Bobbi Greenberg

Yoga Nidra: A blessing in my life.

Bobbi was instrumental in bringing Yoga Nidra Teacher Training to an amazing yoga community in Ontario this past year. It was joyous to be invited and to meet a new community. Bobbi approached me with tears of release after one powerful yoga nidra journey. She said to me “I finally got what I wished for– I finally stayed awake the entire yoga nidra.” I knew something big within her was finally integrating, she was feeling it now, and she would feel so clear and fresh soon after. I wanted to share her story with you to help us understand just how powerful Divine Sleep yoga nidra can be.

Before my daily yoga nidra practice I was living a busy chaotic life, scattered all over the place, Most of all I did not sleep well and that affected every aspect of my life. Being a type ‘A’ personality and being at a certain age when sleep is not always a sure thing, a friend gave me Jennifer’s CD, and it could not have come at a better time.

I was stressed out with my profession, which is public relations, and one of the aspects that was stressing me out was an upcoming “lobby day” in the capital, Ottawa. I had a lot of difficulty falling asleep so I began practicing Jennifer’s CD every day and I was immediately able to sleep and rest deeply. When I went to Ottawa for our annual Hill (lobbying) day, a colleague said “You are SO different.” And I was. I was much calmer, more grounded, and she could see it in my face, and how I conducted myself even during this very stressful time.

I soon got all of Jennifer’s CDs– they are a blessing in my life – and began listening to them faithfully every day because this practice helped me so much. I have a teenage daughter who also suffers from insomnia and I suggested that she try yoga nidra as a tool for sleeping. When I asked her what she remembered of the words, she could not remember anything! But when I asked her how she felt — she was actually able to sleep and stay asleep by using Jennifer’s CDs. The amazing thing is we are handling insomnia without the use of any drugs – and that alone has made yoga nidra a savior in my life.

I go to sleep with Jennifer’s CD every night! I have been practicing daily for three years now but I hear something different and new each time. I pick up on what I need in the moment and it goes right into where I need to hear it, and to soothe me.

It was my dream to bring Jennifer here to Ontario to lead our community in Yoga Nidra Teacher Training, and Aida Neves, my YTT teacher made that happen. I did the training for myself – I wanted to learn about this magic and how it worked. I wanted to meet Jennifer because her Divine Sleep yoga nidra has had such a strong and uplifting impact in my life. I love yoga nidra so much and see how much its changed my life and want to give that gift to other people.

I love how my friends and students look when they come out of yoga nidra! Pure bliss and openness. I lead my friend who just went through breast cancer surgery and she found great peace within it. My work is in the healthcare field involving ALS — a disease that is terminal with loss of the use of arms, legs and all movement. Yoga nidra is perfect for this population because they have complete mental function but can’t move, so this offers an amazing way for them to connect with their body parts and open the channels of the nervous system, not to mention calming and soothing their emotions during what can be extremely challenging chapter in one’s life.

It also works for their caregivers, who need it as well – care for the caregivers. I have lead Divine Sleep yoga nidra at our conference for social workers, caregivers and so on who work with people living with ALS and they all loved it and were amazed at what a great tool yoga nidra is.

Jennifer goes with me everywhere I go — I will not leave home without her CD’s. It’s my guide. What a gift to have this practice in my back pocket! I travel for work a lot and out of everything, the CD is the most important thing I take with me. It helps me settle in to other places and to sleep. I listen and I am calm – it’s no big deal and I go on into my day with more energy than before I practiced Divine Sleep yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra changed my life! Like most people, I have had difficult periods in my life and I feel so supported and confident knowing that when things get tough I have this amazing tool of yoga nidra to help me get through. And it does. I have become more accepting and surrendered, and the inner fighting has stopped. My sleep is much better and I awaken more rested.

I was in an extremely traumatic event a few years ago. During the Yoga Nidra Teacher Training Jennifer led us in Divine Sleep and I came to a point where the feelings surrounding the event came up. These feelings had been causing a lot of unnecessary pain in my life — I’d been living in the past with them and had been trying to move beyond. But what happened in this specific yoga nidra was remarkable – I felt the feelings, I let myself feel it, it was uncomfortable — and I had the calm presence to state ‘I’m willing to let go now’. And I let it go! It was a major breakthrough. You could go to therapy for years but yoga nidra really gets in there and shifts things in the deepest levels for the better. Jennifer, I can’t thank you enough!

