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This is how the naturally easy meditation practice of Yoga Nidra can inform, transform and heal your life

For years I thought meditation was about struggling to quiet my thoughts. 

Suddenly one day, I understood that meditation isn’t about focusing on not thinking, it’s focusing on something that’s not thought.  It’s about getting our awareness out of our head and placing our awareness on our bodymind, on our consciousness.

Before this epiphany I thought meditation was about technique: I sat up ramrod straight, legs twisted in the appropriate pretzel-like pose, motionless, breathing “properly,” holding fervently onto an intention.

Then one day my body just spoke, and on an impulse, I decided to listen to my own inner promptings rather than to what the world outside of me had told me to do.

I laid my body down.

Opening Up To Energy

During the months that followed that decision (and the years since) I have had some amazing inner experiences in meditation.  I interacted with the energy within and around me and very cool things have happened. 

And I’m not special: these things are available for us all because it’s who we are: we are biologically, neurologically, energetically and chemically designed to have amazing inner experiences.  Although I now understand a good deal of the science that explains what’s happening in meditation, I had no idea what was happening to me at first.  

But it felt really good, and it was incredibly interesting, so I just kept at it.

I experienced feelings I can only describe as bliss or ecstasy flowing through my body and brain, I had sudden and complex epiphanies about my life which became my best guidance. I healed old emotional wounds within me by somehow spontaneously becoming aware of and reconciling them with no effort at all. 

With eyes closed I could see amazing colors, living kaleidoscopes, and images that played out like movies in the “third eye” within my brain.  I saw unfamiliar symbols pass through the space behind my brow and became aware of the connection of every person, every place, everything and every time as One. I even heard wisps of celestial music that were from some dimension beyond my room.

I know it sounds a little trippy, but I assure you these were drugless experiences, with the only chemicals involved being those naturally occurring in my body and brain. 

As a healer I now know so many of us have these kinds of experiences, we just feel we can’t talk about them publicly because our culture isn’t very supportive, trusting or understanding of them.  We are afraid we aren’t supernatural, be instead mentally ill or that we will be seen by others as mentally ill.

And by supernatural I don’t mean paranormal, I mean supernatural: outside of the “normal” range of perception and eminently real.

I think our supernatural and meditation experiences are inspiring and liberating and healing, and I have a strong desire to normalize sharing our inner experiences, because to reject them or to suppress them is to reject and suppress our wholeness. 

A collective of Oneness & Wholeness

As a collective we are having all sorts of fascinating inner experiences and we deny or question the reality of them because we feel alone and we haven’t been taught that this is a normal biological, endocrinological, perceptual and spiritual reality of who we are.

Back when I changed my meditation practice from sitting to lying down, I didn’t have any language around what was happening to me energetically. I thought I’d stumbled upon something magical and that the whole world should know about.  Then one day I exclaimed to a neighbor (who is well versed in the Eastern wisdom traditions) this fantastic discovery I made. 

He just laughed and said, “Diana, that’s Yoga Nidra.  People have been doing that for thousands of years.”

I was both amused with myself and affirmed!  This exceptional experience was REAL!  And I knew with all my heart I wasn’t special: anyone could do this…feel this goodness within the sanctuary of their own body.

Meditation means “to become familiar with,” and in Yoga Nidra we become familiar with our unknown Self and we learn that:

  • The body is an instrument of consciousness that is biologically and energetically designed to connect to the life-giving and loving intelligent energy that manifests everything—the meta-reality beyond what we experience through our 5 senses in the here-and-how
  • We are designed to connect to the energy of the all-in-all and to fearlessly participate in the creation of our life
  • The inner space within the body, no matter what it has experienced in the past, is actually the safest place in the Universe to Be
  • To linger as awareness in this sweet safe place is to flow more energy into our life

Lingering in the sweet space within you

Yoga Nidra is the art and science of lingering in the state of consciousness where the mind maintains a state of awareness and the body is relaxed, even asleep.  It is a practice informed by the Mandukya Upanishad, a Sanskrit (Eastern Indian language) text of Hindu philosophy.  Anyone can enjoy and adopt this practice, as ultimately it is a natural state of being that is beyond any religious affiliation.

