by | Sep 29, 2015
Before I regularly practiced Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra I was caught up rushing a lot and not taking a minute to breathe and be present and to just be ‘me’. I’m a ‘worrier’ and at times have negative thoughts and self-doubt rushing through my head.
Just before I first took my first class with Jennifer at Kripalu Center, my husband and three children and I were caught in Hurricane Sandy. We live by the beach and our house was demolished! We had to evacuate and didn’t know what we were coming back to. For a few weeks we were roaming all over the place – and I was all over the place with the kids – not knowing where we were going to end up or where we were going to live.
Insomnia cannot even describe what I was going through – I could not sleep AT ALL. I had anxiety attacks and panic attacks. I felt like I was waiting for something bad to happen – the other shoe to fall.
In this state, I came to Kripalu and took Jennifer’s workshop, and after arising from Divine Sleep I felt that ‘what just happened?’ It was like a miracle – I came out feeling this wonderful sense that ‘everything is going to be okay’! I felt like ‘the universe has me, is taking care of me, and everything is okay’. I said ‘what did she just do to me?’
I bought Jennifer’s CD and brought it home to my husband ‘the skeptic’, and told him to just listen to it. We listened to it and it put us both to sleep and when we woke up in the morning we felt renewed! We were playing it when we fell asleep and it changed my life! It’s an amazing practice.
After that, I attended Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher training and I learned that ‘worry’ is actually often false and self-created. Those rushing thoughts use to take up all of my attention and steal my energy because I got so caught up in the spin of it. Now I am able to see that much of it was false and merely the mind racing. Divine Sleep helps me to be more centered and to be in control of the craziness in my mind to bring me back to into the present.
Our house was knocked down. It was a good lesson in non-attachment. I learned that I do not need ‘stuff’ even though we lost lots of photographs, furniture, clothing and more. Now I see I don’t really need those things anyway. My family and I were in tact – we were fine – and that’s what mattered! We found a house in town to rent and now we are here just living in the present. I do not want to think what we are doing next but right now everyone is settled and it is okay.
At the time we were frantic. But now afterward, it feels very freeing, it was a good change of perspective. I feel like we were supposed to go through it to get to the other side and learn and discover through the process. Now I truly appreciate every day. This practice has helped me to realize that I need to do things that I have been envisioning NOW and not wait for the future. So I started a website that I had been thinking about for a while – a directory for various causes like helping animals, human rights, and other categories.
Divine Sleep brings me into a whole other level of ‘being present’ that I found my regular yoga practice did not take me to. Now I’m able to be life’s stressful situations and come back to my whole self, knowing that my reservoirs run so much deeper. And yoga nidra has taught me to get control of my self-doubting mind and negative thoughts and worrying, and be able to come back into the present and out of the worried state.
The teacher training was absolutely amazing. I loved it! I felt like I was like floating each day. I got to really explore myself and I found what was blocking me from doing some of the things I wanted to do. I noticed a lot of the self-doubt, and when I really picked it apart, I was able to see beyond my fears. I had been afraid of failing, and also afraid of succeeding. It can be difficult because the mind can trick us into believing fears are real.
The whole way Jennifer’s training was set up was really effective. The way she built on each level helped me completely understand Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. She made the information very accessible and better than the yoga nidra book. And just as Jennifer says – all you have to do is lay down and listen and you get it! I think everyone needs to do this.
Now I feel confident, balanced and calmer in my center so that I can offer that to other people. I have a sense of stability now and guess what? It’s working wonders on my kids. I lead them in Divine Sleep and within two minutes into the body scan, they are out like a light and sleep for the whole night.
It is wonderful to wake up before everyone else so that I can practice with one of Jennifer’s CD’s. With three kids, I do not have a lot of time but with fifteen minutes of Divine Sleep starting my day, I feel grounded and it sets the pace for the day. Then when the chaos hits – getting the kids ready for school – my older son has anxiety issues so he is sometimes not a ‘joy’ when he first wakes up – I am able to stay calm because I have already centered myself. I found that place inside that’s calm. I am able to stay centered.
My kids who are five, seven and nine years old, and amazing yoga nidra has changed their lives too. For my oldest, it’s giving him tools to be able to regulate anxiety on his own – empowering! He’ll ask me ‘What was that breathing thing again? Will you breathe with me?’ And my two younger ones love it and ask ‘Mommy, can you read that to me again?’
