Ancient Yogis tell us that the source of health lies in the balance between tension and relaxation. Modern science calls this imbalance stress. Most of us live at chronic high levels of excess tension in the body which eventually causes it to burn out. Day after day, week after week, we don’t even know that we are overtaxing the nervous system. Finally, after the body has depleted its reserves, we are left in an exhausted physical, mental and emotional state that cannot accept the slightest demand. This we call burnout. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 85 percent of doctor’s visits are stress related. Burnout is at epidemic proportions. According to the Huffington Post, burnout costs more than cancer, smoking, diabetes and heart disease combined.
Working with the symptoms of burnout are like working with the leaves of a tree. You can treat each symptom singly, or you can work with the single root that is the cause. Work with the symptoms and you could be busy for a lifetime. Work at the root cause and the symptoms begin to simultaneously erode.
Yoga Nidra combines the benefits of meditation as well as relaxation. It induces a profoundly deep relaxation and restoration response in the body. 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra is said to be as restorative as three hours of sleep. As meditation, Yoga Nidra also helps you to create a different relationship with stress-producing thoughts and emotions. By learning how to deal differently with stressors, you can prevent and reverse the process of burnout.
Best of all, Yoga Nidra is the easiest meditation you will ever come across. It uses the biology and brainwaves of the body to take you to the space between waking and sleeping where meditation happens naturally. We are not trying to be aware of our thoughts, it is a natural outcome of the technique. Together, the relaxation and meditation benefits of Yoga Nidra build a brain and body that is more resilient to stressors.
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You can find guided I AM Yoga Nidra experiences on YouTube or on a convenient app such as this one: I AM Yoga Nidra for Apple and Android. Or if you want to know more, take an online course.