By Anne Douglas
Originally published in Yoga Bridge - AUTUMN 2024 VOLUME 24 ISSUE 3
Alive in your very own heart is the code to living a fulfilling, purposeful life that is unique to you. Your heart is like a homing device or beacon that steers you ever toward fulfillment by what feels right and true. Every heartfelt “yes” or “no” is a clarion call from your most authentic self that can not only guide you in your daily choices, but according to the law of attraction, can also draw to you all that is a resonant match.
Yoga Nidra is a guided laying down meditation with multiple steps of increasing subtlety that invite the practitioner into deepening layers of selfexperiencing. In a traditional Yoga Nidra practice the sankalpa (meaning a resolve or intention) is stated aloud or silently. It is the first step of six or more steps and consists of a one-sentence silent proclamation of something the practitioner wants to actualize in their life. It could be said that the main purpose in Yoga Nidra is to achieve the sankalpa, and all the remaining steps help to facilitate that purpose. These steps follow the Pancha Kosha or Five Layer model from yogic philosophy that include the layers of sensation (annamaya), breath and energy (pranamaya), feelings and emotions (manomaya), thoughts and beliefs (vignanamaya), and finally, the layer of bliss (anandamaya).
To determine your own resolve, you need simply to answer the essential question, “What brings me to this practice today?” For some it may be for stress reduction and relaxation, while for others it can be for health and well-being. There are no limits as to what one’s intention may be.
In some schools of Yoga Nidra, the sankalpa can be potentiated by adding a Heartfelt Desire or wish. This addition can help to deepen a resolve into something of greater impact and meaning in one’s life by asking the heartfelt question, “What is it I life?” or “If I could wish for anything, what might it be?” If we don’t ask this valuable question, we may never realize our heart’s true calling. The answer is unique to each person and may be like their initial resolve or it may include a longing for deep inner peace, unconditional love or meditative insight and self-realization. Our heartfelt wish often evolves over time and can eventually empty out into a feeling of deep inner peace where there are no desires and only gratitude remains.
Each time we avail ourselves to our heart’s call, we are mining for gold by listening to and receiving the inner prompting from our heart of hearts. We pause in silence as we ask, feel into our heart of hearts, then wait as we allow the desire to blossom out of our heart’s depths. It may arise as a feeling, as a knowing, as an affirmation or as a combination of the three.
Some people can’t relate to the words heartfelt desire or wish and so we can use variations that include heartfelt mission or purpose, heart’s vision, heart song, core value or dharma. Each of these can act as a doorway to new possibilities and can be used interchangeably depending on the audience or theme of a practice.
These variations of the Heartfelt Desire may evoke a higher calling that invites a greater harmony with life. Correspondingly, the word dharma comes from the Sanskrit root rta, which means to be in total harmony with the universe.
The Heartfelt Desire is formulated at the beginning of the practice and seeded into the conscious and subconscious mind as a simple affirmation stated silently to oneself. It is then germinated, so to speak, through the deep relaxation and receptivity that is invoked by the next steps of the practice that include sensing the breath and the whole body.
Its blossoming can come when the Heartfelt Desire is invited back into awareness towards the end of the practice, as one opens to the resulting experience of deep calm and ease, and a feeling of just being. It is in this openness of being that the truth of the heart’s purpose or one’s dharma can shine forth unrestrained by one’s conditioning or past limitations.
As we open to the possibility of our wish, mission or purpose being actualized, and allow spontaneous images and their corresponding feelings and emotions to emerge of what this is like, we are building new neural pathways in our brain that hardwire it as our new reality. As Dr Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of the New York Times best selling book Hardwiring Happiness wrote, “emotions are like rocket fuel for building new neural circuitry”. Further, the Law of Attraction (still in the realm of pseudoscience) suggests that we draw to ourselves that which is in resonance with our current psycho-emotional state. Yoga Nidra invokes the experience of having what we want.
Continued practice in this way can nourish our sankalpa to manifest in our lives. Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga stated in his book Yoga Nidra, “When sankalpa becomes the directing force, everything you do in life becomes successful.”
When you feel into the quiet of your own inner heart, what longing emerges to inform you for direction in your life? The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad offers this sage advice: “You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.” The forces of destiny are ever present, beating in your very own heart, and calling you home to wholehearted living. Will you heed the call?
Anne Douglas is a Yoga Nidra teacher and trainer, a C-IAYT Yoga Therapist and YAA1000 yoga teacher. She has over 4 million listens to her meditations on the Simple Habit app. To learn more about Anne, visit yoga. ca/teacher-directory/. Join Anne September 28-29/2024 for her YAA online workshop “Living Your Heart’s Desire - Yoga Nidra Meets the Law of Attraction” (see page 10). To register, visit www.yoga.ca/store.