• Table of Contents
  • SVB At Home
  • Karma by Swami Rama
  • Experiments with Yoga Nidra by Swami Veda
  • SVB and the Sunflower by Joanne Sullivan (Divya)
  • Beauty That No Cosmetic Can Imitate
  • Technology & Kalyana Mitras? by Denise Martin-Harker
  • A Yoga Home Away From Home by Catherine Campion
  • Back to the Origin of Yoga by Little Student
  • Six Steps of Meditative Asanas by Swami Veda Bharati
  • Recognition Award by Tejaswini
  • Invitation to Meditate on 1st July, An Interfaith and Global Meditation
  • 2014 Events and Beyond
  • Full Moon Meditation Dates
  • Location of our SRSG ashram
• AHYMSIN Newsletter Archive

My Experiments with Yoga Nidra: Inward Perceptions

© Swami Veda Bharati

This is a short excerpt from a book/booklet that will soon be published by AHYMSIN Publishers.  For more information, please write to ahymsinpublishers@gmail.com

Here is another story.

As a child I never enjoyed good health. There was always a sense of fatigue through all the studies and meditations.

We moved from Dehradun to Ludhiana. I was then about 12 years old. Waking up in the morning I always felt tiredness and no desire to move about. We had the family system that each person waking up would roll up the night’s quilt and place it on a cot in the room to make living space for the day.

I did that daily and always felt it a chore of heaviness. One morning as I put away my quilt I felt so tired, I really did not want to move. I reclined against the pile of quilts and felt good support!! Suddenly a change of consciousness came over me. I felt some kind of a wave touch me. My whole body went into a state of deep relaxation; my breathing changed as though the whole body breathed; there was a restfulness in the mind and the heart centre.

I ‘knew’ that ‘they, the rishis from the Himalayas, had sent something my way’. I did not mention this change to anyone; obviously, as it seemed to me, everybody receives this state.

From that day, each day upon waking up, I tried to capture the same feeling and often succeeded. I did not know this was called ‘relaxation’ (shithilikarana), whole body breathing, yoga-nidra and so on but I had learnt a non-technique method of being there.

At that time my reputation as a ‘child prodigy’, who could render three-fold translations of each of 20000 Veda-mantras, had already begun to spread. 

The experience of that morning’s revitalization remained with me namelessly until I met my master at the age of 36. Through all those years of long travels, lecturing, greeting and serving thousands of people (I recall giving 49 lectures in one week in one city at the age of 17). The repeat of that early experience always saw me through.

When our Master Swami Rama of the Himalayas finally guided us through the ‘technique’ then I knew what each of these steps was called.

Editor’s Note:

There will be a Silence, Shavasana Practices and Yoga Nidra Retreat 22nd March - 5th April 2015 at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh, India.

For more information, please read http://ahymsin.org/main/ashram/silence-shavasana-practices-and-yoga-nidra-retreat-in-2015.html