last eight years, been running Bamboo Yoga in Byron, and that has recently closed.
So that has certainly opened up a lot of time for me to really focus in on. This little love project. [00:01:00] The gentle revolution. Is ultimately.
I'm going to make it about. Saving the world. The gentle revolution is ultimately about saving the world. It's about saving human culture. It is about the evolution of human culture. If we look back in history humanity's been kicking around for really, not that long in the course of things. And we have had some spectacular successes, but we've also had some fairly phenomenal failures.
There's been no other species that I'm aware of that has caused the amount of genocide of their own species, the amount of war, the amount of calamity. The amount of environmental degradation. We humans have an incredible capacity to trip over ourselves, but at the same time, we are phenomenal
we are so smart. We are capable of developing things. I'm literally talking to you [00:02:00] via the internet, which was. Not even existent. 50 years ago, a hundred years ago was the stuff of pipe dreams to be able to talk. Through a mobile device that streams across the internet that we can talk to each other, ultimately in real time on demand as required.
So we've got this incredible capacity to share ideas, to support each other, to connect. And that has it's light and dark, like everything with the human conundrum, we have the light and the dark. And whilst there's this ability to come closer on to explore new ideas, to open our minds, there is also this tendency with, particularly with social media, it would seem to. Divide. And to forget. What. Makes us human.
If you put two humans into a field together where they're working side by side. The day after day, they have a common goal. They need to till the field, they need to create food to [00:03:00] feed. Their families and to support themselves. What happens when we look at each other across the realms of Facebook is somehow or another.
We forget that. When you forget that and we look towards the differences. I think one of the things that we all need to do upon the spiritual path is look to similarities. Find that sense of connection with other humans, with other beings, with other forms of life, find the similarities.
In fact, it is at the heart of. Yogic practice. non-dual tantra particularly shows us a way where we can find that sense of cosmic connection, that threads between all of us. So I don't want to get too cosmic right now. We're going to be quite pragmatic in this second installment. The subject of today's podcast is. Contrasting. Meditation, regular meditation with yoga nidra.
So it's a bit of a one for the yoga nerds. I'm just freshly starting a meditation [00:04:00] teacher training. So it's going to be of importance to people who are certainly doing that training with me, but anyone who's interested in the field of meditation or who's working with meditation techniques and has heard of Yoga nidra in NSDR as it's sometimes called and wants to understand the difference.
I was certainly confused when I started to work in this field and started to practice both meditation and yoga nidra. I wasn't quite clear of. The differences, it was packaged to me in my training is just another form of meditation. And look, there is a lot of similarity. One of the things we'll cover is the similarities between meditation and yoga nidra. But also the very important differences. Again, welcome to this episode, two of the Gentle Revolution where we are indeed, as I said, seeking to save the world, but we're doing it through. The evolution of conscious awareness and just threading back to where I started.
I do go on these little tangents from time to [00:05:00] time. That this podcast is very much about the evolution of the human condition. The spin on gentle revolution is gentler evolution where we can learn to evolve, hopefully in harmony with our planet. And for me, I've looked at every single possibility and looking at away. As many of us do in the course of my life of how could I serve, how can I make the best positive impact?
And I was involved in environmental causes for a period of time in my younger life and was really passionate, still really passionate about environmental causes. But what I did see in that area was a lot of really stressed out people who. May have been trying to save the trees, but they were in a sense casualties themselves because they were so strung out.
They were angry. They were raw. And I had a little moment in life. Like I really don't want to be like that. I really don't want to be like that. I want to help. I want to serve, but I don't want to be stressed and angry and raw. And look, I have [00:06:00] great respect and much gratitude to those people who stand out on the front lines. Protecting the trees saving the whales. Digging up. Whatever it is the garbage that needs to get collected.
And I have been and continue to be involved in those sorts of endeavors, but for me, my way to serve. Look, it was first of all, just saving myself. Yeah, I was falling apart and I needed. To be saved. And I really did I was so grateful, so fortunate to be introduced to this pathway of yogic meditation.
