Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep (Restore Your Health, Reshape Your Life and Change Your Destiny)

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Yoga Nidra is the master key to initiating shifts in conscious sleep states where change happens outside of doing. In Yoga Nidra you enter a state of non-doing in which transformation happens from beyond the mind rather than through the mind. In this highly regenerative meditative state you can restore and rejuvenate your body, heal and recover from illness and re-wire your brain for greater mental and emotional balance and resiliency.

This comprehensive guidebook explores the core of Yogic philosophy and modern applications of Yoga Nidra backed by scientific research affirming what Yogis have known for thousands of years. You will receive instruction on the practice of Yoga Nidra and the use of intention. You will discover how unconscious thinking patterns and resulting biochemical states contribute to ill health, stress, insomnia, depression, anxiety, bad habits, trauma and addictions and most importantly, how to neutralize them with the Six Tools of Yoga Nidra.

Kamini Desai, PhD, Kamini Desai, PhD, is the Director of one of the premier schools of Yoga Nidra in the West. Considered an expert in the inner sciences of Yoga Nidra, Relaxation and Artful Living, she is author of the acclaimed book, Life Lessons Love Lessons, and is a frequent guest speaker and teacher at various institutions for higher learning worldwide.

Kamini's corporate clients have included: Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, Sony, Kellogg's, KEDS, Mars Confectionary, and KPN Telecom in addition to the Netherlands Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Finance. Her guided Yoga Nidra ex-periences have been used in various United States government facilities.

Trained at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Kamini also earned university degrees in Anthropology and Psychology, and is daughter of one of the original masters who brought Yoga to the West. Kamini served as Director of Wellness at Yarrow, an executive retreat center in Michigan, and was on faculty of the Foxhollow Leadership Center, Lenox, Massachusetts. She isone of three Founding Directors of the International University of Yoga and Ayurveda with Vijay K. Jain, MD, and Shekhar Annambhotla, MD.

Kamini is a member the Editorial Board of the Light on AyurvedaJournal, associated with the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. In 2012, she was awarded the title of Yogeshwari (a woman of yogic mastery) for her keen ability to bring ancient illumination to the genuine challenges of the human experience.

She was featured on the cover of Natural Awakenings (2015) in celebration of National Yoga Month, in Dutch Cosmopolitan, Fit, and Healthy Magazine, and has published numerous articles and videos in the United States and Europe.

For more information on worldwide Yoga Nidra courses, pro-grams and trainings given by Kamini Desai visit: www.kaminide-sai.com or www.iameducation.org.

Free Yoga Nidra experiences and teachings are available on YouTube.

Her I AM Yoga Nidra App with guided Yoga Nidra experiences can be found on both apple and android by searching her name.

The year was 1972. It was near the beginning of my career as a clinical psychologist and I was working at a hospital-based clinic. The patient was thirteen years old and pregnant for the second time while her maternal grandmother raised her two year-old child. Her mother was a heroin addict; she did not know her own father. She was depressed, anxious and the only thing she looked forward to was the birth of this child. I believed my job was to get her to stop having babies while still a child herself. But she wanted this baby so somebody would love her and it would make her important. She had insight. She knew what she was doing and why she was doing it. This was the first time I clearly saw the limits of psychological insight. Mere insight would not change this girl's lifestyle. Nor has it been enough for thousands of patients who have followed.

Last year, in a social setting, I met a 45-year-old Iraq War veteran. He said he was suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He reported that he was being treated as an outpatient at a VA Hospital and was taking fifteen different, powerful psychiatric medications to control his numerous symptoms. He was also receiving counseling. I subsequently learned that he committed suicide and joined the ranks of the 23 US Veterans who kill themselves each day.

Different assumptions have underscored the major approaches to psychotherapy, personal change and growth. Psychoanalysis and its many off-shoots are based on the assumption that once the historical antecedents are learned, the patient will under-stand why they are the way they are and will be relieved of their troubling symptoms. This is referred to as ""insight."" Behavior Therapy and its derivations assume that changing behavior pat-terns through learning will result in alleviation of maladaptive behaviors. Cognitive Therapy is based on the belief that by identifying and changing negative, self-defeating thoughts, one will become symptom-free. These and most other psychotherapeutic techniques either ignore or give nodding recognition to the importance of physiological processes in the individual. On the other hand, Yoga Nidra directly addresses, focuses on, and changes habitual physiological reactive patterns. This results in actual change, healing, growth and freedom without the need to go into the story.

In my forty-five years of clinical work with every type of psychological or psychiatric problem at the front-lines of mental health struggles, I have encountered psychotics, schizophrenics, bi-polars, the depressed, traumatized, addicted, neurotic and the ""worried well."" I have treated children, adolescents, adults and the mature in individual, couples, family and group settings. I have forensically evaluated those accused of murder, white collar and street crime. Although I am not a psychiatrist and do not prescribe psychiatric medication, I have observed their ample use in treatment throughout my career. I have studied various approaches to psychotherapy and human change, ranging from classical Freudian Psychoanalysis to Past-lives Regression Therapy, and everything in between. For at least the past thirty years, I have been impressed with the value of meditation and body-oriented approaches to therapy including massage, yoga and tai chi.

Then, last summer, my wife kidnapped and dragged me to an ashram hidden deep in the Ocala National Forest in Florida to learn Yoga Nidra meditation from a renowned master and his daughter. I was blown away.

Yoga Nidra: The Art of Non-Doing

It is like floating. Floating is not something you do, it is some-thing that happens in the absence of doing. It is an experience of being held, being carried...but it can only happen when you stop struggling to keep yourself upright. Stop doing and floating happens. Stop efforting and sleep happens. When you let go of any doing, everything gets done. This concept is so foreign to the Western mind, we can hardly fathom it.

There is a reason stress is at epidemic levels in the West and I believe this is why: we don't know how to stop. Our waking hours have taken over our sleeping hours. Even our sleep and rest is in service of doing more, rather than being more. We don't sleep to be rested, to revitalize and nourish ourselves, we sleep so we can get up and do more the next day. We haven't mastered the art of non-doing along with the art of doing. We haven't learned how to relax in action.

What if there was a way we could experience being carried by the waters of life? A way to feel held and supported in the midst of life rather than struggling to keep our head above water? This is exactly what Yoga Nidra is designed to do. Through the practice of Yoga Nidra you learn to relax as deeply as in sleep while awake.

Yoga Nidra is an age-old practice of Yoga described in the ancient texts. It is not new. It is composed of a series of breath, body and awareness techniques designed to help you move into progressive states of relaxation, of non-doing. Though it is impossible to achieve relaxation with greater effort, you can enter a non-doing state where you are doing nothing and relaxation happens. The techniques of Yoga Nidra are active techniques that allow access to the non-doing state of being. The function of the technique is to do in such a way that you slip into a state of non-doing. So much so, that the experience of the body and mind can disappear completely for a time. The result is a highly regenerative state where the energy normally burned by the mind is fully freed to heal and restore the body. This healing energy of the body, freed from the mind, can also become a spiritual force, unlocking inner guidance, knowing and insight into your true nature.

Yogis state that 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra is as restorative as three hours of sleep. The body needs to let go. It needs to rest. It needs to have profound experiences of non-doing so it can regenerate itself. Without this, the body begins to tire. Like a car, it needs maintenance and repair. Keep it in overdrive and it will eventually burn out.

Yoga Nidra is regenerative, but it is more than a nap. It is a spiritual practice that, through a structured and conscious movement through sleep states, takes you to realms beyond the mind and into the fourth state of consciousness beyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Ancient Yogis knew that a vital, rested and restored body is a necessary first step toward inner awakening.

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