That is why Divine Sleep is so great because I feel it making me a better mother for my kids. I am able to remain calm and not be chaos and they truly benefit from my practice.
by | Sep 29, 2015
Previously I sought a lot of sources outside myself in my search for balance. I imagined that the key to becoming calm and balanced was in physical exercise. I had been raising two growing kids, changed my career, and was trying to find my way as a yoga instructor and educator, but I had not found the tools to truly connect with myself in a positive way.
The last twenty years of my life have been spent managing a preschool and raising my kids. When my youngest one went off to college, I decided to make a big change! My intention was to take the yoga tools that I had to help kids and adults find calm, connect with themselves, and also to provide parents and teachers tools to teach the kids themselves. Personally, I also wanted to do more yoga, knowing that there was a special and powerful side of yoga that I had been hesitant to explore, and had yet to find.
When I found yoga nidra, I found a compassionate practice that gave me a way to go to that deeper place within, and in a way that was very safe. After experiencing this practice deeply, I found a much greater love and balance within myself. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra allowed me to be replace self-doubt and judgment with inquiry and acceptance — knowing that I am already precisely who I am supposed to be! I found a new perspective where the ‘stories’ of my life are just there as ‘part’ of my wholeness. Now I feel whole!
And — graduating from Jennifer’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra Teacher Training – gave me an amazing tool that I can use to guide people in finding connectedness within themselves and share this powerful practice with others. I was having a lot of doubts about whether I was good enough, or I had what I needed to empower people. And what I found while practicing Divine Sleep confirmed for me that I have it! Jennifer’s training boosted my confidence, and the yoga nidra experience itself allowed me to work out some of my doubts.
One of the reasons I picked Jennifer’s teacher training is because I love Kripalu Yoga and feel how Jennifer’s work is the embodiment of it. There is an element of spirituality in the practice that makes it exceptional in a world of physically dominated yoga and sets it apart from the rest. For a long time I was getting stuck in my head, over analyzing things, and tending to be masculine-dominated in my thinking. But I was attracted to the more feminine, creative, intuitive yoga, even though I thought that it was not me — but it really is me — and practicing it I now enjoy more balance within.
Previously I had been uncomfortable being by ‘myself’. I tried very hard to take care of other people, and was a ‘people pleaser’ to avoid taking care of myself. I didn’t even like relaxation at the end of yoga! Or taking a walk by myself, because I had to be with ‘me’ and I was not sure I liked myself. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra has given me that safe space to get to know me and I really like me just as I am.
Before Yoga nidra, I was always in a rush to get somewhere –- get somewhere with who I was, or get somewhere with what my work is — and within my yoga nidra practice, I realized that I am already there! I am who I am, and I already have what I need. It’s just a matter of uncovering it, and yoga nidra practice allows me to uncover it.
I had always tried very hard to stay in my physical body, not going deeper, because I knew there was a lot in there. But Jennifer’s Divine Sleep yoga nidra makes all my deeper parts accessible and allows me to be in a space with my feelings. I can be ‘with’ my anger, my doubt, my resentment, anxiety, and to observe it and think “Oh! look at that”. To see these parts and not have to change anything about them is so refreshing and powerful. And that is the gift I want to be able to give people through yoga nidra. It’s that realization that ‘I am not perfect, but I am whole’. And now I feel whole.
During the training, it was amazing to experience the shifts in the other participants as we went through the week and deepened into Divine Sleep. That was something I didn’t not expect – to see people physically lighten. To see them transforming right in front of me, and to see them discover energy in themselves that they did not know was there, that was obviously there because they found it through yoga nidra, was really awesome.
Another result was that through the yoga nidra experience I tapped into inexplicable joy! I have this deep balanced joy that underlies everything.
Before our final training day, I wanted to try my new Divine Sleep script that I had created. I practiced by leading my 18 and 21 year old sons, my husband and our two cats. All week during their training, participants talked about how their dogs would come and lay down when they were practicing leading Divine Sleep and how their husbands would have these great experiences and I was so excited to bring it to my family – I knew they were going to be thrilled.
My son has a condition called Vasovagal syncope. He regularly would pass out from any body trauma. It’s a debilitating condition that has strong symptoms after the event like nausea, headaches, fainting, so there is a risk of falling. I was very concerned because he had to have surgery for a deviated septum. I brought my new tools with me — I played Jennifer’s Healing Rings of Light journey from her CD at the hospital, gave him an eye pillow, lavender oil, and squeezed his feet.