It's classical yoga, ultimately yoga. That brings together the physical form. Pranayama breath work. Brings together. Classical meditation techniques and it brings together for me, very importantly, yoga nidra was. I often call it the special sauce. It made everything else better. It made everything else work.
I got my real aha from this experience of yoga nidra. And if you listen to me, talk for long enough and you come to any of my classes or [00:07:00] courses, you will. No doubt. Hear me waxing lyrical about the saving grace of. Yogic practice and yoga nidra in particular. Onto today's podcast. We're talking, as I mentioned. The similarities and the differences between meditation and yoga nidra.
So firstly, we're going to need a couple of definitions. Meditation, as it's understood by the yogis is.
A practice of ultimately concentration. It is a practice of refining the mind, your meditation in the yoga tradition. Is wrapped around this concept of Dharana. Dharana is applied concentration where we're focusing our attention in a specific direction. They say, in fact that there's a pathway to get there. Anyone who's studied. And Ashtanga method. The Patanjali yoga sutras, talking about yamas and niyamas, which are essentially behavioral codes of conduct. I often, explain it as just get your shit together. Tidy up [00:08:00] your external world, tiny up your internal world.
I won't go into too much detail on that right here, but it's more about dealing with your thinking, your behavior and the outside world cleaning up the mess a bit. So ultimately you can. Quieten down life enough. So you can come into an experience where you can meditate. And from there, they introduce asana the physical form coming into a stable position.
Although in classical yoga meditation, it's more about establishing a comfortable seated position. We're introducing then pranayama. Which is regulation of the nervous system, learning how to control that energetic body pranamaya kosha through ultimately breath, but not just breath. Breath is obviously a big part of it. And from there, we moving into the practices of meditation, which is Pratyahara. sense withdrawal.
So I'm detaching from the outside world and there's techniques that are very much about getting us there. Yoga nidra being a great one. Pratyahara coming into, through as I [00:09:00] mentioned before, Dharana this capacity of focus and a lot of meditation techniques in modern Western psychology are categorized as focused awareness or concentration meditation.
Ultimately, it's just focusing. Your attention on a specific thing for a period of time. It doesn't say how long you need to hold it for. It might be a second. It might be a minute. But there is an understanding in yogic meditation that if you can hold that concentration steady for a period of time, that's when it becomes meditation.
So Dharana I often referred to it's the practice of coming back to the practice. So say my meditation technique is to focus on the breath. I'm just noticing the breath in my nostrils. And it's difficult. You will notice your breath in your nostrils for a period of time. And then what will fairly inevitably happen is you will be distracted and you'll be into your mind.
You'll be thinking about something internally or perhaps you will. Put your attention out there into exteroceptive awareness, [00:10:00] maybe noticing a bird or somebody else out in the field of awareness. And it's going to distract you away from the meditation practice. And the practice of Dharana is returning there.
So you will notice you might be distracted for a few seconds a minute. Whatever it is, but the practice is in fact, coming back to the practice and it's building a muscle it's building. Psychic muscle and quite literally, that's what you're doing. Strengthening the willpower by coming back again and again, and again to whatever it is, whether it's the breath or perhaps a mantra mantra practices. Again, a practice of concentration focused awareness meditation.
So we're coming back again and there will come a moment. It might just be for a few seconds, or it might linger for a longer period of time where you will find that. Awareness is just effortless. It can just rest there on whatever the point of focus is. So I'm just noticing the breath and I'm really comfortable there.
Their sense of tension is lost for a moment.
[00:11:00] And at that point, we're experiencing meditation. So this is what the yogis described as Dhyana which is meditation. When you can comfortably rest your awareness on that particular point. So this is the classical definition of meditation. There is another form of meditation indeed we do teach this system in yoga as well.
