by | Dec 1, 2019
I practiced yoga on and off during my adult life, however never as a steady practice. In 2008 my husband died after eighteen months of terminal bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma. We’d been married almost fifteen years, and I was left with four children, two grown and two still at home. Suddenly becoming an only parent and surviving on one income instead of two presented a host of challenges. My older kids were a huge support to me, taking the younger two children out on “sibling days” to give them time together, and to give me time alone.
I put all my energy into making sure my kids were okay: taking them to therapy and support groups; making sure they made it to all their activities; making sure homework was done etc. I put them before me, and my own physical and mental health began to suffer. My husband had been a very well-known basketball coach in the community. It was hard to go anywhere without running into someone who knew him. Somehow, I was in a constant state of consoling others, rather than getting the support I needed for myself.
Beth and Dave
In fact, my kids nurse practitioner used to call to check on me regularly. One day when I said I was ‘reaching the end of my rope’ she told me I needed to start taking care of myself, or I wouldn’t be able to take care of the kids anymore. That hit home for me so I started therapy myself and made exercise a regular part of my routine.
Participating in therapy, support groups, and a wonderful in-person and online widow network called soaring spirits international, helped me immensely through my grieving process. Eventually I began a steady yoga practice and found yet another level of healing. Movement and breath allowed me to release grief from my body that I didn’t even realize I was holding onto.
Yoga provided me with a wonderful physical outlet that I had not found in any other forms of exercise or yoga. Also a steadying of my mind so crucial to my healing. At the time I didn’t really understand why, but I know I cried through not only hip openers but many other portions of practice for a good nine months.
My kids and grandkid!
Widowhood throws a huge monkey wrench into everything and yoga also provided me with a level of social support. Couples no longer want to include you when you are alone, and I didn’t always feel comfortable around divorced friends. Most people have no clue what to say. Yoga allowed me to interact on my own terms.
I was practicing in a room full of people, but wonderfully I could be alone and inward at the same time. Once practice started it was just me and my mat. Gradually getting to know people of all different ages allowed me to build a new support system. My youngest daughter also practices yoga and it became something new we could share during this trying time.
I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training, and continued with more yoga trainings. I became interested in the use of yoga to work through the grief process and I presented nationally at a conference hosted by soaring spirits. As I continued to both study, practice and teach, I was able to move forward in my own healing process. Over the past few years I have undergone five major surgeries, and found my yoga practice to be crucial to my recovery in each of them.
Vancouver, BC, Canada
One thing that continued to be a huge stumbling block to me, as well as many widows I know, is insomnia. For the past eleven years I have cycled through some really difficult spells having minimal sleep, which greatly affecting my work and personal life. I have practiced meditation on and off with yoga, and although it helped me to sleep better to some extent, there were still many nights where sleep eluded me.
About nine months ago I was introduced to yoga nidra which in my training was suggested as a tool for helping with veterans and first responders. In the short trial practice of yoga nidra during training, I found that I experienced a level of calmness and a feeling of restoration that I often lacked, even on the nights that I did sleep. I was quickly convinced yoga nidra was a tool I needed. For myself as well as for my students, particularly my grieving community.
I found Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra first on the Insight Timer app. Then I searched and found that Jennifer was bringing her teacher training to my area, and was extremely excited to enroll and learn more about this specific form of yoga nidra.
Jennifer’s training was all I could have asked for and more! She is a phenomenal speaker and presented the information in such a great easy to understand way. There was lots of hands on practice and that solidified the learning. Her course manual is a great and informative tool.
However, what I found most amazing, was that within the first two days of the training, I was getting the best sleep that I had had in the past eleven years! Yoga nidra offers me an ability to clear my mind, and find restoration and rest in the midst of a busy day. Jennifer’s cd’s are a wonderful tool that I use any time of day, providing varying lengths of practices.
Me now!
Even in a short time it has brought me a new awareness and connection with my body. I feel aware and connected with my breath in a new way. I am confident that I have a new tool to use on days when my mind is swirling, and when I am afraid that I am not going to be able to sleep. It has also given me a new level of confidence as a yoga teacher that i now have an additional means to help others.
I am so inspired to take this tool into my yoga community to share this powerful practice to those who need it. Right after the training I jumped in and led a short Divine Sleep® practice with a group of middle-school girls, began leading it in my adult-weekly yoga class, and provided a one-on-one session to a friend who lives with several chronic illnesses including ongoing insomnia.