Bobbi Greenberg

 

 

Verne D’Angelo

It is said that ‘When the student is ready, the teacher shows up’, and Verne added: ‘regardless of age!’ When Verne turned 60, and she thought of being 65 one day, she wondered what will she do then? Something in her said she had to become a yoga teacher. Verne is a breast cancer survivor and began practicing yoga after having surgery. What an inspiration! She let her light shine and did her yoga teacher training for her 61st birthday!

“Teaching yoga is the perfect thing! I am so grateful for this opportunity and for my teachers.
I was able to attend Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training in Ontario, Canada. I had been leading yoga nidra, but fumbling my way through the dark to some degree, and Jennifer’s training helped me to learn the depth of this powerful practice and also to feel confident in my delivery of it.

My life before my own yoga nidra practice was a little different! I was not calm. I jumped in with both feet. My personality was reactive.

Now I am less reactive, calmer, and more grounded. I use to go through periods where I felt disconnected and did not have my feet on the ground and that has changed. I have more space in my mind to stop and think. I am able to step back and consider things, and know what feels right before jumping in. I am less selfish and more expansive in my viewpoint.

Currently I am going through months of house renovation. The initial renovation uncovered more serious problems and it has been unending and very stressful to live amongst all the chaos with my home upside down. I am much more relaxed in how I am handling it all and less picky. “That’s life”, I say. Before I would have been tearing my hair out. The other day I sat down and laughed in the midst of everything and the renovator asked if I was okay? I said I am laughing, not crying! It is intense, but I am happy with how differently I am navigating through it all.

A family member aggravated me and I knew instead of reacting to her by opening my mouth and going into confrontation which had been my habitual way, I went outside and raked leaves! It was a good decision — it felt good to be physical and cleared my head and heart. That would not have happened before.

I now have clear boundaries with my adult children. I often felt in the middle of their interactions and arguments with each other. I am able to state what I will and will not do-rather than get sucked into it. Intuition and my inner voice speak. And now I listen now. I can hear it. That is new for me.

I act instead of react. And that makes me feel like I can breathe! I truly wish I had this 30 years ago. The way I once dealt with things – ugg! Yoga Nidra has given me tools that I now have within myself, that have a major impact on my life.

I am grateful to Jennifer and appreciative of her experience and knowledge. Generally people have knowledge but don’t share it. Jennifer gives away what she has in order to help other people — she gave me this gift.”

 

 

Dave Gerlits

Dave and I first met when I gave him a bodywork session at Kripalu in Healing Arts. Dave then signed up for the newsletter and has incorporated it into his life ever since. He is so kind, open, relaxed and sincere, and when I met his wife, Bobbi, she was the same. I wondered how they lived their lives to embody these beautiful qualities, and asked Dave if he would share a little with us. And isn’t it about time we had a man in the Spotlight?

“In 1977 I graduated college and began to practice Transcendental Meditation — seated meditation on a sound or word. I had a strong practice and meditation gave my mind a way to relax tension and anxiety. But I still could feel it in my throat, chest and diaphragm. And when I hold tension in my body,it also affecting me mentally and psychologically. At that time in my life, I was less confident and more fearful. I joined the Navy to see the world and then saw it through a periscope! In the Navy I studied nuclear power. I always had a desire to cultivate both sides of myself — the mystical and the scientific.

Growing up, my father was an alcoholic. I learned to hold everything inside. I was in a state of flight or fight and would freeze, retreat. I wasn’t breathing. I would try to disappear. It was when I began practicing yoga postures that the avenue opened up for real communication to occur between my body, mind and heart. My wife Bobbi and I have been going to Kripalu nearly every quarter since 2007. I’ve found the reflective atmosphere parallels my inner process of evolving.

Kripalu is a community of self-selected people who come really wanting to be there. What is so powerful is that I hear my own story coming out of someone else’s mouth every time I am there. I am looking for a way to evolve where I can open up to all of life. Yoga has allowed me to get out of my head and into life.

Yoga has been a miraculous doorway to rediscover my body. Now I take a nurturing and understanding approach with myself and use yoga to self-sooth. I react less. I no longer retreat, withdraw, or hold a ball of anxiety within. When I am triggered, I am able to witness the process of how my body is responding. And from this place of witness, I can decide where it goes from there. This is not an intellectual thing – far from it. It comes from a place of body, mind, and heart.