And this is what more like open monitoring meditation. It's mindfulness. So in mindfulness meditation, the focus is more openly aware and we are. Noticing pictures in the mind. So we're noticing. Perhaps it could be focusing on sounds or physical experience but, not specific ones, it might just be opening your attention to hear all of the sounds or notice all of the experience of touch and cultivating this disposition of the witness of Vairagya, which is the ability to observe something in a non-reactive way. And this practice becomes particularly interesting.
And we use a technique called Antar Mouna. Anyone who studied meditation with me would be familiar with that [00:12:00] Aunty Mona funnily enough, my grandmother's name was Mona but she had a sister called Rona, . So auntie Rona and grandma Mona.
So I guess My cousins would have had an auntie Mona. So Antar Moana, which actually means. I N T a R M O U N a. It means inner silence. So through this practice, we are learning how to. Bring the experience of non-reactivity Vairyagya. To the pictures of the mind. So we're exploring the thought forms, noticing. The patterns of thinking, noticing if I'm thinking in a particular way from aggravated or desirous of something, or perhaps I'm adverse to something, and as you explore this practice over a period of time, It's fairly inevitable.
You'll see the patterns of thinking. Most of us are fairly limited with thinking about things that we want or perhaps things that we don't want. And, it's often. Big ticket items, physical thing that I want to have in my life, or an experience that I want to have [00:13:00] sexual desire. I used to think a lot about surfing.
I remember doing. Shavasana at the end of yoga practice. And all I would think about was surfing. I was so obsessed with surfing. I'm still fairly obsessed with surfing, but maybe, not so much, but I do recall just lying there. Just mind surfing. And at that time, in my early years of practicing yoga, I hadn't really been introduced to meditation. And not in any sort of serious way.
And I was just, for me, I didn't feel comfortable. I felt like I, my mind was still busy after all of that yoga practice. My mind was still busy and it wasn't until. Some years later that I was introduced to techniques that you can in fact use during Shavasana at the end of a yoga class or at any time to help quiet in the mind. Yogis understand that the mind is a busy place.
The mind, the nature of the mind is to think it's going to think, whatever. You do with it? Its nature is to think it's very uncommon for the mind to just naturally come into quietude. And so what we learned through this practices with open [00:14:00] monitoring meditation, particularly this technique of Anthem Mona. Is we learn how to. Cultivate a different relationship to those thoughts. So there'll be thoughts there, but we cultivating this capacity to see them more for what they are.
And as I've heard it described they're clouds, just moving across the sky and you see the clouds coming. Ultimately, you see the clouds go. So that's an open monitoring practice. Vipassana is another. Practice. Technique that is offered through the Buddhist tradition. Very similar to the Antar Mouna technique.
They have ultimately the same heritage they've come from the same place, slightly different. Elements to the techniques, but ultimately the same thing. And. That is a really important technique. I have found in my journey of meditation to help me understand the machinations of my mind, to help understand the patterns of thinking and to cultivate more of an elegant mind, which is a [00:15:00] phrase I heard Rod Stryker use once a beautiful term, just to. Imagine elegance in a house where everything's just in its place, nothing's out of place and the mind can be quite unruly.
It can be busy, it can jump around. And as I said before, the nature of the mind is to think. But a well-ordered mind, an elegant mind. We keep the thoughts. Where they're supposed to be. You learn the capacity to relate to the thoughts in a different way. So we're not having a thought, we're not running away with it all the time.
We're not letting the next thought, just take us away and distract us from where we're supposed to be.
Through this practice, you can learn over time to actually come to a space where you can let all thought go for a period of time. Not forever. Just having those moments of thoughtlessness to actually be able to sit there and not have any thoughts in the mind.
It's quite an exquisite feeling. It does take a while. And the pathway to get there through exploring thoughts or exploring our relationship to touch sensation to all the senses. It's a [00:16:00] beautiful journey to get there. So as always with meditation practice, the destination is. Yeah. Okay. There is often a destination and. Ultimately in yogic meditation, they talk about the destination of Kaivalya, which is liberation from the thoughts, liberation from the senses, from the experience of Guna, which is the. The primordial machinations of the world.