In Sanskrit the term Yoga Nidra means “awake asleep.”

Many people find this ancient form of meditation practice naturally easier than sitting, standing or walking meditations.  It is typically performed while lying down, supine, but it can be practiced reclining or sitting in a chair if lying down is difficult or uncomfortable.

In Yoga Nidra we learn to observe our body as space, as a sort of container through which all experience flows.  Practicing this meditation—and energy healing modalities like Reiki—we may experience knowing ourselves more deeply as the awareness that is having this bodily experience, not as the stories of the past Earthly reality we so heavily identify with.

Suspending our awareness in the state of consciousness that is Yoga Nidra we are able to experience our inner being as the space through which thoughts, feelings, perceptions and beliefs flow and move.  The practice cultivates relaxation, restoration and healing. 

It is a state of consciousness in which the “doorway” between the subconscious and conscious mind opens and we may experience epiphanies or spontaneous spiritual, mental, emotional or physical healing.  And it is the threshold beyond which we may experience mystical connection to the all-and-all of our Divine source.

Moving from doing to non-doing…from doing to Being

This meditation practice is often called the art of non-doing: of moving beyond the active mind that is conditioned to the habit of doing to get something/somewhere.  Yoga Nidra is the experience of relaxing and observing the inner self as we enter a state of restful awareness.  During this experience our brainwaves drop from higher frequency (cycles per second) to lower frequency, just as they do when we fall asleep, but in Yoga Nidra, we maintain an aware mind. Here’s a hierarchy of brainwave states:

  • Gamma and Beta, 12-100 cycles per second, where the brain is focused in problem-solving mode; busy and active (or overactive in anxiety) with attention placed on the external environment, to
  • Alpha, 8-12 cycles per second, a state of relaxed, restful, reflection and passive attention (like when you’re watching birds at your birdfeeder) to
  • Theta, 4-8 cycles per second, where the brain and body are drowsy, deeply relaxed and inwardly focused, to
  • Delta, .5- 4 cycles per second, where the body is dreaming or deeply sleep

Yoga Nidra is typically a guided meditation, but it is entirely possible to entrain and condition yourself into this meditative state through independent practice.  Ultimately, we practice navigating through subtle realms of consciousness: we experience levels of mindful awareness in which we identify less with the known self and become aware of our unknown Self

We move from a known and familiar consciousness (the story of our limited life) to greater unknown and expansive source Consciousness (the unlimited unknown.) 

We experience ourselves less separate, less a “part” and more of the Whole, or as Wholeness itself.

Supernatural Brain

The brain gears down through the brain wave states in Yoga Nidra and can spontaneously return to Gamma, as the inner experience of the meditator becomes as real or more real than any experience the body has had in 3-dimensional reality.  When this happens, the meditator is having a supernatural experience in Consciousness.

For many people, this creates a certain knowing in which we understand we are more than, greater than our physical body.  We have had a direct, first-hand experience of the supernatural.

The supernatural experience is real and we integrate that energy and information from our new awareness back into our body, living our life in the here-and-now more free, more clear, more in love with ourself and others, and in a very real way more enlightened. 

We bring more light, more love into our Earthy experience.

Body of light

Both Yoga Nidra and energy medicine (including the Japanese healing art of Reiki, in which a practitioner flows universal life-force energy to the recipient) are informed by the knowledge that our physical body is nested in an invisible but perceivable torus/apple-shaped energy field of light and intelligent information.  This field is a matrix of emotional, mental and spiritual energy, a constellation of consciousness.  Energy medicine calls this the biofield or the Human Energy Field (HEF.)  The Vedic texts call these subtle fields that surround the body “koshas:” bliss, wisdom, mental, energy (emotional) and physical elements.

