As an undergraduate, I was a decent student but I lacked confidence in my abilities. I completed my degree, but I never sat for my athletic training certification exam. Then I found my passion as a massage therapist which felt like an innate ability. One of the things that I learned as a massage student is that it’s a profession that a person might not practice for very long. Many massage therapists get injured, and after a decade as a massage therapist, my right wrist could not handle the pressure anymore. I needed to change careers. And I want to make a difference in the world.
A challenge that I continually face is that my mind feels like it is constantly spinning. As soon as I wake up, the wheels start to turn. “What do I need to get done today? Did I finish reading that book? Did I answer all of my work inquiries?” And on and on it goes.
Because of this continuous chatter in my brain, I find it extremely difficult to lay down and rest, even if I’m feeling especially tired or exhausted. Although I close my eyes, I continue thinking about all the things I’ve done so far, and everything else I have yet to do, wrapped up in the day.
Luckily I discovered yoga which both helped my mind focus and gave me a new career opportunity. I was first introduced to Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra during my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu in Stockbridge, MA. She guided us through a session and I remember feeling like I ‘came to’ at the end of the class, and wondered what had just happened.
I had no idea that I could feel so refreshed without taking a nap! That was when the first seed was planted within me about taking her teacher training. Then later during our training, Jennifer taught a Friday evening Divine Sleep workshop that was packed wall to wall! And it was after class that I knew that I needed to learn much more about this wonderful meditation.
I began practicing Deep Relaxation Divine Sleep CD a few times every week. I found this form of guided meditation has enabled me to feel refreshed without grogginess that can come from sleeping too long midday.
On Jennifer’s website, I was lucky enough to find her teacher training would be happening close to my house! So I went and was not disappointed. Jennifer is kind and patient; wise and thoughtful. I smile to myself when I hear her voice on the Deep Relaxation CD because it makes me think of her smiling face
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training was well organized. She thoroughly instructs each section, then and guides you through it experientially with yoga postures, mudras, statements, and of course with yoga nidra. Each part builds on the next as the training systematically goes on with heart. I found partnering with other students and leading each other in small segments of yoga nidra was especially useful. I received helpful and loving feedback from fellow classmates. Jennifer also gave us time to ask questions, and I found it insightful to hear what other people were wondering about.
My husband Michael and I recently took a trip to Europe and as we were landing, I listened to one of Jennifer’s 12 minute Divine Sleep tracks. This made such a huge difference in being able to stay awake and work through my jet lag.
Michael was also having a pretty devastating time trying to stay awake so I passed my headphones to him and told him to listen as I was driving us to our destination. (I did not listen while driving!). Although it was so short, when he had finished the practice, he felt as if he had taken a nap and was ready to go! He regularly tells himself in self-talk to ‘relax’, or ‘calm down’, and he appreciated being guided without having any responsibility to do it on his own.
I am thankful to have been introduced to Jennifer at Kripalu. How wonderful that she has taken her years of experience with yoga, yoga therapy, Ayurveda, massage, and meditation study to create Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra to share with anyone that wishes to learn it. I’m truly grateful to have this tool in my kit!
Before discovering Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra, I was teaching yoga, stress management, and Reiki to individuals with autism, special needs, disabilities, addiction and mental health issues.
I discovered yoga after struggling with many of the same issues, such as an addiction to drugs and alcohol, suicidal ideation and other self-destructive behaviors. I also have high-functioning autism (formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome), which I was diagnosed with when I was 17 years old. At first, I did not want to accept my diagnosis and this caused me to never feel comfortable in my own skin.
I was bullied intensely during my school years and I internalized all of the negative judgments I heard said about me. I turned to alcohol and drug use and self-harm to cope with my pain and isolation. Pursuing a yoga practice has helped me find peace within myself and a community of people that accept me for who I am.
After practicing yoga and yoga nidra, my anxiety and depression lessened and I found my spirituality through asana practice and meditation. I no longer wanted to partake in alcohol or other substances. Eventually, I also stopped hurting myself.
Because I can experience anxiety in large crowds, I sometimes struggle at music concerts. At one concert in particular, I was feeling very anxious. In this case, I remembered to use my yoga practice and breathing and that helped to calm me down. I felt empowered that the practices helped me to self-regulate my emotions enough so that I could actually enjoy the concert experience!
