Yoga Nidra Guided Meditations give you instant relief from stress. Take a quick break to listen to a guided meditation and effortless drop into a deep meditation. Rather than making STRESS be one more thing that you need to MANAGE in your life, learn how to get relief anyplace and anytime. I’ve used these techniques in life threatening situations and in the face of difficult work situations.

You can get relief.

Have you ever heard of the idea that it’s best to EXPERIENCE the emotion in the moment? During my study of Yoga Nidra mediation I discovered a concept that has really helped me visualize the idea of allowing emotions to flow through rather than trying to STOP having a given emotion.

Here is the idea:
Imagine you, your body as a tube. Then imagine that an emotion comes along and flows in to the opening of this tube. If nothing happens to the emotion it can flow straight through, entering in one side of this tube and then exiting out the other side.
The trouble comes when people try to STOP having the emotion. They put up blocks or distract themselves or numb the feelings associated with the emotion. Then the emotion gets stuck and cannot flow through the tube that is you.

One of the ways to help the energy of the emotion to flow through is to BREATHE. It’s that simple. Breathe in deeply, breath out completely.

Actually breathing is just the first of many steps that can help you experience an emotion rather than blocking it.

Other steps include: observing the sensations of that emotion in your body, Relaxing and Allowing the emotion to be there.
The key to all of these steps is to BE PRESENT with the emotion. Feel it and experience the feeling in the present moment.

Using this philosophy you can actually integrate experiences into your being.

People often ask me: What does integration mean?
The yogic definition I learned is: Integration is the clearing of the effects of past experiences on the mind body complex.

Another way to look at it is to consider the ingredients of a boxed cake mix. In this example I will use a chocolate cake mix. Consider the contents of the bag of “cake mix”. Can you separate the chocolate from the flour in that bag of cake ingredients?
I can’t. The chocolate has already been INTEGRATED into the mix. You know it is is there but it is blended so thoroughly into the mix, you can’t separate the chocolate from the mix.

OK. Now imagine you’ve poured the mix into a bowl along with the other ingredients: 1 cup of water 1/3 cup oil and 3 eggs.
When you blend the ingredients they resist being integrated into the batter.

Even when most of the ingredients have been mixed into a batter there are still little clumps of the cake mix that haven’t been integrated YET. In order to integrate them you need to continue to stir.

All of the clumps have been integrated into a smooth batter – you won’t be able to extract the chocolate and you wont be able to extract any of the dry cake mix.

The chocolate is an important part of the cake, if you taste it you will know there is chocolate in the cake but you cannot separate the chocolate from the cake.

When you integrate an experience, you cannot separate the experience from you but the experience is still an integral part of your life experience.

Now a real world example: When I got divorced, it was painful. There were times when I wished I hadn’t gotten married. There were times I wished I didn’t have to deal with re-setting my life after such a big change. But I eventually integrated the experience. When I look back on it now I am grateful that it happened JUST the way it did, because I learned so much about myself through the experience. I stepped out and traveled around the world one year later. I doubt I would have done that without the catalyst of the divorce.

Getting married and divorced formed the person I am today. You can’t separate that experience from who I am. I believe I have integrated that experience. When I remember the divorce I don’t have any strong emotion surface based on the memory. It just is. The experience is a part of my past, but and my memory. I do not regret or rejoice the experience. To me, that is integration.