We have Rajas, Tamas & Sattva so we're ultimately coming into balance. Rajas being desire. Fervency Tamas beings stagnancy decay which so the tendencies that we all have to either be anxious and overactive and. We find through the practice of yoga and meditation, we're coming into this experience of satwa. Balance and purity, however, In the yoga sutras, and we'll actually at a certain point, you're going to have to let go of that too.
You might become the most clean living, balanced and harmonious person in the world, but there's still perhaps an attachment there that a certain point we have [00:17:00] to. Let go of that to. Skipping ahead a little bit down the yogic path, but it's good to know. That there is somebody who's thought it through and certainly Patanjali did a good job of doing that Patanjali for anyone who hasn't heard that name before was the. Not necessarily the author, but the collater of the Patanjali yoga sutras, which gives us the Ashtanga Yoga yoga method, which I've just mentioned before. At this point we've introduced concentration meditation focused awareness.
We've looked at open monitoring meditation, which is mindfulness practices. And I often explain those things. Psychologists, modern psychologists have come up with those terms being focused awareness, meditation, concentration, and open monitoring meditation. They are constructs of the Western psychotherapy method. I look at that and they try and categorize different meditation techniques or it's this, or it's that, in fact, what I'll come to realize is that most meditation techniques will have [00:18:00] elements of both.
And as a meditator, I would suggest that these are qualities that you need to have. Whereas when you learn how to meditate, the capacity. To focus is really fundamentally important we learn this through concentration meditation. Again, practice returning back to our point of focus. We're very distracted in the modern world.
So the capacity to concentrate fundamentally important. And the other one is the changing this relationship to thought cultivating Vairagya detachment. The elegant mind again, really fundamental quality that every human will benefit from. Are we talking about this idea of a gentle revolution?
I would say that. That's a fundamental quality. Changing our relationship to our thoughts. Our opinions around things. People are so hot headed around their opinions. Thinking that it's my way or the highway. And there's a lovely Snoopy cartoon I will put it onto the YouTube video, but I'll describe it for those, just listening on Spotify [00:19:00] that. And Snoopy comes along and says, oh, I'm thinking about writing a book on theology. And his young friend all have decided what it's going to be called. He says, yes, I've got a wonderful title for it. Have you ever considered that you might be wrong? Which I think is a wonderful premise it's for anyone contemplating a discourse on the theology or spiritual thinking. Indeed any sort of thinking at all, because most of the ideas we come to learn over time that we have. With the, particularly the ideas often the ideas were so hot headed and passionate about. They change over time. They do change over time.
So we're going to literally go to war over particular ideas about culture, about who we are and what we are, and we're destroying human lives. Destroying. The lives of. Many creatures. Putting indeed. The future of the earth in jeopardy, because we're so attached to having more. Usually we're scared of not [00:20:00] having enough, which underpins this idea to have more. My experience, the practice of meditation, cultivating Vairagya in our life and. This capacity for Vivek, which is to discern right from wrong and really getting to the niche of things.
The nuance of things and understanding why do I want that thing? Why it's so important. And this passionate desire that we have for so many things in our life, hopefully over time that can soften and. A lot of meditators learn to live with not very much. I had a Conversation with a friend just the other day who was talking, who'd actually just inherited a lot of money and was, had a lot of money sitting in their bank account.
And.
You know, it doesn't feel like it's changed me at all. I really don't think that it's helping me at all. I've often reflected. The only time I really worry about money is when I don't have enough money becomes important at that point, if you don't have enough money and if you can't. Afford to [00:21:00] feed yourself or to give yourself the basic level of sustenance. Provides security, which is a fundamental human need. Then money is really big.
We are anxious. We. Kicking off into this experience of Rajas but beyond that point, when we have enough, whatever that might be. That's a dubious line that is very uncertain for a lot of people. When we have enough then money. And in my experience becomes a lot less relevant. In our life. Again, this is the quality of gentle detachment Vairagya which is cultivated through our practice.