Another benefit that my yoga and yoga nidra practice provides me is being able to feel grounded and also be in the present moment in my life. It allows me to not obsess over the past or the future – which most of the time causes me to feel depressed and anxious.
I previously struggled with body image issues and compensated by skipping meals to lose weight and over-exercising. I used to drink myself to sleep and drink to blackout, but now I am able to use yoga nidra, breathing exercises and the other yogic tools I’ve learned to help me ease my mind.
After using yoga to conquer my own challenges, I am now devoting my life to helping others who face similar challenges as I did. I feel very blessed to have gone through all the experiences because it made me the person I am today!
I recently started teaching at a facility to individuals with autism and it is the most rewarding feeling for me to try to help them have a better day. I love that I can teach them healthier skills so they can deal with the stresses in their lives. In 2017, I will also be volunteering at Bellevue Hospital in New York City for an organization called Kula for Karma. I am very grateful to be working in the adolescent and children’s psychiatric unit, since I was once a patient at a similar location.
Brian Aubin with his yoga students at Vista Life Innovations, CT, an organization that supports individuals with disabilities.
I came across Jennifer online after talking with other people in the yoga community. Everyone said they loved her classes and her teaching style. I personally love Jennifer’s CD’s because they help me relax and to be present and they help my day go by in a better, more calming way. I’m now able to sleep better and also they help me fall asleep. Insomnia is something I have also struggled with in the past.
I took Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra Teacher Training with Jennifer who is a very informed and knowledgeable teacher. I’m looking forward to bringing the powers of yoga nidra to my students now! Jennifer is a beautiful individual and is compassionate and passionate. I’m looking forward to attending her future workshops and trainings.
It was a delight to have young inquisitive Brian in our teacher training! He has inspired me to see how we can use yoga tools to reach out to assist groups who are in need of these practices. He received a spontaneous ovation upon graduation that was well deserved ~Jennifer
Please enjoy this video of Brian!
MADISON HOUSE AUTISM FOUNDATION
Brian was bullied growing up due to his differences and turned to substances to cope. He found sobriety, spiritual fulfillment, purpose and community as he developed a life-saving yoga practice.
I discovered yoga a couple of years by accident, when I was working for a high school residential summer program. As a part of my job, I accompanied students to daily activities – one of which was yoga – with a Kripalu certified instructor! Lucky for me, I was able to participate in the yoga classes with the students.
After my summer of practicing yoga, I began to notice a difference in the autumn within my body when I was no longer practicing yoga as my body became more sore, tight and achy. In contrast, the yoga had made me feel flexible, intuitive, and at peace. I searched for yoga classes and eventually found what I was looking for nearby.
Yoga has been a subtle but progressive journey of transformation for me. At first, it helped me to find calm at the end of my busy and stressful days during graduate school. It helped me to navigate the questions that for me came with being a young adult. Questions like: Where should I live? What is my true purpose? What is my next step? Yoga became the practice of stepping into stillness and finding the quiet to navigate decisions.
Yoga became my normal practice which has become my anchor for creating a sense of presence and grounding stability in my life. As I explored deeper into yoga, I found Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA. On the daily schedule Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra was listed and I was curious to try it out. I found myself in a deep, relaxed and meditative state under her guidance.
Over time, I became more and more devoted to getting deeper into my own yoga practice. This last year, after a busy year of teaching Kindergarten in a high-need district, I wanted to devote a whole month to becoming a yoga teacher! I did this at Kripalu, where I found myself learning not only how to teach yoga, but also learning how to be present and open in each moment of life — for myself! I was able to attend Jennifer’s Divine Sleep classes again – at times fast asleep, and at other times in deep meditation, and sometimes somewhere in between, which was all enriching.
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra practice helped me to find the deep sense of calm, rest, and healing I was longing for. When I graduated from Kripalu, I continued to long for and search for further opportunities to intensify my personal practice. One of the ways I did this was to join Jennifer for her annual Five Element Yoga Retreat on Martha’s Vineyard!
I was amazed by Jennifer’s knowledge of yoga and healing. She’s has trained in a variety of healing modalities such as massage, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and yoga therapy, and has woven them beautifully together in her creation of Five Element Yoga. Her Divine Sleep meditations come from her deep understanding of the rich tradition of yoga and healing.
Jennifer’s light presence and sense of humor lit up the retreat for me! I found her to be an incredible guide on my journey inward towards healing and wholeness.
