by | Mar 29, 2016
When I was only 43, I had to be admitted into emergency at the hospital. It seemed that I had chronic urine retention, and the doctors were not sure if it was caused by a C-section, the epidural, something in my back, or was it multiple sclerosis? A string of neurological and urological tests turned up no origin. Surprisingly, I had no pain, but I was debilitated because I could not do something so simple as to urinate completely.
Doctors left me with a prescription for catheters and a ton of anxiety! Initially I felt I wasn’t able to go to work, travel, or do anything that took me away from my home — and my bathroom! I felt trapped in my house.
On top of that, I was in an unhappy marriage and I could see no way out. Somehow, something inside me found the courage to go through the divorce process, and at the same time, embark on several life-changing trainings. I was learning to live with my health issue.
One of the trainings was my 200-hour Yoga teacher training at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. I began teaching yoga part time at a local hospital. I felt extremely empowered to be able to help others. I still had the urinary issue, but teaching yoga gave me the flexibility to get work around getting to the bathroom. My attitude towards it had shifted into a much better place.
I was hungry for knowledge about how the body functioned (still hoping to fix myself). I enrolled at a local massage therapy school, then I was able to supplement my income as a massage therapist. Then, in 2012, my personal life suffered a great loss. My dear 91-year old Mother passed away after a bad fall (my Father had already passed in 2004). Unthinkably, six months after my Mom passed, my only sibling passed away.
The anxiety I had experienced in earlier years had returned, and this time it was much worse. I began to doubt myself, and also was unsure of my ability to support myself, as I started to experience back pain, as well as a shoulder injury. Current events in the world and in my community had begun to bother me. I felt helpless in the sense that there was no place I could go to escape to where life would be peaceful. I could not relax, and I was always tense and keyed up.
It was obvious to me that I needed something else to relax both myself and others without compromising my body. I had been thinking about yoga nidra for a few years. We had dabbled with yoga nidra during my Kripalu training, and I realized now it would be perfect to help calm my anxious mind.
I felt that taking a yoga nidra training would help me get to a place where I could relax. Researching yoga nidra trainings, I found that some were downright unaffordable! Thankfully I found Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra Teacher training at Kripalu from a friend’s recommendation, and found it to be reasonably priced.
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training surpassed my expectations! Jennifer wrote a huge training manual, and all the details and organization that goes with her in-depth training were exceptional. Every morning she led us in yoga practice to feel experientially the concepts for the day, and that was followed, of course, by her leading us in yoga nidra.
It was so powerful during her yoga nidra journeys and I can’t tell you exactly where I went, but it was deep inside. Some days I must have fallen asleep, others I was awake but was in a higher place. For me the most moving was the time Jennifer took us on a journey with the Eagle. She had one of the Kripalu drummers playing live Native American flute and drum during our practice.
For once, I felt like I was whole again! As a child, I had always loved Native American culture, and the Eagle journey brought me back home, to my childhood self. I was able to remember parts of myself that I had forgotten and lost over the years and I felt reunited within myself. I was able to access my stored up grief — and release it, realizing tears were streaming down my face. It was a potent transformation that left me feeling lighter and that there was more possibility in my life.
With Divine Sleep, I learned to go inward to find the peace I was looking for, rather than looking for it externally in others and in the world. I learned that I could craft a Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra script to take myself on a journey to all the places I have wanted to visit – without ever leaving my home!
When I left Kripalu Center, I bought two of Jennifer’s CDs to use at home. It was a great decision as I use them practically every day to energize, recharge, and calm my mind. This deep practice takes me on a journey inward and I am amazed at how much better I feel after doing even twenty minutes. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra has become a routine for me – almost like brushing my teeth or washing my face. Now, I feel the softness inside that has been the result of my Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra practice.
I think that Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra is very much needed in our times, and it would benefit everyone! I like to think of what the world would be like if everyone did Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. Thank you Jennifer. Your Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra is amazing!
by | Feb 24, 2016
Bright shining Betty has brought so much joy and peace to herself and so many through her work as a nurse and yoga teacher. Here’s her story:
The body knows how to heal itself. This is something I’ve seen first-hand throughout my professional career as a nurse for over 43 years working in a level-one trauma center in a large inner city hospital. One of the key factors that is needed to allow this natural phenomena of healing to happen is time. Time to be still, quiet and non judgmental.