I am excited to see how much people love this Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra, and how eager they are to participate! I have planned upcoming workshops at the studio where I teach, and hope to make it a regular event. I am sincerely grateful to Jennifer for this training and for how Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra has helped me move into yet another level of healing.
by | Oct 23, 2019
I was introduced to yoga at a young age by my grandmother Cindy Yaple, who is a yoga teacher. I enjoyed taking the classes and sometimes got to go to her adult classes when I was three years old! (I would sit on her lap during the meditation). The breathing helped me to feel calm. Then I took yoga classes for children, participated in family yoga events, and also practiced yoga in elementary school.
Even with the yoga, I still used to have difficulty falling asleep and then staying asleep. My mind was always thinking about things that would sometimes cause me to wake up during the night. Currently, I am in middle school and on the cheer team and I have a very busy schedule.
One night, I was staying with my grandmother and she played me Jennifer Reis’s Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra for Children CD/MP3. I didn’t make it through the whole journey before I drifted off to sleep and I slept for twelve hours straight!
A few weeks later, I called my grandmother and asked her if she could send the CD to me so I could listen to it AGAIN! I found Jennifer’s voice very calming and soothing and I liked the journey with the bubbles a lot! As I continue to listen to the cd, I have never made it through the whole thing without falling asleep! I wanted to actually hear the whole thing, so I listened to it during the day a few times.
My sleep has definitely changed for the better from practicing Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra with Jennifer’s recordings. I have also invited some friends to practice with me and they liked it too! School and life for children and teens can be very stressful and I am happy to have a new tool to practice with.
I wanted to tell you my story and so I asked my grandmother who works with Jennifer if I could share it here. I hope Jennifer will make another cd for children to listen to! Thank you Jennifer!
(You are very welcome Abby! My pleasure.
~Jennifer)
by | Sep 22, 2019
My life before yoga nidra looked like the following: stressed, impatient, overachieving in all areas of life, grasping, controlling, the start of physical ailments such as high blood pressure and ulcers, always thinking of the future rather than the present, self-doubt, and way too busy!
When I had finally had enough of that – I walked into my first yoga class as a graduate student – while at the same time holding down three jobs. In yoga practice, I immediately found ‘home’! I asked the teacher if I could stay for the second class that evening… and finding that my ‘home’ was inside of me, I feel as though I’ve never left my home again.
A year later I enrolled for the yoga teacher training program and began teaching alongside my instructor. As the years passed, my list of ‘problems’ disappeared, I began to realize that I was both practicing and teaching yoga postures in a way that could aggravate my intense type ‘A’ tendencies. I had been drawn to Ashtanga and vinyasa, but gradually I felt pulled towards meditation, and slower more mindful ways of practicing postures with Viniyoga and Kripalu yoga styles.
In 2006 I left my stressful corporate life and actually moved to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires as a volunteer! I wanted to steep myself in the practice of seva yoga, which is selfless service. That’s when I experienced my first full yoga nidra with Jennifer Reis on one of my free afternoons and delighted in the magic of Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra.
Never in my life I had I ever felt so grounded, balanced, and relaxed! I felt expanded and empty for the first time. I continued to practice regularly and it had tremendous effects on me. I began to ‘walk’ differently in the world. My life took on a clearer magnificence, deepened intimate connections with friends and family, with a greater openness to change and flow. I now have the ability to let go of unnecessary disturbances such as worries and anxiety. I am free!
After volunteering at Kripalu, I moved to Austin, Texas to lead teacher training programs at Yoga Yoga. A lovely teacher led yoga nidra each week at our studios, and I attended three times a week. That was back in 2007 and still to this day, yoga nidra and meditation are the core of my daily practice. I have been teaching yoga nidra and leading workshops in Texas and Louisiana since 2008.
I have Jennifer to thank from the deepest depths of my heart for introducing me to the practice that has changed my life! I have claimed it as my road to more love and connection in my daily experience. I feel that the practice of yoga nidra itself, IS my Guru-teacher! It has forever shaped me.
www.premascension.com
by | Aug 13, 2019
I have always been prone to anxiety. Over the years, I have experienced peaks and troughs in the level of anxiety in my life. I have also noticed over the last several years a kind of low-grade vibration of anxiety persisting underneath everything. It came to the point that I dreaded facing the day, talking to people, dealing with phone calls, and even talking to my family.
My yoga and meditation practices over the years have brought a lot of this to the light. Its also helped me release some of the angst, so I do not experience the high peaks of anxiety as much as I used to. However, even with my regular practices, the dread remained. And I thought it would be my companion for the rest of my life.
