YOGA NIDRA~where healing takes place...
yoga nidra. the sleep of the yogis. it brings rest and healing. ‘this is where healing takes place’....or so i am told. yet when my mind is quiet and my brain waves (supposedly) enter the healing realm of theta....i remember the painful things. the memories i have so long stuffed away...where? many of my teachers say they are in my hips? really? somehow that seems hard to believe. i think they are in my heart, broken and bleeding and perhaps half gone. i think i need soul retrieval. i have heard that pain, shame and humiliation lead to loss of fragments of the soul. i feel this is perhaps what is ‘wrong’ with me. i have lost several pieces of my soul....’you have to feel it to heal it’....this too, i have been told in yoga. could it be true? is this why these memories arise in yoga nidra? where healing takes place. do i have to remember and feel the pain again to heal it?
I wake up and see the little hand on the 4 and the big hand on the 10. it is the middle of the night. the sky is black and the only light in my room is the flat green colored night-light. I get out of bed and walk to the door of my room. I open it. I step in the hallway and reach up and flip on the switch and the hallway light flickers a bit and then illuminates the way. I hear crying and moaning and water running and see the light escaping under the bathroom door. as i plod sleepily down the hall toward the door I think, "Jesus Christ, what now?" I am 4 years old.
I reach up and grab the doorknob and turn it. I try to do it quietly so she won't look up and see me when I open it. I know she is awake because she is moaning and crying. I twist the knob and push in and peek inside. She is in the bathtub. The water is running and the water spilling over the sides and onto the bathroom carpet is pink.
I know what to do. I have done it before. I run to the end of the hall and pick up the telephone receiver and lay it on the nightstand beside my parent's bed. My dad is not in bed and must be working late again. I stick my pointer finger in the very last hole and pull it all the way to the end before I let it go and it rolls back to it's original position. "Operator" says the lady on the other end. "I need an ambulance at 12 Prospect Street". I have said it before. I am only 4 but I know my address and can call for the ambulance. Now she will go to the hospital and i will have to take the little ones and go stay at Marg's house. 'You were put on this earth to suffer'. 'You don't deserve to be alive'. This is what she is screaming at me when they put her on the stretcher and carry her to the ambulance. I already know this. I know I don't belong here. I am not good enough to be alive.
Yoga Nidra...the sleep of the yogis....’where healing takes place’....

HOW I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOGA

I began doing yoga 8 years ago as a way to relieve stress. To my surprise I fell immediately in love, blindly, head over heels or more accurately, crown of head on floor, matsyasana style. Yes it happened in my very first yoga class in fish pose. I knew that very moment I would do yoga for the rest of my life.

I had walked past the studio many times and told myself I would go. Months later I purchased a $10 yoga mat at the local discount store. Still I walked past. About 6 months later, I walked into my first class. "Hi can I take your class?", "15 dollars please". "Please no shoes in the studio." No one really spoke to me but they spoke to each other. Being overly anxious all my life, I already felt out of place, but i had taken off my shoes and paid my $15 so I followed the others and laid out my mat. The class began.

"Close the mouth and breathe in and out through the nose only." Her voice was kind and it seemed like it was just part of the class, but I immediately realized she was saying this for my benefit. I was inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth, all the other students there already knew the breathing rules.

I remember being somewhat proud of how I could keep up for my first class, which I thought was a beginners class, but being my anxious, kooky self had mixed up the times and showed up for a mid-level class. And then the fish pose instruction came. "Elbows on the floor pushing in, opening the chest, arching the back and allowing the crown of the head to come to the floor". Well I knew that wasn't going to happen. My neck had been severely injured in a drunk driving accident 15 years earlier and I had ever since held my head and neck far forward and still had a limited range of motion, bone spurs and arthritis. I was astounded when I came into the pose, easily and without any discomfort.

And then it happened. My life literally passed before my eyes and all the pain and despair I had felt for the last 36 years related to my brother's death washed out of me in one small tear that fell down the side of my face.

Then it was savasana (dead man's pose), of which I barely could stay still for "what just happened to me?" kept running through my head. Then the class was over and everyone quickly ushered themselves out of the studio. I was dying to ask someone what just happened to me, but there was no one to ask, even the teacher had to hurry away after class. But I was hooked... yoga was my new love.