Wintering: Preparing for the Season of Rest with Yoga Nidra and Reiki

As the days grow darker and the cold sets in, the natural rhythm of winter season reminds us to slow down and turn inwards. Yet, due to our societal or familial conditioning, giving ourselves permission to rest might be challenging. That’s why we have created the Wintering Programme - a space to reconnect, recharge and experience the transformative power of rest through the healing practices of Yoga Nidra and Reiki.

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Aligning with the Autumn Equinox: Balancing Light and Dark through Celtic Wisdom and Yoga Nidra

The Autumn Equinox offers us a powerful moment of balance, inviting us to pause and reflect on the energies at play. The Equinox occurs on Sunday 22nd September this year. This is the final of the 8 festivals celebrated during the Celtic calendar. We are now halfway between Summer and Winter Solstice.

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The Importance of Heart-Led Community and Deep Connection

Last Friday evening, we gathered to celebrate the longest day of the year and the peak of the Celtic Wheel of the Year. It was a beautiful, enriching experience that reminded us of the benefits of being part of a heart-led community. Following our gathering, we reflected on how consciously co-creating a community helps us deepen our connections with others and ourselves.

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Reconnect and Recharge: Join Us for a Transformative Summer Solstice Virtual Circle

As the Summer Solstice aligns with the powerful energies of a Full Moon, the time is ripe for personal growth and renewal. How are you harnessing this potent solar power to recharge your batteries. We invite you to build your toolkit for transformation and join us this evening for a special Summer Solstice gathering. We are excited to introduce a brand new Yoga Nidra practice designed to help you connect deeply with your sacral chakra—the centre of creation, joy, and nourishment.

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Connecting to the Chakras through Nature →

Connecting with the chakras through nature is a powerful way to restore balance and harmony in your life. Chakra means wheel in Sanskrit. When our Chakras are aligned they are turning and keeping our energy field balanced. When they are stuck due to stress, trauma, or life factors our energy field is out of balance. By aligning our Chakras, we can ensure that our energy flows smoothly and supports our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Here is a guide to understanding and connecting with each chakra through nature as well as some connecting practices to help you balance each chakra.

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The Healing Power of Somatic Therapies: Reiki and Yoga Nidra for Nervous System Support →

Both Reiki and Yoga Nidra are accessible techniques and powerful somatic techniques that can greatly support your nervous system. We combine these two modalities to amplify the benefits for you. Whether you are looking to manage stress, improve sleep or build your emotional resilience, our unique Reiki-infused Yoga Nidras can help you maintain energy balance, reduce stress and improve your well-being. Anchored in the ancient wisdom of the Celtic Wheel of the Year let us support you find that inner connection to yourself and to the rhythms of nature.

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Balance and New Beginnings at Spring Equinox

As we move from the darkness of winter to the brightness of spring, the Spring Equinox represents a moment of balance in the natural world where every region on the planet experiences equal amounts of daylight and night. Midway between the Winter Solstice and the Summer Solstice we welcome in the revitalising energy of spring as we emerge from our season of hibernation.

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How Yoga Nidra can help with Trauma

Yoga Nidra is a safe and gentle way of allowing unresolved energy from an overwhelming event slowly begin to unwind and be released. You do not need to dig into the past and relive the event while practicing Yoga Nidra. This prevents the practitioner from becoming traumatised again and therefore allows healing to take place. The body will naturally dissolve what it is ready to release in a relaxed state.

Old fragments of trauma are often released outside of conscious awareness. People often feel lighter as if a weight has been lifted after practicing Yoga Nidra for a while. This happens in deep states of relaxation where the body can let go completely. In the meditative state the practitioner is resting in a safe place. Yoga Nidra re-teaches the body how to turn the light switch off so that it can return to a balanced state. The nervous system can reset itself so that it can operate normally rather than in a hyper-tense or dissociated state. The body can enter a state of homeostasis which allows the body to heal itself naturally. During a practice of Yoga Nidra the practitioner deliberately slows and deepens the breath to induce a state of deep relaxation. A deep breathing practice alone helps regulate the nervous system and bring the body back into a state of balance.

The practitioner becomes more ‘stress-resistant’ amidst the pressures, insecurities and difficulties of everyday life, and learns to thrive on the same difficulties which would lead others to the brink of mental anguish, emotional self-destruction and physical breakdown. This is the great secret of Yoga Nidra. It is not only a way of coping with stress; it also provides a means of transforming and positively utilizing tension as a steppingstone to greater awareness, efficiency and achievement in life. At the basic level the practice of Yoga Nidra helps us to process, integrate and release the experience of existing day to day.

For more information we recommend Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep by Kamini Desai.

What is a Sankalpa?

San = truth Kalpa = vow

Sankalpa is one of the defining tools within the practice of Yoga Nidra. We use a Sankalpa to repattern and reprogramme the mind. One of the most important things to remember when practicing Yoga Nidra is that you are already perfect, you are already whole. You are everything and nothing at the same time and are pulsing with polarities.

Sankalpa is placed twice in the Yoga Nidra script. The first placement is to bring the statement front-and-centre into your experience before we surrender the intellect. The second placement comes at the end when the bliss body is centred and you are beyond your patterned, conditioned mind. It is here you can affect the underlying energy of your life and have the potential to experience miraculous healing, sudden remission of a limiting belief, or welcome an aspect of your potential to life.

Sankalpa is a vow. It resembles an intention, but it is so much more because you are more suggestible where you use it in the practice. It is a resolve to create a difference in your lived experience. According to our teacher Jana Roemer, there are two main ways to use Sankalpa:

1. To transform a limiting belief into a liberating belief.

2. To plant seeds of intention of something you want to create.

It is most potent to have a short, concise Sankalpa. Create a statement that includes the personal pronoun “I” and very little after that. For example: I am worthy.

It is also helpful to use the present tense and positive language. For example: I am calm and peaceful.

What is Trauma?

What do we mean when we talk about trauma? Trauma is our response to something that happens in our lives that we can’t make sense of and so our nervous system gets overwhelmed. A fragmentation or disruption occurs internally and we cannot stay present to what is happening right now. We all have our own responses with some of us becoming more reactive and some of us becoming absent. When we are acting out of a trauma response to something that is happening in the present moment we are responding from an unintegrated and fragmented sense of self. We lose our sense of interconnectedness which leads to separation and othering. By creating space to practice group coherence we hope to create safe opportunities to heal this separation.