The physical body has 7 primary energy centers.  The Vedic texts refer to these as “Chakras,” or “spinning wheels of light.”  These energy centers are each associated with an epicenter within the physical body where nerve plexuses emerge from the spinal cord.  These centers inform and are informed by the brain.  They are also associated with the endocrine (hormonal regulation) system.  You can find more information on my energy centers/Chakras chart here:

An energy medicine view of the body: our nervous system is converting the energy and information of our life into chemistry and communicating this information through our circulatory system to our physical flesh. 

This transmutation of energy causes a state-of-being that we perceive of as an emotional state: we feel at peace or in stress, or somewhere in between.  We may be consciously (knowingly) aware of our state or unconscious (not knowing) of it.  For example, we can be unconsciously fearful or shameful or guilty and those states may drive our behavior.

For many people right now, the set point state-of-being is stress, anxiety or depression.  Yoga Nidra has been shown to reduce these sensations. In Yoga Nidra the parasympathetic (rest/digest/restore) nervous system is engaged.  When this system is engaged the body self-regulates and self-organizes to order, harmony and coherence, and we feel sensations of well-being.

And in Yoga Nidra some people have mystical experiences that can be healing, transformative or personally informative and deeply meaningful.

In this state the neurochemicals in the brain and the hormones in the tiny pineal gland within the brain generate conditions in which the brain acts like a radio antenna, receiving and decoding energy and information from the universe at large and creating a mystical experience that is very real to the person experiencing it.

Why take the journey?

I love Yoga Nidra as a tool to support my/our transformation to a better-feeling state-of-being.  This practice has taught me there’s nothing to “fix” within me, that nothing is “wrong” with me.  It shows me that meditation leads us to embody the freeing sensations we feel through the practice during our waking hours, which translates to:

  • Observing our thoughts rather than attaching to or believing in them as absolute truth
  • Challenging our beliefs and assessing whether they limit or expand us
  • Becoming aware of biases, programs, distorted thinking, fears, shame and guilt of the past and deciding if these have a place in our future
  • Becoming objective about our subjective experience and taking things less personally
  • Being less affected by the low energies of other people
  • Being less influenced by the environments and of the conditions in our life that aren’t actually life-giving to us
  • Knowing how to self-regulate to obtain relief from aspects of our reality that cause us stress
  • With agility detach from the energy that is not preferential to us
  • Fall more deeply in love with ourselves, our life and with others, embodying objective non-judgement

Would you like to learn more?  I have some upcoming 2-hour group healing Yoga Nidra sessions you might want to attend.  Please sign up by texting, calling or emailing me at dianamariachapin@gmail.com, as space is limited to 4 people.  Also, some upcoming day-long retreats are scheduled.  You can view upcoming opportunities here. 

Call Diana at 207-249-2261

Please subscribe to my blog at the bottom of this page. Healing, learning and sharing is my passion…please share this blog with those you think it can help.  We are changing the world, one heart at a time. Thank you!

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This is how awareness of your energy can help heal your mind, body & life

Call Diana at 207-249-2261

I looked around me, in the sea of 1200 people and I realized everyone here seemed like a perfectly “ordinary” person.

And we were: there was no single demographic, no common identity other than human. 

We represented every skin pigmentation, the expanse of educational backgrounds, every point on the monetary spectrum from financially impoverished to incredibly wealthy. 

We were aged 7 to 92, and we were from farms and rural outposts, the world’s greatest cities and everything in between.  We were male, female and those who identified differently from the binary order.   

Some of us had travelled the world over and others, this was one of a few privileged trips beyond the familiar life-long existence in a single place.

We were all sorts of spiritual and not spiritual at all.  We were scientists and mystics, the seekers, the finders and the lost.