It was like a miracle! He was calm and did not go into Vasovagal response at all! He was able to go through the surgery, and also had a quick recovery. He had no side effects from any of the procedures, or from his condition! Some folks said he had a good doctor, but I know he had Jennifer’s yoga nidra! He told me that when he was doing the Divine Sleep that he “had never felt more connected to my body”. I am still amazed that he was able to keep from having a Vasovagal reaction!
I find Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra accommodates you. It is a practice that meets you where you are today and tomorrow. It’s liberating to find something that goes where you are. It comes and finds you where you are. You don’t need to be spiritual or be a yogi and it will work. There is no belief system attached – it is all about feeling what is inside of you.
by | Sep 29, 2015
Before I practiced yoga nidra, I very anxious. It’s really hard for me sometimes to relax and to trust myself. I always want the guidance from other – whether it’s a friend, an older person, a wiser person, a guru, a therapist – an ‘authority’. “I don’t really trust myself. I don’t know what to do. I want advice from other people,” but after practicing Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra, I realized that “This body, and my wisdom, are all right here. It’s inside. It’s always been here, within me!”
My constitution is vata – meaning air and ether elements. So it’s really hard for me to be still and stay still unless I’m completely floored by exhaustion. When I practice Divine Sleep®, the most amazing thing is I don’t have to do anything! I just lie down and let my mind relax – then my body relaxes, and this opens into trusting my inner voice, trusting the guide, and trusting the loving heart of the universe. It works instantly – and it’s fun.
It’s a journey – and it’s relaxing. And it’s where I turn when all else fails. When I can’t go to yoga class, when it’s so boisterous outside in the city, and inside my mind, I can just press the button, and I hear the voice. I hear, “We’re going to go on a journey…” and it’s always a journey that brings me back home to myself.
Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra has been my saving grace! It was so amazing to be fully relaxed – and not asleep. I didn’t know that I had so much wisdom within myself. I think those two things — being relaxed while awake — and awareness of my wisdom, as I pass through all these wonderful, beautiful images and symbols, have been the most powerful for me. During the guided imagery, so many of my own images are evoked and inspired.
I had been living at Kripalu Center as a volunteer and practicing yoga nidra with Jennifer there. Then, even after I moved to New York City, it felt like those yoga nidra journeys feel were still within me! And I have access to that place of deeper wisdom and knowing all the time. Anytime I need to find the pathway inward again I have Jennifer’s CDs downloaded onto my phone, so I can instantly practice. It always brings me back in touch with my own insight and divinity. I often feel “I want to have this session with Jennifer today. I want to be refreshed.”
With my regular Divine Sleep® practice, I feel the difference in my body. It’s a very obvious change for me because when I’m centered, collected, grounded, and feel whole by my inner wisdom, everything else in my life is also aligned.
Now I’m definitely more gentle and compassionate. I feel gentleness radiating from my bliss-body. When I give myself gentleness and loving kindness, I’m able to naturally extend that to others. I feel compassion flowing now.
Professionally I am an actor, and my last play was with twelve actors. We worked together every day intensively practicing vocal and physical theater exercises. I found that the most crucial component to acting, or to giving a performance, is to relax. When I relax my body, then its possible for the energy and creativity to flow naturally and I can play!
I was pleased to be able to share relaxation techniques from yoga and yoga nidra with my colleagues as a warm-up or a cool down which tremendously helped us to bond and to relax. Being able to be easy in the body and notice the breath – and let the world fall away — my colleagues found that amazing.
A quality that I’ve cultivated is the ability to drop everything and just sit wherever I am, and be still for as long as I want. That’s really amazing! And something I wasn’t able to do before. I wasn’t able to trust. I didn’t feel safe in the world. I didn’t feel safe at all, and Divine Sleep® is almost like this magic pill that helps me to feel safe, and I can get there any time I need to. It centers me. It’s the most accessible practice. Silent meditation is still hard for me to do on my own – but yoga nidra is perfect because it’s guided. It’s a journey, and it’s beautiful one.
The ‘heart’s longing intention’ part of Divine Sleep® is powerful because as I state it in the present tense, it is actually already happening at that moment! I go back to my intention throughout my day, and then each moment — I am healed. I am whole in this moment and the moments after that forever. My heart’s longing previously was to ‘be healed’, and it really worked in only a few months. I wanted to be healed, and now I feel so healed.
by | Sep 29, 2015
I recently completed Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra
teacher training with Jennifer. Yoga nidra is an essential part of my life and the changes in my life are profound. I am more comfortable and allowing of myself. I surrender into a place of beautifully being, rather than needing to do so much.
