My first yoga teacher, Barbara Occleshaw included meditation in every yoga class, and I have had some very weird and wonderful experiences in dark village halls on rainy Wednesday nights in the early 2000s…. but seated meditation is quite hard to master.

Lying down under a blanket in Yoga Nidra, however, I can drop into a meditative state effortlessly. And in that space I get to hang out with my subconscious mind and see what’s lurking in there, waiting to be seen and healed….

Exhaustion & fatigue have been hanging around me for longer than I want to admit…. I have been to my doctor countless times, struggling with fatigue. Each time, they take blood, check my iron and it always comes back ‘normal’ and that’s the end of that.

I have put it down to peri-menopause / full-blown menopause / time of life, but I really felt there was something deeper going on.

So, one day in a long, juicy Yoga Nidra, I felt myself dropping into the deep, silent space that I love, and I asked the question into the void ….

What is it with this fatigue?

And a part of me answered – ‘Deep Healing’…. And I had a vision of my femininity, the very essence of the female and the Mother inside of me being under attack, for all of the years that I had brought up my four boys solo.

The constant stress from strained relationships with their Dads and new partners.

The court hearings, the squabbles over Christmas, birthdays, holidays.

Defending myself from lies and being patronised about my parenting.

Feeling trapped inside my own home with an ex on the roof of my garage banging on the windows, calling my landline over and over.

My house broken into.

My phone calls recorded.

I was painted as a terrible person to the Dads’ new partners and to my own children, and to myself.

‘Don’t take that to Mummy’s, she’ll only lose it / break it.'

‘Take those clothes off; they are dirty. You wear these clothes in this house. Mummy’s clothes go in this bin-bag until you go back.’

‘This is your real family. You have to go to Mummy’s because the court says so, but this is where you really belong….’

‘Your children hate you.’

‘The first time I have my child on his own, you will never see him again.’

‘I’ll finish you, bitch.’

And on, and on.

In the complete stillness of my Yoga Nidra, all these memories merged into one tsunami of

STRESS, FEAR and EXHAUSTION.

A wave of tiredness that I have been holding back, hanging on by my fingernails, trying to keep all the plates spinning... this wave crashed onto the shore… and I felt the Mother in me always under attack and never seen for how much I sacrificed for my children, how much I adored them and did everything I could to give them a joyful and fun-filled
childhood.

I was just seen as enemy no 1. To be defeated and taught a lesson. How dare she leave me???

The answer to my question became crystal clear...

Deep, long-lasting stress takes a lot of DEEP HEALING.

And so, as Karen Brody always says… Permission to rest is granted.

So where did these answers and visions tumble from?

In any deep meditation my aim is to bypass the conscious, ego-controlled mind and try to have a dialogue with the sub-conscious. And because the mind is like the classic image of an ICEBERG – the part we see on the top of the water is tiny compared to the vast mass underneath - the mind is like this. The conscious mind is the iceberg and the vast ocean of awareness underneath the iceberg is the sub-conscious mind where you have all the answers. The problem is that when we are in our normal day-to-day life, and we are operating with Beta brainwaves, it is hard to access this all-knowing space. So we have to drop into Theta and Delta brainwaves, when the conscious mind is effectively asleep.

And this is what happens when you relax so deeply, stay awake enough to be able to follow the instructions of a Yoga Nidra. It’s a systematic process, a science and art, and if you can drop into the stillness where your thoughts are no longer running the show, then you can ask for whatever answers you are seeking, and then just WAIT. See what arises. And if the answers don’t come, or don’t make sense, you have turned a key in a lock, and things will start to come to you, over time.

The truth has been given permission to be revealed. And to be healed.

I don’t always go to this space or get such profound revelations, but if you practise Yoga Nidra often and regularly, your body and mind get to know the routine, they get used to not actually falling asleep, and more readily the layers of the body, mind and emotions will fall away to reveal the truth that is deep inside of you.

Yoga Nidra can be just a 15 minute relaxation technique, yes, of course. But the real treasure can be found when we go a bit deeper, stay alert but completely relax and let go and see who you really are... are you ready to find out?!

Try a Yoga Nidra for yourself here: Student Resources