We had birth defects, were mentally impaired by injury and were brilliant.  We were clear-thinking and mentally and emotionally disrupted by anxiety and depression. 

Some of us were speed walkers, marathon runners and big mountain hikers, others were bound to wheelchairs and walkers and medical devices I’d never seen before, physically limited by diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, advanced Lyme Disease, the degeneration of age or injury, or impaired by mystery illnesses that had no known origin.

We were anorexic and overweight, chronically stressed and naturally peaceful.  We were vegans and meat-eaters, drinkers and smokers and in recovery.

We were from all parts of the world…well, many parts: participants from 121 countries gathering for a week-long healing retreat in Indian Wells, California, in February 2020. 

Beyond all our labels we were all ultimately seeking the same things: healing, relief, wholeness, clarity, the mystical. We were unified by the idea of our own personal transformation, the evolution of humanity and the expansion and elevation of human consciousness. 

We had the idea that if we could heal our self, we could in turn affect the whole of humanity: heal our part of the whole, and thereby, take part in healing the whole.

It seemed we were united by being more at peace and bringing more peace into the world as individuals and as a collective.

Becoming awareness and entering receiving mode

We laid down in meditation, over a thousand of us, spread shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of the conference center’s great ballroom, which felt the size of a football field.  Our meditation guide—a genius, a master meditator, a mystic, a brilliant scientist, and to me, the greatest global leader of our time—Dr. Joe Dispenza spoke into the heavenly abyss of the low-lit room and we each navigated a journey of our own inner wonderland and simultaneously connected to the energy of the collective in the room. 

Toward the end of our meditation something very special and interesting happened. It started slowly at first. 

A woman on the other side of the room from me started giggling and then burst out a little laugh.  After a pause she chuckled and snickered.  But then she just couldn’t contain herself.  She started laughing and even sobbing a little the way we do when we laugh so hard we cry. 

The people around her started to giggle and a few people in random spots around the room did too. 

I thought this unfolding was amusing and kind of cute, but I managed to hold my awareness on the energy within and around my body in the space of the huge ballroom.

At the same time, I just couldn’t help it, the thought of them giggling made me smile. 

Then something fascinating and delightful happened. 

Know you are greater than your physical body

I sensed and perceived a wave of energy flowing throughout the room: it ebbed and flowed over us, it pulsed with something that magnetic that gripped my interest and curiosity.  I paid attention to it more and held my awareness on it, sensing and perceiving into the energy of the space of the room.

As I tuned in to the space—using my whole body and mind (more aptly I should call it “bodymind”) as an instrument of attunement— I engaged in using an ability we can all cultivate that is perceiving beyond the 5 senses.  Through some fine-tuned and practiced combination awareness, sensing and perceiving, I felt into that magnetic energy present over and around us.

Simultaneously, I mentally tabbed through possibility. 

Was the energy rich? It was pulsing with life.  

What was that pushing sensation? It felt like it was prompting me. 

Had it stilled? I felt pause over me, like an invitation, but demanding nothing.

What was that tickling feeling in my forearms and legs that made my hair stand on end?  Was it…it was fun! It was playful! It was joyful!

As this all dawned on me, as it became conscious and articulated in my mind through words I could understand, I connected fully to the energy. 

I “touched” it through my awareness of it and it touched me.

Know that all energy carries information and you are a decoding instrument

I felt the playful, joyful fun nature of the energy within the space of my body and my body giggled, a little laugh escaping from me, my shoulders shaking as the energy pleasantly flooded through me.

It sounds a little trippy because it is, but I assure you the only chemicals and intoxicants that were making this happen were the natural chemicals within me that my own brain and my own endocrine system produced as it received the information contained in the energy of the room.

I felt the habitual response of social pressure and self-consciousness kick in, that maybe I shouldn’t laugh out loud and disturb the people around me, but I surrendered to the good feeling of laughter instead. It felt too darn good to just let it pass me by.  I let myself giggle, snicker, chuck then just laugh out loud, and soon the people around me were laughing too.

