Here at year’s end it is time to enter a big sleep known as the yoga nidra. Through this practice, we dissolve the many holding patterns that have accumulated over the course of the year and come to a place of deep rest. Sleep, we could say, is one of the greatest yogas. But this sleep is not simply the snooze that restores the brain, builds immunity and helps process experiences from the day. Ultimately, the sleep that we tap into is not about taking a siesta or catching zzz’s. Rather, the sleep we are talking about lies at the very source of all becoming. It is the genesis, the origin of all things. It is the sleeping god Vishnu, Sustainer of the Universe, who reclines on the serpent raft, afloat on the cosmic sea at the beginning of time. In the mythology of India, Vishnu is in the midst of a 10,000 year slumber. Together with his serpentine mattress, he is the subconscious energy that gives rise to all activity—all duty, all thought, all TikTok—that consumes us in our daily round.
A practice of yoga nidra invites us to drop into the unitive state, into the “ocean” of awareness. Like any encounter with god, it cannot be engineered or made to happen. Our limited ego-consciousness can never fully register the fathomless source that underlies all becoming. It is only through profound stillness and serenity—only by being fluid and immersing in the ocean of infinite awareness—that we experience this totality. As the great singer song-writer Leonard Cohen wrote, “If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day”.