In the summer of 2017 this all changed when I first encountered Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra when Jennifer came into my Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu. I was immediately drawn to yoga nidra because it deeply relaxed and nourished me. I purchased one of Jennifer’s CDs to take the practice home with me. When the anxiety rose to uncomfortable levels, now I had a tool! I practiced Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra and my levels would subside to that familiar underlying, low-grade hum. Again, that’s the best I thought it could ever be.
I was drawn to Jennifer’s Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra 40-hour Teacher Training and traveled back to Kripalu last spring to attend. She guided us in beautiful yoga nidras every day, sometimes twice! In addition, we also guided each other through each of the various stages of Divine Sleep®.
Towards the middle of the week, I noticed something shifting: I felt easier and more free. And by the end of the training, I was walking on air! I WAS COMPLETELY FREE OF ANXIETY! It felt like whatever it was that I was dreading had completely evaporated! My heart was light for the first time in several years.
The feeling of lightness has not left me to this day, and I am still free of anxiety! I continue to practice every day during savasana pose after my yoga postures and breathing by listening to Jennifer’s recordings. On the days when I do not do postures, I still practice Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra and breathing. I have noticed that practicing daily, as Jennifer recommends, has made the difference between occasional relief and lasting healing of anxiety for me.
When I returned home from the training, I started guiding Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra right away in my yoga classes. My students love it! Jennifer’s training prepared me to write scripts and I now have written about ten scripts of varying lengths. I also find that as I am guiding yoga nidra, I too feel it in my body and mind, so I get the benefits as well! Now my students expect yoga nidra and they find it an enjoyable and healing component of the whole class. I am truly grateful for Jennifer and Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra!
by | Jul 30, 2019
Before I started practicing Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra I was running on empty. I was a very tired “Mom and Yoga Teacher” who was giving, giving, giving, and rarely was I refilling. I was searching for a quiet, gentle practice I could do daily to re-fill.
Becoming a yoga teacher was never in my plan. I worked for many years in arts and fashion and discovered yoga in the late 90’s while working in NYC. My yoga practice began purely as a physical one that I would do in my apartment in the early morning hours using various DVD’s. I practiced this way for many years – just doing the poses – but not practicing anything that was quiet or reflective.
When my family and I decided to move to the Chicago area, I was excited to explore the yoga studios and communities around my new home. My children were two and four years of age and that made me anxious to begin a more regular yoga practice again. I was the student who claimed I would “never teach” because I loved being the student so much! Teaching yoga never really crossed my mind.
Shortly after our move, I met a teacher I connected with, and felt encouraged to begin a yoga teacher training with the idea that it would expand my knowledge of yoga. However, in the teacher training, there was a huge shift for me, and I realized that I Ioved it all so much that I wanted to, and needed to share it with others and thus, I became a yoga teacher!
The first year of teaching yoga I put everything into designing and teaching well-rounded classes. I would come early to chat with my students and leave late when they wanted to hang around the studio after to talk. I taught classes at 6:30 AM and then again at 6:30 PM, in between staying home with my two young children, and teaching classes on the weekends as well. I would fill my schedule to get as much experience teaching as I could. Physically, I was still practicing on my own but mentally I knew I needed something more. What I was really searching for was a quiet, gentle, inner practice.
I eventually I trained in Yoga Therapy and began teaching a wide variety of populations from young children to seniors. While attending a Yoga Therapy conference, I had my first taste of yoga nidra. And it was so profound that exactly one year later I arrived at Kripalu Center for Jennifer’s Yoga and Deep Relaxation Retreat! With Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra I felt I finally found the quiet, inner practice I needed and had been searching for.
I loved how Jennifer bases Divine Sleep® on the five koshas (the levels of being) as gateways within oneself to go deeper within to bring more awareness to my whole being. I realized the piece I was missing in meditation was the complete whole-being awareness that Divine Sleep® offers.
At the beginning of the retreat it took me two days to settle in, mainly because I was thinking about my summer “to do” list and the kids, who were in Cape Cod with their Dad – are they sleeping okay: are they putting on their sunblock… all the things I worry about as a mother. Our twice daily Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidras eventually quieted my mind, and I let go into a place of drop down and re-set. I really got that yoga nidra was something I not only wanted to do daily because I felt so good, but that I also need to do it.
Now, Divine Sleep® is essential for me as daily maintenance. As a yoga teacher, I need to have something I can do to quiet my mind so I can be present for my students. I know now that I cannot keep giving out energy without filling myself first. My daily yoga nidra practice has also allowed me to be more available for my family.
Now I’m able to be in three roles in one day – as the student practicing yoga nidra, and as the teacher and mother. Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra simply reminded me of what I always knew – I am the most important student!