Before discovering yoga nidra, I was a “go-getter” and perfectionist. I easily wound up before bedtime and had difficult sleeping, with resistance of even getting into bed. Going to bed somehow felt like giving up because I felt like I was not accomplishing anything. I fought sleep because it felt like weakness rather than a sweet surrender.
I did not understand that “letting go” could be a desirable, beneficial experience to balance and ground me. I previously practiced hot power yoga and fought sleep, even if I was tired rather than honouring myself. I constantly added fuel to my already fiery self by making lists and multitasking to keep going, going, going! I could not concentrate or sit still, finding ways to distract myself and get out of the moment of my own experience. I became addicted to distraction. I wanted to be anywhere but with myself.
While living in Boston, I worked in a high energy, fast paced hospital, but did not have the energy to care for other people. I felt unsettled. I went to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and my experiences there helped me to fall in love with yoga in a renewed way. I discovered Jennifer’s Divine Sleep yoga nidra classes while volunteering in the Kripalu Center karma yoga program for a year. Now I practice all of Jennifer’s CDs to rejuvenate during the day and fall asleep at night.
Wherever I go on the yoga nidra journey, I always come back to my conscious waking self. It’s a fascinating experience to allow myself wander on the journey but always awake with a feeling of coming home.
I practiced yoga nidra at the airport at 5am during a layover after a red-eye flight. I had an awful headache and achy joints from being crunched up on the plane. I found a corner in the airport and practiced Jennifer’s ‘Ancient Tree Journey’. It worked wonders! I felt fully rejuvenated and ready for my day after only an hour of yoga nidra.
That was the moment I realized, “Wow, yoga nidra really works!”
I also play Jennifer’s CDs when staying at my partner’s house. I relax into a more peaceful nights’ sleep, instead of restless nights turning side to side. My best friend and mother also practice Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra is one of the only experiences where I truly let go and surrender peacefully. There’s nothing that I need to do and nowhere else I need to be. At first, this was a totally new concept to me. There’s a beautiful ease and relaxation because I naturally absorb the practice rather than needing put forth effort.
Overachieving effort will not get me more out of the practice than if I am simply being myself. This is the beauty of Divine Sleep.
I love drifting in and out of consciousness, knowing that deeper parts of myself absorb what I need from the practice. Previously, I felt that if I did not remember everything in yoga nidra practice, then I did not have control over it, and thus there was no benefit. But now, letting myself go in yoga nidra, I accept everything around me, whether or not I remember, and I see the positive results.
As a graduate student, yoga nidra taught me that I do not need to write everything down in class or catch every phrase to learn the information on a deeper level. I no longer need to aggressively approach learning because it filters in more naturally. I am able to concentrate and be present. By simply ‘being present’ I am already integrating information and the world around me.
Jennifer’s training perfectly flowed because she is an incredible facilitator. She created multiple ways to learn through visual presentations, group discussions, readings and powerful personal experiences. We practiced leading each other and held sacred space to share ourselves. Jennifer allowed abundant time to absorb the information mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
The teacher-training manual is the most detailed and organized reference that I’ve ever encountered! I could completely surrender within the training practice knowing that all the information would be there for my reference later. Everything from scripts, chakras, mudras and history are laid out so I am set up for success.
It was helpful to leave the training feeling supported both with the manual, and our Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teachers community. Having the yoga nidra scripts in the manual means less time planning details for all my classes. The scripts are guidelines but are flexible for my own creativity and insight. Jennifer has so much to offer as a beautiful soul.
I lead Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra and Kripalu yoga at The Breathing Room in Cambridge. I also volunteer teach yoga at the Cambridge Women’s Center for women of low socioeconomic status looking for ways to empower themselves and others. I strive to bring yoga into the social work field and social action into the yoga world. I hope to bring yoga to people who may not have access to it otherwise. I want people to know that yoga can bring deep inner healing and is not just a physical practice. Everyone of any ability is welcome in my classes!
www.breathingroomboston.com
anaschreckyoga@gmail.com
by | Sep 29, 2015
Waller had been through many upheavals including being her father’s care-giver. She found the practice of Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra tremendously assisted in integrating her emotions and reactions, allowing her to feel her true light again as a smiling, radiant being! She is an inspiration for healing through Self-Love and self care.
I’ve struggled with depression since I was a little kid, as well as an eating disorder that I almost died from just about five years ago. Thinking I was ‘in recovery’, while I had been malnourished for many years. Following breaking down a few years ago, I put on more weight than I was comfortable with and felt not like myself. I had been living from a place of doing and taking care of others.