The practices she has developed and shares with others, are sincerely profound. She carefully crafted our retreat to incorporate postures, mudras, self-massage, community connection and the philosophies behind her teachings.
I left the retreat feeling rejuvenated, relaxed and deeply rested. Because of my yoga nidra practice, which has become my tool to simply be present and relaxed with all that is, I am now able to be fully present with life. I feel I have the inner tools necessary to navigate through all of life’s stresses, ups and downs, and all the questions that arise within me, often big life questions; and I’m also able to be more present with my kindergarten children in the hectic environment of school life.
For many years I struggled with anxiety, which greatly affected my ability to achieve peaceful and satisfying sleep. Through a significant amount of personal work, I recognized this to be the result of a substantial amount of personal loss and an overwhelming case of angst.
Fear, which affected my life and my relationships, manifested as an obsession with past, present and future worries (real and imagined), on a continuous, repetitive loop. And of course, these repetitious “movies” play out at the worst possible time – at night, when all I want and need is a good night’s sleep!
Cultivating a regular yoga posture and breathing practice has helped me to become mindful, grounded, and less judgmental, as well as physically stronger. However, the skill that has helped me the most with anxiety, has been learning the sweet art of self-compassion.
I had been so busy criticizing and blaming myself that I failed to see how I had internalized myself as the enemy. I actually had to learn to be-friend and love myself again in order to make a change. Interestingly, while I embarked on this new journey of mindfulness and yoga, I was presented once again with a massive blow… an unexpected and excruciatingly painful loss.
Yet, this was also an opportunity to respond differently than I had in the past and with my new skills! I had a choice. This felt good! I felt empowered. I could allow the event to bring me down and I could continue to sabotage myself OR I could love and support myself through a difficult time with hope, trust, and compassion.
With a disciplined commitment to my yoga practice and my new compassionate approach toward myself, I was rewarded with life altering gifts! It really worked! Within a short period of time, I was in a new and healthy relationship, offered a new job, and even enrolled myself in a yoga teacher training program! Although my anxiety and sleep issues weren’t completely resolved, they were greatly minimized.
I entered into the teacher training program at Flowyoga studio in Port Perry Ontario, Canada, under the direction of my amazing teacher Maria Carr. The training got me fired up about my life, my yoga practice, and my desire to teach.
It was during this training that I was introduced to Jennifer Reis’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. I loved the practice so much, I began to practice the track at home before bed on a regular basis, especially if I was feeling anxious. I was shocked to find that most nights I could stay focused and fall asleep peacefully!
I began to realize the crucial element of this practice that was so helpful to me — the concept of self-healing. Now that I was able to be more compassionate with myself, I was able to begin to understand that the tools within me to heal myself were within ME! What a gift this practice has been to me.
What followed was a wonderfully busy, eventful and fruitful year. As I completed my yoga teacher training, began teaching yoga for clients with mental health issues, I also became pregnant! This was exciting, planned and I was prepared for it, yet my pregnancy and raising a child was yet another great opportunity to work through anxiety and sleep issues.
Like any first time parent, I had worries, but I practiced Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra regularly and was so happy with the effect it had on me, that I downloaded to the playlist I created for the birthing process! Yoga nidra helped me to stay grounded and to trust my body would do what it needed to do to give birth, and to be okay with whatever outcome occurred.
All went well and my wife and I brought home our beautiful, healthy baby boy this past spring! I found out about Jennifer’s Martha’s Vineyard retreat. I’m not sure what convinced my wife that this was a good idea. We were feeling a bit strapped financially, plus we had no idea how our six-month old would do travelling 15 hours by car!
It might have been her hobby that won the vote: she carefully researched and found numerous small craft breweries along our route! Joking aside, I’m more certain that it was actually about the changes she had observed in me: from being an anxious and sleepless worrier — to someone who was grounded and at peace within herself, as well as sleeping much better than ever before.
The Martha’s Vineyard retreat was wonderfully inspiring! It was so amazing to experience a variety of Divine Sleep journeys, live from the creator herself! I also really enjoyed learning mudras, positive affirmations and Five Element Yoga.
Now I refer friends, family, yoga students and clients to Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra all the time. Although my experience has centered around anxiety and sleep, I now believe that we can all benefit greatly from learning and practicing the art of self-compassion and self-healing. This is the gift of the practice to me.