How many of us honestly allow ourselves time to heal? Pride filled with the ability to multi-task – ‘do it all’ – and accomplish everything on the to-do list… we are busy, busy, busy, and this mind-set is another way to define ‘stress’. Studies prove that stress is the root cause of most disease and illness. It’s during this ‘peace and quiet time’ that the body repairs and heals itself.
And this is why I fell in love with yoga nidra! Because it gives the ‘time’ needed for healing, and also balance to happen. Balance in my body is something that I have strived for most of my life, and actually why I started practicing yoga postures. I was in a sport that required my ‘physical’ balance, but I found myself falling too often. It was suggested to “try yoga” – and it helped!
Yoga helped me not only regain my balance, but it worked on so many other levels as well, and also led me to yoga nidra. When I began practicing yoga nidra, I knew it could take me into deeper healing and transformation. Before, I had felt blocked but with yoga nidra practice I became much more able to express myself and what I was experiencing inside.
The various components that the yoga nidra meditation leads you through – such as the five levels of being (similar to body-mind-spirit), the visualization, finding my heart’s longing, and increasing my self-awareness by practicing non-judgmental witness – were so fulfilling to me and helped me get in touch with my deepest self.
I first discovered Jennifer in a yoga class at Kripalu during an R&R weekend. Even though it wasn’t specifically yoga nidra but a yoga asana class, during relaxation savasana I realized what made this class so special. Jennifer is an excellent teacher with an extensive background of knowledge that she shares during her class, but it was her voice.
It was her calm and confident and relaxing voice that allowed me to experience this class in a very different, personal way. It was as if I was the only one she was teaching, although the room was full of students. Her voice and and her teaching style allows you to delve deep into your own experience and receive all the benefits that are offered.
I have heard far too many people say “I can’t do yoga, I am too old, too heavy, too…” you probably have heard these excuses too. And yet they would love to actually practice yoga! This is one of the many beautiful things I love about yoga nidra is that can do this yoga EVERYONE can do. And what is amazing to me is that this is yoga that you cannot possibly do wrong!
I did my Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra teacher training with Jennifer. Upon graduating and beginning to lead Divine Sleep®, I knew I was offering a special gift to every person who came to class. This is such a valuable time to experience self-healing. I am so happy to offer a place and practice that invites healthy and lasting change for my students in the safe atmosphere of our classroom. If you can feel it, you can heal it, not only for yourself but for others also is what I have learned as a guide of yoga nidra. Divine Sleep is “the antidote to modern life” just as Jennifer says.
Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra broadened my life-path and continues to improve my life. After I lead yoga nidra I will often hear from a student that, “I feel so good after class, I can’t describe it.” It can be hard to describe a soft breeze on your face, a beautiful sunrise or sunset, the smell of a flower garden, the taste of fresh fruit or music that moves you. But you feel it, and live it in yoga nidra. It’s said that ‘if you can feel it, you can heal it’ and I find this practice so very healing.
I’ve also been fortunate to have attended Jennifer’s Advanced Teacher Training weekends which help me to come home refreshed with new information and experiences to share with my students. She has a very approachable, easy teaching style, a great smile, and a wonderful sense of humor!
Not only am I very grateful for having met Jennifer and have been the recipient of her many teachings, I share her information through her cd’s and her web site. I highly recommend anyone and everyone to go to any of her classes, workshops, weekends or retreats. It will be an experience that will add value to your life and practice that is priceless. Divine Sleep for me is self healing by coming into my own balance.
Betty Hamilton, Guilford, CT
[email protected]
by | Jan 12, 2016
I work in a high energy manufacturing facility and on top of that, I teach multiple yoga classes per week, which is a full life! Practicing yoga for over 20 years and teaching for 5 years has been wonderful, yet I was looking for greater depth and insight. I was always searching for something that would bring more peace into my life, and allow me to bring peace to the lives of others.