I was not conscious of a compulsive need to help others and keep my body in shape to keep up with my best. It was an endless cycle of isolation and shame. Then, at the same time, I had to take care of my dad who was going through a psychotic breakdown which transpired into dementia. Nothing I had done in the past – intense workouts, yoga or meditation – worked for grounding because the grief from my dad’s situation was causing me to not be able to work very much or sleep.
I took respite in other people. I felt that ‘If I’m not alone, I’m okay’, and ‘If I am helping enough people then that means I am okay’. And when overwhelm came to a head from tending to others through teaching yoga or taking care of my dad, I realized that I was really not okay because I didn’t feel like I had enough inner resources to sustain myself. At that point, I had to quit working and just work on myself.
The resource which has the most profound effect on me is Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra with Jennifer. I have been practicing her CD’s for two years now. I practice every day and even two or three times if I can. More than anything Divine Sleep has allowed me to heal and integrate large and small life traumas and become centered daily. I studied to become a Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra teacher with Jennifer and lead it in all my classes.
Now I am nourished from within. I have a tool that lets me gain access to my consciousness to stay centered. I often hear Jennifer’s voice during the day when things feel chaotic reminding me to “sigh out all worries, or feel my bones are heavy”! Yoga nidra has helped me heal from the remnants of an eating disorder in the places I didn’t know I was still imbalanced. I now feel self-contained and together when I’m out in the world, as well safe in my body image and okay with being exactly who and how I am!
I feel like yoga nidra is really the only thing that truly has helped my brain and nervous system to reset from the trauma of being malnourished with my eating disorder for many years. The whole situation and ways that I would rebound and go back into the eating disorder is not there anymore.
I feel like my level of discernment and ability to make wise choices that are flexible has improved. Because of the disorder, I was eating, but I could be extreme about it. Now, I’m flexible with everything. I can go out for pizza, and feel completely fine about it, and that is a true miracle because I was the insane controller of food for so many years!
Divine Sleep has now become my respite, where in the past my respite was in being with other people or in helping others. I used to teach a huge amount of yoga classes, and energy flowing outward to others is not where I want to dedicate my energy right now. Instead, I practice a tremendous amount of self-care – like Divine Sleep – and I feel so happy and light!
Now I’m able to see when I need to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’ based on my energy and my desire for what takes care of me. If you’ve gone through trauma, and had a lot of powerful emotional events, I now know its possible for myself and for all of us, to live my life from a ‘feeling place’ and not just coming from a need to fill up with activities or people which are draining.
Yoga Nidra helps me more than anything to stay centered. I think if everyone had access to a retreat where they could go for the deep rest that they needed, how transformative it would be for their community. A lot of my own struggles in relationships, and even with work right now, occur when I am ungrounded or moving faster than my body and mind are in sync. Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra brings me home to a place inside that is calm, open and awake.
The training and retreat with Jennifer was a milestone for me. It taught me to go inside and slow down. Divine Sleep has been much more important than going to therapy, or getting a good run in, or working out — because if the mind is way outside of the body, trying to process emotions and events, then nothing is getting integrated spiritually and that was what I’ve needed to recover fully a healthy relationship to my body and myself.
When I have difficulty sleeping, I practice Divine Sleep and any anxiety or tiredness from the night before settles. At times my energy feels like it’s almost hovering above me, and then I practice yoga nidra and I come back down into my body and all the anxious energy, or the feeling that ‘there’s something wrong’, or I feel like hiding from the world, totally shifts and I settle down with calm clarity inside. The practice takes me through everything thoroughly that needed to be shaken off, and brings my energy into my own healing flow.
I was so hard on myself for so many years, and now I am not. Instead, I am good to myself and supportive of my needs. I feel like Divine Sleep has healed root chakra issues (basic needs, money, security, safety). Every time I lie down, I felt like it was my root that was missing, creating my previous imbalances, and the practice nourished and soothed and opened root energy. I feel like the practice has balanced my glands and I feel healthier and balanced.
Since I was 16 I have taught yoga to teenagers in a domestic violence shelter, and women recovering from prostitution and drugs and alcohol. What Divine Sleep offers is so different and more potent than what I had taught in the past – the effects are palpable and when I walk in to teach, they ask for my yoga nidra based meditation and they really light up after just a short practice.
Jennifer’s voice is very comforting and I’m sleeping much better! People around me are commenting that I’ve shifted – I’m more relaxed and energized, unravelling towards radiance. When I feel a downward wave of thoughts, I hear her voice in my mind and it helps me to be soothed and feel empowered.
