Would you do Yoga Nidra with Chickens?
Until a few years ago, I’d never even heard of Yoga Nidra. I’d tried Hatha Yoga, a bit of Yin Yoga and Ashtanga yoga, but not anything else. So I was quite intrigued when I booked to go on a rural yoga retreat camping out on a bison farm in Devon (none of this posh 5-star luxury retreat with spa nonsense for me).
The agenda included three sessions of yoga every day, some mindfulness meditative walking; nice veggie food and one of the afternoons promised an introduction to Yoga Nidra.
For those of you who don’t know, Yoga Nidra is a meditative yoga practice where you lie down in Savasana (corpse pose) for the whole session. Basically it’s the best bit of the yoga class right at the end when someone usually ends up snoring (not me — I’m the immature one at the back trying not to laugh).
You close your eyes and the yoga teacher takes you through a guided meditation focussing on each part of your body in turn. Although the word Nidra means sleep, Yoga Nidra is actually a state of consciousness in which you are deeply relaxed, nearing sleep, but actually still awake and aware.
Well the weekend started off well, it rained as soon as I arrived and needed to pitch my tent. Great. But that was the least of my worries.
The pitches we had were beautiful; but it was honestly like something out of Jurassic Park; and as I was one of the first people of the group to arrive I had to face the possibility I may well end up fighting off the werewolves on my own. I didn’t, there were three of us in the end, and the closest we got to a werewolf all weekend was the big fat farm cat.
Anyway, we had two lovely, if not a tad chilly, days and nights of yoga, wholesome food and laughter. I was very glad of the large blankets I’d packed and the loan of an arctic mummy sleeping bag.
On the Sunday afternoon before we were due to finish, we had the Yoga Nidra session.
Because the weather had been a bit iffy, most of our yoga sessions had been under cover in one of the barns and this was no exception. So armed with our cosy blankets we all ambled over and assumed the lying down position. Which, to be fair, was all I could really manage by that time after a weekend spent bending and twisting.
Kirsty, our instructor, promised we’d all feel relaxed and totally refreshed ready for our drive home at the end. It sounded perfect.
And I think it would have been if it wasn’t for a downpour of rain.
Actually the rain starting wasn’t really the problem. It sounded nice on the barn roof and you only got wet if you were unlucky enough to be near any of the edges as there weren’t proper sides to the barn.
But with the rain came our little visitors…a shit load of chickens!
So I tried to stay focussed on what Kirsty was saying. And to be fair to her, she didn’t miss a beat.
I’d been imagining myself on the side of a beautiful lake, nice little hut, happy place and all that. I had started to drift off a bit into a sort of semi-awake, semi-asleep state even.
But you really couldn’t miss a chicken clucking and walking around by your head.
They started working their way around the barn, they clearly wanted to join in.
And it was like being in some kind of strange “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” moment.
Because all of us had wrapped ourselves up like mummies to cope with the draft, there was absolutely nothing you could do to defend yourself when they got a bit too interested.
Your arms were trapped down your sides and you just had to keep one eye open and hope for the best. It was anything but relaxing. I swear Kirsty laughed at least once despite being an absolute professional.
I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, it made the weekend totally memorable.
I have practised Yoga Nidra at home quite a lot since then. I found a You Tube video that is exactly 20 minutes. It is perfect if you’re feeling tired and need a pick me up.
I don’t think I have quite mastered the art of staying fully conscious yet though, I am never aware of relaxing every part of my body.
I start to see pink warm lights and the next thing I know I can hear myself gently snoring (I don’t snore of course).
Like that’s just really weird, not just the fact that I’m snoring, but I can hear myself and I don’t fully wake up until the instructor is counting me back down from 10.
It always makes me feel refreshed though that’s the most important thing, even if I’m not doing it quite right yet. I don’t always manage to settle down, my mind is often a bit too fizzy and unsettled, but when I do I usually find it a lot easier to focus on than regular meditation and I get all the same benefits.
My goal is to do it more often this year and to find out more about the science behind it and work up to a full hour. Who knows, I might even consider doing another session with the chickens.
I’m on my 365 day journey, #365small changes, what difference are you going to make in your life?
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