The energy grew, interconnecting fields of bio-magnetic energy, gaining coherence and momentum, one person, then the next and the next.  Within what I think was probably under a couple minute’s time I was in a sea of a thousand people from all walks of life around the globe and we were all laughing for no reason at all, moved by an energy that could only be the Spirit of Joy itself

No one was untouched by the feeling of gladness: in the playful common ground of Unconditional Love we were all One.

Feel into the reality that your body is an instrument of attunement

We are attuning to the energy around us all the time, and we either consciously (knowingly) and subconscious (unknowingly) connecting to it.

Whatever we are connecting to we are becoming more like: we embody the energy of our life.  So it’s well worth becoming aware of how our energy works, and how we can use the power of our attention and awareness to change our energy and transform our life.

We can tell we are attuning to the energy of our life because it makes us feel a certain way. 

Think about how your body feels when:

  • You are in an environment or with someone who makes you feel safe and accepted
  • You engage in a hobby in which you get lost in for hours at a time
  • You alone get to choose what you want to do and where you want to be today; no demands, you feel in command of your life
  • You are with a person, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or read a book that inspires you
  • You find the perfect, satisfying words to speak your truth; you feel proud of yourself
  • You get that crystal clear insight that helps you navigate whatever you’re working through personally, or within a relationship or job

On the other hand, think about how your body feels when:

  • You feel scared; you’re overwhelmed by not knowing what to do, feeling threatened, frozen in place physically, emotionally and/or mentally
  • You don’t feel accepted by your family, friends, community, boss or employer…or by anyone at all
  • You have no say over your time, and you’re being driven from one thing to the next; you feel pushed through life; you’re just surviving right now
  • You can’t remember the last time you felt happy or connected to your life and others
  • You experience frustration and anger because you can’t seem to find the words to express your understanding of a situation or why you feel the way you do
  • Your mind feels cluttered, frazzled, foggy, racing or all over the place; you’re anxious or depressed or oscillating back and forth between those states

The body is always processing the energy of your life

By developing a greater level of conscious awareness around attunement and how energy feels in specific areas of our body, we can learn to use our body in our everyday experience as an instrument of guidance.   

We can pick up on the subtle ques our body is offering us in our relationships, in the conditions of our life and in our environment.  We can learn to use feedback make better-informed decisions about what we want more in our life and what we want less. 

And we can learn to use our body—to entrain ourselves—as an instrument of attunement in meditation to connect with energy that is creative and life-giving, joyful, appreciative, abundant and liberating. 

Remember, what we are connecting to we are becoming more like…who doesn’t want to feel more alive, more joyful, more peaceful, more in love?

The body’s nature is to self-regulate and to self-organize into coherence and harmony

Through meditation and energy healing we can get familiar with and memorize the sensations of our own energy so well that we immediately know what’s “ours” and what’s “not ours” in the experience of our everyday life. This ability to attune to the information within your own body—to create and attune to your own inner harmony—helps you to discern which people, places, conditions and things in your life flow helpful, life-giving energy to you, and which ones disrupt your energy or throw you out of your alignment

In my experience it helps to consciously make these decisions and affirm yourself in them as you explore your inner being, your inner energy.  These may be new ideas/beliefs for you, so come back to them and see if their meaning changes for you:

  • I want to know myself.  I want to take time to get to know who I am, who I say I am.  I am just going to push the pause button on what the outer world has taught me about being human while I figure this out.  Time is my friend, and I’m here to use time the way that suits my higher purposes in life.
  • I trust myself.  I’m going to take whatever I discover within me as my truth, as my personal authority and law.  I trust that what I encounter will be the best thing for me, and that whatever I might feel is my body educating me on what I need to know. If at times it feels overwhelming or weird, I’ll just remind myself that’s because I’m having a new experience of the energy of my inner being. I’m learning about my own energy and feeling into the part of me that’s pure energy, including but beyond matter.  If I experience something and don’t understand it, I’ll remind myself that it’s only weird because it’s new and unfamiliar.  I’m going to get my bearings in this work and soon I’ll be better at decoding what my body is trying to tell me.
  • I love myself enough to do this.  You know, it’s possible that nobody has taught me the most important things or the full picture about the nature of my inner being.  I’m going to have to teach myself…no! I’m going to ENJOY teaching myself.  I want to know myself and heal myself more than anything.  So I’ll be patient.  I’ll trust that everything is going to come into my awareness at the right time that I’m ready to integrate it into my life’s wisdom.
  • I am willing to accept help.  If I encounter something that seems too hard, too big, to confusing, etc., I’ll get help.  I’ll think about what resources I have available to me in the form of people, medical professionals, therapeutic modalities, massage, energy healing, the internet, books, podcasts, and the like and I’ll stay true to myself, getting the help I need to get to the next level or dig through the next layer.  I believe I’m surrounded by a world of wisdom, and I’ll be supported in my journey, I just know it!

The Anatomy of Self Love: Know your energy anatomy, follow its guidance and fall in love with your wholeness

Your physical body is surrounded by an intelligent field of life-force energy, light and information.  Science calls this your biofield, and it is electromagnetic in nature.  Within the disciplines of energy medicine, it is often called the Human Energy Field or (HEF.)  In energy healing terms, your biofield or HEF has spiritual, mental and emotional energy aspects and manifests/affects the state wellness and order within your physical body.

For now, just hold that as holistic (whole, holy) information, and look at the basic and practical starting point of how your energy anatomy is organized within and around your body.

Not only is a good practice to cultivate self-awareness, but it can be helpful to your healing to take time to feel into each of your primary energy centers whose epicenters are within the brain and at particular points on the spine where nerve plexuses emerge from the spinal cord.

These nerve plexuses transmit energy and information from the world around you and from the tissues in their corresponding areas to your brain.  And your brain sends energy and information through the spinal cord and these nerve plexuses to the tissues of your body in the areas that correspond with the nerve plexuses.

Your nervous system engages with the energy and information of your life and converts that information to chemistry through your endocrine system.  The hormones and chemical regulators move through the circulatory system to the organs, creating a state-of-being in the chemical, physical flesh.

For many people this is a novel view of the body—it sure was to me when I came into this work 9 years ago.  And it’s even more incredible to know that our perception of the energy around us—our thoughts and feelings about it—affect this whole process dramatically.

I don’t believe that anyone makes themselves sick.  But we certainly can learn to use our awareness, our consciousness to help ourselves heal.

The Eastern wisdom traditions have for thousands of years known, discussed and taught energy anatomy. Volumes have been written about this system, called the Chakra system.

An illustration of the Chakra system/energy centers

Chakra means “spinning wheel of light,” and indicates that the life-force energy that sustains and animates us has a spiraling nature.  This is replicated in the natural world around us and can be seen in things like pinecones, sunflowers and nautilus shells, and it’s illustrated in our spinning Earth and spiraling galaxy.

Here’s my table of basic information regarding the 7 primary energy centers and the basic information about them.

Spend time in meditation, sensing and perceiving into the space these centers occupy in your physical body. 

Try not to judge the sensations or even assign meaning to the words that come to mind, but gently assess.  You’re just information gathering, so be the mind of an objective observer, what in meditation is called “the silent witness.” 

Hold on to the idea that your body is naturally powerful self-regulating and self-organizing.  As you feel into your energy centers, invite flow, life, grace, abundance, freedom and empowerment into your life.

Does the idea of transformational wellness interest you?  Please sign up for future blogs at this bottom of my blog home, or book an in-person or remote/distance appointment with me by calling 207-249-2261 or emailing me at dianamariachapin@gmail.com.

Call Diana at 207-249-2261