As most of you know, I host a Yoga Nidra Club. This is a subscription-based club that provides members online access to meditations, asana practices and more. I have a huge passion for this! It is an outward manifestation of my personal dharma and I find creating it each month an absolute joy!
I provide people with a free trial month so that they can experience yoga nidra and see how truly life-changing it is. Often, at some point during the trial month, or when the trial membership expires, I receive an email stating that they did one or two, loved them, but want ideas on how to get their practice really rolling. This brings us to the ‘burning platform.’
Many years ago in my corporate life, I took a graduate course on change management. Its not easy to effect change, whether you are talking about one person or a whole team. We are all very patterned and to make a change, we either have to perceive the vision so compelling that we are deeply drawn to it, or we have to feel we are literally standing on a burning platform and thus feel the change is essential to our well-being.
I have a feeling, if you are reading this, that you understand that yoga is deeply restorative and calming. That it reduces stress, helps with many physical issues and is deeply spiritual. So I am going to take the burning platform approach.
NOT meditating can cause you to fail in your career, fail in interpersonal relationships and shorten your life. I have your attention, yes?
Career: Adults who have a regular yoga nidra meditation practice outperform their peers by 50%. They come up with more aha ideas because they spend more time in the alpha brainwave state. They can separate from the chaos and truly determine what is important versus urgent in their jobs. They have higher social IQs and work more effectively with teammates.
Relationships: Studies show that those who meditate have more empathy an a better ability to accurately read other’s facial expressions. They are able to see situations from outside their thinking brain and respond instead of react. They are more outwardly than inwardly focused. They better understand their own motivations and needs and can better let go of ‘old baggage’.
Life & Death: Yoga nidra meditation measurably reduces stress by changing the output of our endocrine from stress management hormones like cortisol to those associated with peace and higher levels of thinking. These changes result in lower blood pressure, better sleep, weight reduction and more. Yoga Nidra is also shown to help people working through past traumas and with addictions. Yoga affects us at a cellular level and can increase immunity, improve brain function and increase longevity.
So you really can’t afford not to have a meditation practice. This seemingly big chunk of time (20 minutes, 5 times a week) is really nothing when you think about it. And like most habits, just dive in and do it and, within the first month, it will be a part of your routine.
A few interesting links:
Empathy: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/study-meditation-can-make-us-more-empathetic/263307/
Longevity: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sonimacom/the-science-of-meditations-effects-on-aging_b_8688678.html
Social IQ: https://www.mindful.org/how-high-is-your-social-iq/