Of Antar Mouna meditation, mindfulness meditation. So we've got this capacity. For detachment and also this capacity to concentrate. So that is in my opinion. And again, from the yogic tradition, the opinion around the definition of what meditation is. We can talk about it and for a lot longer. But that gives you a bit of a discourse on what [00:22:00] meditation is and what it can bring into our lives. So let's now talk about yoga nidra and how does yoga nidra fit into the mix?
Firstly, again, I'll give you a definition of yoga nidra. Quite literally yoga nidra means yogic sleep. So Yoga in this context means. Connection.
And nidra quite literally means sleep. So yoga nidra is connection awareness in the experience of sleep. So what's happening in Yoga nidra is we're putting the body into a sleep like state. However, the mind remained conscious the mind remains awake and aware this practice has been. Utilized for a very long period of time.
There is a long heritage of the experience of yoga nidra. It is referenced in tantric upanishads. And certain techniques reference the experience of yoga nidra. However, the modern format, the modern technique. That we know the eight stage. Yoga [00:23:00] nidra practice, which involves rotation of awareness through the body and cultivating this state of nidra. I was really only introduced to the world in about the 1960s. Largely through the work of Swami Satyananda who is my teacher, but through other teachers as well through other school of yoga, I think what Swami Satyananda did really was. Give it a system, gave it a form.
And. Created this eight stage technique, which brought in certain elements of psychotherapy as well. Sankalpa was introduced to it. Visualization was introduced to it. And it became a structured practice, which again, enabled it to be. Easily accessed. So the experience of yoga nidra could be. Easily accessed by pretty much anybody.
And that is indeed one of the great benefits of this practice, where meditation can be really hard. Yoga nidra is really easy. All you have to do you do it lying down, which is a boon for [00:24:00] many people and it's guided. So you have someone walking you through it. Step by step. And it seems to have a certain magical quality where it just allows us to drop. Allows us to drop.
Yoga nidra. Ultimately is two things. Yoga nidra refers to the technique, which again, could be this eight stage techniques, certain different schools have other types of techniques that they apply to. It. They're all very similar in the way that they're using a rotation of awareness throughout the body, which is in fact, firing up parts of the brain.
As you bring attention into your right hand thumb, it helps to fire up a part of the brain. And as you rotate awareness, and this is how the practice goes, you. For bring your awareness around, through the whole physical body. Slowly, but surely over a period of some minutes and then that fires up the brain and ultimately it allows the brain to deeply relax and take you into an incredibly. Calm state. So yoga nidra again, the technique then what we're talking about here, the [00:25:00] real yoga nidra. Is this experience and modern psychologists, I think Andrew Huberman, Dr.
Andrew Huberman, who is a neuro physiologist at Stanford university, very popular podcaster, he only really discovered yoga nidra probably 5, 6, 7 years ago. And. He has done a huge amount of work in researching it and has really grabbed onto the technique and sees it. The sees the benefit in the practice and. As some Westerners are inclined to do, he has relabeled it and given it an acronym, which is N S D R. N SDR stands for non sleep deep rest.
And again, this nidra state where the body is going into. A state of deep rest, but the mind stays awake. So you are in fact still awake and aware, although. If you measured certain signs. Using. Medical equipment. It would seem like the body was in fact in sleep. The heart rate slows right down the breath slows right down in the brain activity. Importantly [00:26:00] slows right down.
So this is the state of yoga nidra. Where we're moving through again, I'll put this one on to the YouTube video I have. Just a simple graphic here, which shows the different states of activity in the mind. And we're moving most of us. Now, if you're listening to me or up in a state, which has probably. Beta or alpha. So the, basically the graph is measuring brain activity and we're moving from gamma down to beta. Alfa is the mind becomes quieter.