Yoga allows me to go inward and reclaim parts of my body that I had exiled, parts of myself and things I liked to do. I had lost touch. Yoga has allowed me to build resilience and bounce back. I can be who I want to be and return to that calm locus of control. The result is that I more quickly and easily untie knots of anxiety that happen from work and living life. I feel more confident and at home in my body.

All of this has helped my work for a new generation of safer nuclear power. I had to give a speech/testimony about plant safety in Washington, and had I been younger I’d have wanted to hide! I told myself “I’m going to take good care of myself and I will do yoga right before if I need to calm myself.” And I did just that. I found an empty room and practiced the moon salute yoga flow over and over again until I calmed down. A guard looked into the room while I practiced, and I told him I was doing yoga. He said “Cool!” I felt the knots untie and felt more myself. I felt like the “Warrior Mystic” bringing my yoga practice right into the heart of technology. I am learning not to be shy or hide my yoga practice, but embody it, share it and love it out loud.

I love- love- love Jennifer’s newsletters. Radiant Being is so densely packed with information that I use to assist myself day to day. I’m always digesting the newsletters. I keep them in the Evernote program on my computer and sort the topics out so I can quickly pull them up. I liked the theme of the Five Elements and going through one at a time was a powerful experience for me. The last Student Spotlight with Sue Keane was so moving.

The Radiant Being newsletters have become a good resource – a library of wisdom. I’ve begun using some of the practices and I save some for the future for when I will be ready for them. That feels good – to have a direction and a roadmap of practices I can do at home to keep me tuned in and dissolve the tension away.

Jennifer’s newsletters have opened me up to new and different kinds of experiences – seeing energy flows and feeling new things in my own body that Jennifer wrote about on the elements. I have been doing an energy healing practice called Therapeutic Touch my whole life and am part of a healing circle at church offering free energy work. After the ‘Fire Element’ issue of Radiant Being, the things I read and learned washed through me, and then I had a felt experience of my own fire element during our healing circle. It was amazing how it came up as I was working on someone and felt an internal map and points of heat, fire element, and I could control it by moving my body slightly. It gave me a new understanding about energy, elements, yoga, healing and how it’s all related.

I really enjoyed practicing Yoga Nidra with Jennifer when she led a session during “Afternoon Yoga” at Kripalu and I look forward to sharing it with other members of my family.

These practices help me to stay integrated. Yoga gives a quiet mind and allows my body to relax, and I am able to move into my body and experience life with greater compassion.”

 

 

Tanya Mossman

I was in a pretty good place with myself having been involved with 12 Step program for addiction for the last seven years. However I was feeling somewhat imbalanced and undisciplined. I also did not feel a vital connection to the world and myself.

Then I attended one Yoga Nidra session with Jennifer and my life changed! I knew instantly that this was for me. A light went on and said “follow me- this is it”! 12 Step has been so powerful for me, and Yoga Nidra became my next step. Yoga Nidra has brought me to a deeper level of healing and living life fully. My world was much smaller and Jennifer opened me up to a much bigger space.

I had such profound experiences with Yoga Nidra that I knew I wanted to give this back! I help lead a group in the detox center for addiction at my local hospital. There are so many repeat patients and how can I give them tools powerful enough to really change? So I was motivated to do the Yoga Nidra Teacher Training: Melt Them into Puddles, to bring it to them, even though I was not a ‘yoga person’.

I still do not really get into the postures — my love is Yoga Nidra! I graduated in October as a Yoga Nidra Teacher. I was recovering from an acute illness and for many days during the training I was thinking- should I really be here? But the group was so connected, and the depth of experiences guided me along, and I found I was able to speak my truth and be completely accepted, loved and cherished for exactly where I was at. And that is the same feeling I get each time in Yoga Nidra.

I now am living in life! The cumulative affect of Yoga Nidra powerfully peaked one special day when Jennifer lead us in Yoga Nidra followed by a silent outdoor wandering walk. I felt like a door opened and I was rocketed into a new dimension. This world had always been here but I was not fully living in it until that day.

The space around me when I walked — I felt like I was a part of it. And a part of the blue sky. And when I looked at the clouds, I was the clouds. I lay in the grass and I became grass. I took my shoes off and could feel the ground for the first time. I felt reborn! My senses had been sleeping and are now alive and drinking up the world! I am fully alive!

Driving the other day the leaves on the trees had such a depth of color, so alive, vibrant and amazing. As if Jennifer gave me a new pair of glasses to wear. I felt I had fallen off my spiritually beam. But I feel now I am back on top of it and walking across the beam with my higher power.