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra has filled that gap for me! It’s an extremely relaxing and peaceful practice. It’s the best! By accessing the five levels of being called the koshas, this profound practice has opened doors to a very deep place within me.
Since I attended Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training at Kripalu Center last April, I have been practicing with Jennifer’s CDs a number of times a week. Between my own personal practice and also guiding Divine Sleep with students, the change in myself is huge! My spiritual practice has the depths I longed for. My ability to deal with whatever life throws at me has increased. I am more peaceful, present and open to whatever is going on in each moment.
I have never attended a training that brought me deeper, or which I left more open and clear, than Jennifer’s teacher training. It is wonderful and sets the student up to begin guiding others through this incredible practice upon graduation. I jumped right into guiding Divine Sleep shortly after the training and it honestly feels like I have been doing this forever! It feels natural for me and I suspect its because of the simplicity and sheer beauty of the practice. Guiding yoga nidra feels like the most natural thing to do! I can say that — thanks to Jennifer’s teaching.
One amazing aspect is that when I lead Divine Sleep, I feel like it’s as much a meditation for me as it is for those receiving it! Guiding is a deep meditation for me. Recently, we held a ‘yoga nidra and movie night’, with a showing of the movie Awake, about the life of Paramahansa Yogananda, after practicing Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. It helped us to open to the beauty of his life and retain the information rather than just being half present, we were very present. Yoga nidra is a flexible practice that can be teamed up with restorative yoga or, if you’d like, with a great movie!
Jennifer told us during the training is that ‘there is no way you can mess this up’. Using the lessons learned in our training and Jennifer’s wonderful manual, it’s been easy for me to develop new scripts and guide students into very deep states of mind and relaxation. One of my students said it’s like ‘night time story time’ for adults!
I have a number of dedicated participants who are self-proclaimed “haters” of Savasana, yet when I lead them in yoga nidra, they Love it. Because it’s a guided practice it gives the mind something else to do, which gives a chance to quiet the minds, and to find some peace inside within. This practice opens doors deeper and deeper into one’s self. The journeys plant a seed inside that blossom into better rest and sleep, more peace and an awakening to one’s true Self.
I am more peaceful and more present than ever before. Jennifer is a wonderful teacher and she is the reason that the trainings and her Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra sessions are so profound. She is a master at guiding groups into very deep states. I feel very grateful.
by | Jan 4, 2016
I met beautiful, pregnant Nikki in Australia over two years ago when I lead Divine Sleep Teacher Training in Melbourne. She had concerns because she was suffering from morning sickness, but it disappeared during the training! I love to witness the transformations that occur during the training. Here is Nikki’s story!
Of all the health challenges I’ve faced, the “disease to please” put my life in jeopardy. My anxiety levels were like nothing I’d ever experienced. After being unhooked from an ECG machine to check that I hadn’t had a heart attack when I was only 28 years old, the doctor told me that my chronic stress would tip over into depression if I didn’t do something about it as soon as possible. That statement felt like a massive SLAP!
Thanks to an interview by Brene Brown, and stumbling upon Jennifer Reis’s yoga nidra, things were about to turn around for the better. I had suffered from work-induced chronic stress. Then, during the first two years of my toddler’s life, I became so chronically sleep deprived after breastfeeding her every two hours every night, that prior to the MRI, the neurologist thought I had had a stroke! With that amount of broken sleep for so long, something in me felt like it was about to give.
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra has helped me cope with some of the biggest life challenges I have ever faced. I began to address the chronic stress and it was yoga nidra that helped me create big shifts mentally and emotionally. I began to see and understand myself and my deepest needs, rather than being so concerned about everyone else’s. Now I have an approach that helps with developing insight!
Yoga nidra is my daily practice and was what helped me get past the exhaustion of the first two years of my toddler’s life. It truly was the only way I felt like I had gotten some decent rest at that time. It sounds like I’m talking about a long time ago but my daughter is only 2 years and 3 months old!