Theater is heading into that sleep state where there's a lot of pictures. So that's the dream state when you're sleeping, but you're having a lot of pictures in the mind then ultimately down into Delta where the mind becomes really quiet. And so this is akin to deep sleep in this. Something magical happens here. When the mind is almost completely.
And if you're looking at the EEG, it's almost just. There's nothing on the graph there. Very minimal brain activity. [00:27:00] And so what happens at that point? Is the body kicks in and a lot of healing hormones come into play. So there's an incredible physiological response. That your body begins to heal itself, but from a mental perspective, it's like the great reset. So they're doing again, as I said, a lot of research into it now, seeing that it's quite a unique. Mindspace that you're not getting to in regular meditation.
So this is what's really important with yoga nidra. You're getting this opportunity. The yoga nidra experience is. This. Experience of deep relaxation, where the mind almost completely resets itself. It's been shown that it's set resets the dopamine pathway. So if you've been. I like to do yoga nidra. If I'm having a busy day, I like to do it most days.
If I can. And most of my days are fairly busy and I've particularly, I'm doing a lot of thinking, a lot of talking. I get to a point usually mid afternoon where I'm just like, yeah. That's when people say, when [00:28:00] did you, when do you do yoga nidra when I'm feeling? yaaa. And I've just got nothing left and I'm just, I just need to reset.
And so look, the practice can be 10 minutes can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. If you've got it. I think for me, the average practice is usually 20 to 30 minutes. I find that sort of my happy medium of time that I could afford. I know some people who do it in less I often do more as well. The 45 minute practice it is a tantric practice. It's important to understand that it's more than just that mental reset. And this is where I do love Andrew Huberman. And I love that fact that a modern psychologist and neurophysiologists are really interested in this going, wow.
We can biohack. Our brains by you doing this stuff. However it's important. And certainly a big part of my work is to remain, retain that connection to the yogic lineage and understand that yoga nidra is more than just a mental reset. It is in fact, An opportunity for you to connect with primordial stillness, talking about the experience of yoga nidra, another word for it is Turiya [00:29:00] and the Turiya means the timeless place Turiya is the primordial beginning. Beyond thought beyond matter. Beyond time. This is the opportunity with yoga nidra is that it can take us there once you get into that space.
In fact, there's a lot of stuff. Really cool stuff. You can do introducing Sankalpa which is a way of cultivating an intention. Sankalpa as a resolve that we create. So that's a form of self hypnotherapy where you can really cultivate purpose, cultivate intention. You can do a lot of work with your Pranic body.
If you're interested in Kriya, yoga, Kundalini, yoga. You can really tap into Chakras which again is part of the heritage of yoga nidra. So working with chakras and introducing mantra right into chakras there's a lot of pretty cool stuff. It might sound a bit edgy if you're new to yoga nidra. So again, the wonderful thing about the practices can be really simple.
It can just be you. Coming into a quiet place, watching your breath, and just having a [00:30:00] quick reset. It's fantastic. If you're not getting enough sleep and has been shown that. 30 minutes of yoga. Nidra is the equivalent of about three hours of sleep. So if you finding your sleep is not sufficient I would say it's not a sleep replacement.
It is an adjunct for sleep. I'm always advocating for. Good quality sleep at least eight to nine hours is what science is showing. We should all be getting. But if you're not getting that and you do our feeling a bit ew during your day, maybe you are getting that and you feel like you need a little top up yoga
nidra is a wonderful tool to have. So you're getting the rest. You're getting that. Beautiful reset of your energy and your mind. But through this space, you have an incredible opportunity to access the subconscious mind and seed your intentions of using Sankalpa and you can also work with yourself.
Energetically working with. Chakras, et cetera. So leave that for another time, but know that there's an opportunity there with yoga nidra. [00:31:00] So again, yoga nidra and meditation.
They are. Different. They are different. And it's important to understand the experience of yoga nidra and the experience of meditation are different. The experience of meditation involves the definition given by the yogis is focused awareness. When you become. Almost absorbed in the particular point of focus. However with yoga nidra, the mind is switched off. So the mind is in a very different state.