Along with heightened awareness of everything, I have noticed new changes in how I am without even trying. I am able to step back and witness without needing to force. I am able to trust that things are unfolding perfectly just as they are. I am more aware of why I do things and my ego does not get hurt if things do not go how I wanted them to go. I do not ‘need’ things to be a certain way as I did before.

I feel connected to my inner self and have a deeper connection with other people. I am able to understand where they are coming from, and with acceptance. I use to feel like I was all on my own- I had to solve it on my own and do it all by myself. Now I know I can be vulnerable, be myself, and I am loved.

Thanks Jennifer. One class at Kripalu has changed my life.

Tanya Mossman

 

 

Stephanie Leeds

“Before I began practicing Yoga Nidra with Jennifer, each day, whatever was before me, I felt tense, and tension building in anticipation of everyday tasks. I felt pulled in many directions and a fair amount of anxiety: the pressure to achieve, to make deadlines, as well as anticipating every possible thing that could happen. I was not sleeping well- I would wake up in the night still processing concerns left over from the day. I was at the maximum daily recommended allowance of tension!

I had been practicing yoga poses and breathing each day, but still had a gnawing anxiety, tension, and worry about things in daily life. I felt a lot of internal conflict- especially in savasana at the end. Raging battles would be going on in my head when it was time to ‘relax’.

I began practicing Yoga Nidra with Jennifer during Yoga and Deep Relaxation Retreat: the Gift of Yoga Nidra. I was affected so deeply and profoundly that I just completely melted! I could not get enough. Now I practice Yoga Nidra almost every day for 15 minutes or more. Jennifer’s openness invites people to come fully into the experience she is offering whether it’s yoga class, Yoga Nidra, retreat, or teacher training. There is always a sense of welcome and pure acceptance she extends to all present. I felt valued and respected by her right away. What encompasses that is this kind, warm, generous human being who is fun to be with, bright, supportive, and nurturing. I feel I received special, special gifts.

Just before the first retreat with Jennifer, I went through an incredible process of self-denigration. It was about all the nots: “I have not learned enough; I am not capable; I need to clear up all of my deficiencies before I can leave here” (I was a volunteer living at Kripalu Center). The weekend of Yoga Nidra completely shifted that! I was able to go so deep that I wasn’t bombarded with that voice. In journeying to my true Self, I was able to counter that game in my head about not being good enough, ‘not complete’. The retreat was when I was able to begin the process of turning that around.

I have an amazingly different life now. I have given up worrying altogether! Yoga Nidra has completely shifted, without even trying to shift, the whole way I approach my everyday life. I am much more able to be with ambiguity, surprise, the unknown, and trust that I can handle whatever comes up. I have a grounded sense of clarity and confidence. I feel the effects and the effects are profound! Now I feel valuable, worthy, complete and whole. The shifts from Yoga Nidra have been mind boggling for me.

Yoga Nidra has provided me with lasting peace, clarity and calmness. Now I am able to bring myself to the state of profound peace and stillness that Yoga Nidra awakened and nurtured in me. I feel much more comfortable with myself and I have come to appreciate all of the parts more fully, even the parts of me I find annoying. I can let me be me!

People have commented on my disposition and they see a very clear shift in my approach and serenity. I am less reactive and I do not get tense and anxious now. I have evolved to this place where to others. I feel grounded, centered and calm. I am much more helpful, responsive and objective in relationships, even with my family which had been challenging. I relate differently now even to problematic people. Right now I am supporting my friend who has a serious illness to find her own answers, rather than me telling her what to do, which may have happened in the past.

Jennifer invites people to find themselves and supports the process of discovery and unfolding for each person. She profoundly honors others and nurtures the expression of where they are at and what they most need. Jennifer’s expertise is a natural part of who she is. She has the magnificent combination of being approachable and completely grounded in the knowledge of yoga and Yoga Nidra. Jennifer has a wonderful voice, a fabulous sense of humor and an infectious laugh. She is kind and her kindness has really touched me.

Yoga Nidra with Jennifer Reis has brought me freedom, ease and joy that has integrated into my whole life. I feel like the deepest part of my being is being touched. Yoga Nidra brings me so much closer to my essence and that has made a big difference in my life. It has become the way I do my life- with ease, grace, and peace.”

~ Stephanie Leeds, Syracuse, NY