I’m still on the road to recovery with sleep deprivation side effects, but yoga nidra continues to create healing and deep peace within me. It’s my ‘nap’ without actually going to sleep during the day because I want to avoid that groggy feeling midday sleep brings on.
Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra is my ‘go to’ for those intense times, but it also connects me with the beautiful. The more I practice, the more connected I feel with my purpose. I experience so much more confidence than I every have! Fear is still there, but I don’t let it take the driver’s seat as often as I used to. I experience more clarity on what I need, and what I need to do each day for that to become true. I am more aligned with my core desired feelings: Open, Connected, Love, Freedom, Vibrant.
I was so fortunate to be able to attend Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training in Australia. I didn’t think I’d survive because of my horrendous morning sickness, I was amazed to find it disappeared while I undertook the training. (For anyone who has had morning sickness, that is epic right?!)
Jennifer has created something truly extraordinary with Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. I feel blessed to have such an amazing practical method that provides so much healing and nourishment both for myself and my students. After my stroke scare, I put a hold on teaching yoga and meditation classes, but Jennifer has been very supportive of me in sharing yoga nidra with as many people as I can, so I have recently taken my yoga nidra offerings online. I also write on my blog. These are new adventures for me, and hopefully a healing experience for those that find me!
Nikki Veliz is a stay at home mum in Australia and the creator of Pause & Reset.
https://nikkiveliz.wordpress.com
by | Dec 22, 2015
Teresa jumped right into the front row of my retreat at Kripalu Center! Talk about a bright light – she was so lit up from within! I was amazed to hear her story and hope you enjoy it.
When I went to Kripalu in January 2015 I was trying to come back from a painful break up. As a single, self-employed business woman, the stress of that year depleted me on every level. And worst of all I felt unworthy. Rejection, abandonment, loneliness and also my brother’s death, all emptied me and I could not imagine any escape.
With the encouragement of a friend, and knowing nothing of Jennifer or Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra, I enrolled in her weekend retreat at Kripalu. On the opening evening I walked in and a space in the front row literally opened to me, as if it was inviting Me! Typically, I would not have sought a front row mat, yet unconsciously I took myself to that mat — and am so glad I did — for it was there that I was able to receive the loving nurturance Jennifer gave. Everything was taken care of all weekend long. It was magical!
The retreat left me feeling so peaceful and rejuvenated. It transformed me. Especially powerful was that I could come home and practicing with Jennifer’s Divine Sleep CD. I love the hand mudras, each one of them, and every time I practice at home on my own, I felt like she was right there with me. I knew I had to return to take a more extensive course with Jennifer. And I did. I could barely wait to get back to Kripalu this past August to be taken care of again!
For me Jennifer is adorable — yet she is totally professional with an attention to detail and clarity of instructions, followed by examples and demos and everything I needed to get the most from the postures. Her class is so much more than postures. The potent practice of Divine Sleep Yoga Nidras helped me re-enter each part of my body. I returned to my inner home. When she led us through mudras or guided imagery my mind settled down, and I was enveloped in a sweet peaceful quietness.
The five-day Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra filled out for me all the gifts that had begun during the weekend retreat. I was able to shift into a sense of freedom and peace much more quickly. And this time I was very conscious of taking a mat in the front row so I could see Jennifer as closely as possible without distraction.
Her guidance into the Five Elements of water, air, fire, ether and earth opened me to my own flowing energy. I was able to stay with myself and be exquisitely attentive to the movements and sensations and experience of being in my body. Being present and feeling grounded was what I most needed. There was no ‘right way’ nor were there any rules to follow. Props and supports were everywhere. Her assistants knew exactly how to help. And I didn’t have to do it perfectly without any pressure to be perfect.
The freedom I feel within through Jennifer’s Five Element Yoga is palpable. I feel grounded, rejuvenated and feel its life-giving potency. It has picked me up and given me new awareness of myself. I know all too well how life can be so dark at times. Now I know, trust, and feel with every part of myself, that there is another way to live! Life continues, there are moments of unknowing, yet I know now I have the tools to bring me back to where I can be fully alive.