However to get into yoga nidra, what you are doing.
In fact, a lot of the techniques, the awareness. Moving around the physical body. We focus on our breath. We noticed sounds to the very beginning of practices, often a practice of listening to sound noticing, touch, which is open monitoring meditation. A lot of those techniques that we're using to get into yoga nidra, in fact, concentration meditation techniques and open monitoring meditation techniques. We're [00:32:00] using them in a particular way. To help induce Pratyahara sense withdrawal.
So we're coming into ourselves, we're detaching from the outside world, but we're taking it a lot further. And at a certain point, we let go of all those techniques and then we're just having the experience. The experience of rested awareness within this inner space. So very similar, a lot of crossover, but the in fact, the destination with yoga nidra is different to the destination. With classical meditation. So, which one is right for you? Well, there's an interesting question. Dare I say both. It really depends on your lifestyle.
As I said before, if you're not getting enough sleep. And you feeling a little bit. Yeah, a lot of the time yoga nidra, it's hard to go past it. It was very well documented a few years ago that the CEO of Google his name is Sundar Pichai who is I imagine a very busy guy. Who running in one of the world's biggest [00:33:00] corporations. He gave an interview with the wall street journal and he was saying that yoga nidra has in fact for him being a really core part of his practice.
And I remember hearing Andrew Huberman talking about that. It's all that actually makes a lot of sense because. His mind is really busy. A lot of the time, the last thing that he wants ultimately is more stuff to do with his mind when he gets 10 minutes, 20 minutes to do a reset. What he needs is to give his mind a break. And perhaps that's the same for a lot of you. To give your mind a break.
And so if you've got to try one thing. Perhaps yoga nidra is the good place to start. If you are feeling rested and you feel like you've got a lot of energy, perhaps too much energy, and you need to give your mind a little bit more focus. Focused awareness meditation. The way I teach it. Though is ultimately a system.
So I use all of them might use focused awareness meditation. I use constant I used open awareness meditation and I used yoga nidra. They all support each [00:34:00] other. They all cross pollinate. I'd done a lot of meditation, classical meditation, a lot of a Vipassana
in fact, before I came to yoga nidra, And what I realized was that yoga nidra made it all better.. I think there's always been a bit of a struggle for me with meditation and yoga nidra was just so easy. It was much easier to just integrate it into my life.
I think that's. The great gift. That yoga nidra gave me. It was so much easier to adapt it as a regular practice because I just felt that was what I needed. It felt just really natural. I didn't feel inspired a lot of the time to get up and sit. And meditate early in the morning. But what I did find was that yoga nidra. Gave me that extra bit of rest.
So I was waking up in the morning, more rested and more inspired to sit and do my practice in the morning. As I said, I found, and I do find that the practices very much support each other. I would suggest that for most people try both. If you're serious about a practice of meditation. You should [00:35:00] try and give everything a go.
And then working with a teacher, the guidance of a teacher is really useful. I think in this instance, we've only got a certain amount of time so making the best. Use of that time is important. So if you're trying to choose, I would say experiment with both and then ultimately just grab onto one for a period of time, but do feel free to, to change. And adapt.
And look, if you do have time, both is wonderful. I've been doing a lot of study recently around learning and. Interesting to I've always been very interested in learning. I am a teacher. I teach yoga and meditation, but I was school teacher at one point, and I've taught a lot of things. In fact, over the years.
And. I've always been interested in the learning process. One of the. And now as a meditation breathwork teacher, I'm really interested in the intersection between meditation and learning. And there's a protocol which is being pushed at there is a scientist, her name is, Wendy Suzuki, who has. [00:36:00] Published a really good quality study showing that 10 minutes of concentration meditation. I suggest it could even be less five to 10 minutes of concentration meditation. At the beginning of a learning activity helps to. Improve the quality of the learning experience. So improves concentration . Improve our ability to absorb the information and then ultimately memorize the information. And it has also been shown another interesting study published, not so long ago that. Yoga nidra performed after a learning activity helps to. Improve our neuro-plasticity by up to 50%. What that means is if you're practicing yoga, nidra is this is the time when your brain is rewiring itself.