This is the amazing story of two sisters who have helped each other in life, healing and with love through Emily’s Traumatic Brain Injury:
Twelve years ago, my world suddenly shrank. I was out in the woods happily trail riding. The horse and I didn’t know each other well. ‘Big Red’ didn’t know that I wouldn’t ask him to do anything dangerous. I didn’t know asking him to go around an obstacle in the trail would be scary.
So I was very surprised when he reared, throwing me off. My head hit a rock (thank goodness I was wearing a helmet!). Big Red lost his balance, toppled over, and fell on me. It could have been the origin of the phrase: “Caught between a rock and a hard place”. My brains were scrambled.
Every Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is different. For me, my head feels like a cement bowling ball that is tucked in a too-tight bowling bag, all the time. The pain in my head increases or decreases depending on many factors. But it is always there and has been, since the accident.
I had been a well-respected international consultant, teacher, and supervisor in my field. It took me a while to realize those days were behind me. Also behind me are going to restaurants, concerts, family gatherings, and essentially any activity that involves more than one conversation going on at a time or has background noise.
I have tried many traditional and alternative treatments. Nothing helps for long. Some avenues have been painful and expensive. Through all of this, my sister, Mary, a certified yoga teacher, has been an encouraging, supportive and compassionate presence! I am a joyful and grateful recipient of her skillful and healing ways.
~Emily
I am very blessed. Blessed to have my sister, Emily, to share yoga with her and to learn from practicing with her. We have tried many types of yoga over the years. I have learned to speak slowly, to use simple words, and have realized that “less” is always better. I can look at her face to tell what is working and what is not! I try to carry these lessons with me always.
When I was taking Deep Sleep® Yoga Nidra training this spring with Jennifer Reis, my sister and I went to Kripalu together. I practiced what I had learned in class with Emily most evenings. She was usually very tired and hurting from attending the R&R drop-in classes during the day.
Emily would always introduce herself to the teacher at the beginning of class, explaining that if she had to leave class early it was because her head hurt and not because the topic was uninteresting or teaching poor.
One evening, I was practicing just the first stages of Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra with Emily. She was covered up with a blanket on her bed, and using an eye pillow as well. I led her through the body scan two times, then slowly brought her back to the present moment and into the room.
Wanting to know if it helped in any way, I asked Emily if she felt any different. She paused to observe her body and feelings, and told me that on the pain scale from 1-10, in which 10 was the highest level of pain that, “I went from a 7 to a 4”.
I was so surprised that such a change could happen in 20 minutes that I asked, “You aren’t just saying that to make me feel good are you?” Emily said “It’s true!” She is always open and honest with me.
I had another way to know that leading her into yoga nidra worked. Emily snores only when she is in a very relaxed state while sleeping. She snored all night! Not so good for me! But I didn’t mind because I knew we found something that worked to soothe her pain.
I think the greatest thing about Deep Sleep® Yoga Nidra for many people with TBI is thatit’s something that they can do for themselves. They don’t have to rely on someone else for treatment or medication. Just pop CD on and listen! Or go to a class. Or in our case, have your sister come over. No physical movement or thinking required. Listening softly, and feeling.
I include yoga nidra at the end of my Yin and Restorative yoga classes, and students
love it. They want more! I will be giving a Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra workshop soon and hope it will be in the regular class schedule in the near future. ~Mary
After so many unsuccessful attempts to deal with my TBI, I was amazed at the impact of
Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra. This practice significantly reduces my headache pain, which allows me to become calm, and also feel and assess my body without getting ‘stuck’ in the pain.
I have listened to Jennifer’s CD so often it has worn out and I am on my second one! Practicing yoga nidra has actually allowed me more freedom in life. Now I can do activities I would have avoided, for example, a friend’s birthday party or a restaurant outing. I practice yoga nidra before to prepare and afterwards to recover. The pain level decreases each time. It is inexpensive and easy to do. I really enjoy the practice!
I am concerned that I sound like a commercial, but I really wanted to share that it has been so effective for me. Yoga nidra has eased my life considerably.
As I reread what I have written, I fear I sound like a complaining, self-pitying
wuss. In fact, my life has been, and continues to be, a journey with many lessons to be
learned, and many gifts to help me learn them, and I am so grateful for these opportunities.
I am blessed with a loving spouse, loyal friends and family, a peaceful country home with horses, dogs and a cat. And as you know, I have the best sister ever and Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra to help me on my journey! ~Emily