So I've taken in some new information as you are right now, perhaps if you went off and did a yoga nidra just after this. It would improve your brain's capacity to recall the information. So neuro-plasticity is ultimately the brain. [00:37:00] Rewiring itself so it can remember. I would suggest the ultimate protocol for learning would be five minutes of meditation, concentration meditation, focusing on your breath or focusing on a specific thing.
I use Ajapa Japa which is a little bit more sophisticated than breath awareness. We're using breath awareness, moving between particular points of the body. Chakras. And. Even just the belly button to the throat pit is a great place to start using the ujjayi breath is whispering and breath with gives them more of a. Of visceral experience, so you can feel it more. I think helps us to concentrate on the practice for a little bit longer, just simple breath awareness.
It's really hard. It's really hard just to sit there on your breath for a long period of time. So Ajapa Japa I've heard it described as breath awareness on steroids. It just evolve the practice a little bit further. So I think if you did something like that focused awareness meditation, five minutes before the learning activity, and then at the end of the learning activity say if it's at a school, you might do it just [00:38:00] before lunch. The 20 minutes of yoga nidra, or 15 minutes of yoga nidra, which is going to rest the body and enable the mind to rewire. Cultivate that neuro-plasticity so that the brain can remember, what's just been learned. Again, we're all in a. Practice.
I hope of learning continually lifelong learning, I think is what it should all be about. There is so much fascinating stuff in this field. I just can't get enough. I'm constantly studying in some way, shape or form, and I feel. Spoiled. There's so many other people out there studying and publishing and sharing really cool information.
So I hope that this has been useful. I think we should wrap it up. Fairly soon because that's a lot of information. If you are interested in techniques to explore with these practices I do have on Spotify. Sorry, not on Spotify. I have them on SoundCloud and I have them on The insight timer app.
I have [00:39:00] some recordings. I'll put some links in the show notes. That you can access and I'll probably over the coming weeks. Add more to YouTube and add some directly to Spotify as well. So you've got access to the recordings. And again, if it's all completely new to you, I would suggest yoga nidra.
If you want to just do one thing. A practice of NSDR or yoga nidra. It's really easy to access if you're completely new to meditation and you want to just jump in and give it a go. You certainly don't have to use mine. And there's lots of other techniques around NSDR or yoga nidra practice.
There's plenty on YouTube or Spotify. Or as I said, the insight timer app has many as well. I will give you some links to mine but please do feel free to get out there and check out some more. It has been an absolute pleasure talking about this stuff. I think that's probably enough for now. Couple of things.
I do have some interviews lined up over the next few weeks. So it won't just be me talking to you directly. I do like to get nerdy about this [00:40:00] stuff sometimes, but it's also cool to chat to some other people other yogis. Again, the theme for this show is very much. About. Anyone. Any way that we can use the evolution of conscious awareness, breath, work, meditation, self-awareness yoga practice, whatever it is. To improve life,
so I'm really interested in talking to. Anyone who has had a journey with this practices and. Interested to get the insights of how they adapt practice into their world and the effect that meditation. Self-awareness practice has on the evolution of their life. So stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe. And follow and leave any comments in. The comments section.
I love to check them out. Let me know if there's anyone specific, you'd like me to talk to. And I hope to see you again, talk to you again very soon. Hari Aum Tat Sat.
So the Gentle Revolution is sponsored by the [00:41:00] yogic meditation Institute, where we run courses in meditation, self-awareness yoga teacher, training programs, meditation teacher training, and yoga teacher training, as well as offering coaching and Other ways to support you. You can check that out at yogicmeditation.net.
Otherwise I hope to talk to you soon.
Hari Aum Tat Sat, peace
