I had a very odd experience yesterday. As I posted last week, I’ve been making some changes to my lifestyle, including starting several exercise classes, adjusting my diet, and working on a few other aspects of my life. I suppose I’ve been reading Robin Brande’s blog so much it’s rubbed off on me.
Anyway, one of the things I’m doing is taking a class in Yoga Nidra, which is a type of meditation. I thought it would be a good idea because my favorite part of my regular yoga class is Shavasana (I hope I’m spelling that right) at the end. I actually blogged about that last winter. I’m not very good at it, but I love it. So when I walked into this sample yoga nidra class a few weeks ago, and the instructor announced that it was “the dessert of yoga” and we could all lie down and shut our eyes, I signed right up. Nap time! Fun!
Except… weird. The instructor admitted that the first time she attended at yoga nidra class she thought it was B.S. That made me relieved, because I’m a pretty skeptical person in general, and I was kinda thinking that myself. So she talked a bit more about the practice and I’m sitting there under my blankets with my little eye pillow over my face and I’m thinking I don’t even need the instructions, I’m already falling asleep. (Yoga Nidra means Yogic Sleep.) So then she starts talking about how my hands feel heavy and my feet feel heavy and etc. and then it’s an hour later and I don’t remember a thing. So I think: I fell asleep. And the people around me are totally snoring, which reaffirms my theory that I was asleep.
But the teacher says that’s “not unusual” and that we won’t always remember what happened until we become more experienced in the practice, blah blah blah. And of course, all along, my B.S. meter is going off and I’m convinced I fell asleep. Still, I sign up for the course and I go a few more times and each time it’s like BAM! Asleep. BAM! Asleep. BAM! Asleep. Except the weird thing is, that I do wake up when she’s telling everyone to start waking up. So maybe she’s right about there being this continuum between awakeness and asleepness, because I remember how I used to totally fall asleep on public transportation (like the Metro or Metro North or the bus) and I would still wake up at my stop, as if I somehow knew.
Anyway, Monday afternoon I go to the class and I get all set up and I’m thinking to myself that I wonder what happens when she talks to us when we’re all asleep or in a meditative trance or whatever (and of course, the storyteller in me is thinking “Manchurian Candidate,” right?). So we start, and since I’ve been working hard on my revisions and all the other stuff going on in my life, my head is totally full of that. Weddings and Amy and unicorns and all of it. I can’t seem to even concentrate on what she’s saying. But I do remember being able to hear her instructions and follow them on a conscious level for much longer than usual, since I had to keep forcing myself to pay attention to her. But then the next thing I remember is her talking as if we were all sitting up in cross-legged prayer pose. I’d totally missed the part where she tells us all to start waking up! So I shoot up off my blankets and I open my eyes and…
I can’t see.
I mean, I see shapes and colors and stuff, but it’s all completely blurry. I can’t focus my eyes. So I try not to freak out and I “Namaste” with the rest of them and then start folding up the blankets while the next yoga class comes in and the whole time I can’t see. I keep bumping into people and I’m trying to see the writing on the far wall or the face of the clock but it’s all blurry, blurry, blurry….
And I stumble into the changing room and the instructor is there chatting with the other students and I’m all, “Hi, I can’t focus my eyes, is that a problem?”
So we chat for a while and her theory is apparently that I was very deep into my yogic sleep trance and came out of it too quickly (which, in retrospect, duh me) and that in the future, I shouldn’t feel required to match the rest of the class. So it was sort of the equivalent of one’s foot going to sleep, except it was my eyes. Still incredibly scary. And after a few minutes (in which the instructor and I chatted and did little exercises to wake up my brain such as describing the shoes in my closet (quoth the yoga instructor: “wow, you are a writer! Listen to those descriptions!”), I could see again.
But it’s made me nervous about continuing the practice. I don’t know if I like that these sorts of things can happen. They’ve never happened in regular yoga class. I just get flexible and energetic with the deep breathing and such. And of course, the fact that having my eyes stop working for a few minutes scares me a heck of a lot more than having, say, my foot stop working has not escaped me. Clearly I rely on my eyes much more. My editor would kill me if I couldn’t see her edit marks. She might even hunt down my yoga nidra instructor.
So I’m going to read more about yoga nidra, and I’m going to think about it. What do you all think? Anyone have experience with this kind of thing? Eatrawfish, any advice from young Bogie? Robin, you were a yoga instructor?
In other news, I got a sneak peek at my newest cover. V. Exciting, as certain Brit chick lit heroines would say…
September 25th, 2007 at 6:43 am
Very interesting post…I practice regular, hatha yoga and the studio I go to had a special yoga nidra workshop last weekend that I missed. I was curious about it, though. Deep sleep…what’s not to love? I was told the quality of sleep during Yoga Nidra was superior to regular sleep. Did you feel that way?
September 25th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Wow. I’ve never participated in a Nidra class before, and must admit that losing my eyesight would keep me from returning, too.
And I need to learn to stop leaning on my desk when I read blog posts. I laughed so hard when I read Manchurian Candidate that I almost knocked everything over. (Think skinny rectangle bridge table from Walmart.)
September 25th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Julie, I’ve only been to a couple of classes, but the gist I’ve gotten is that Yoga Nidra is supposed to be NOT sleep, per se, but “yogic sleep” a name for a certain quality of meditation in which you enter the deep sleep state without losing the qualities that make you “awake.” I hope I have that right.
(My yoga studio does a type of “American modern” hatha yoga called Anusara yoga.)
However, when I felt asleep, I just felt asleep — no different from the usual asleep. And then yesterday, I didn’t feel asleep at all.
September 25th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Okay, Heather! So I’m not crazy!
At the same time, though, I feel worried that I’m going to let this little thing scare me away from the class. Like that would be a weak thing for me to do.
Sorry about your desk!
September 25th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Sleeping in yoga class totally freaks me out!! The class I take, we only do it for about fifteen minutes at the end of class, but I always feel like it’s only three. I swear to dog I fall asleep
But no, nothing like that has ever happened to my eyesight or any other senses. But then, I don’t think we’re given enough time to go to sleep as deeply as you did.
Heather – that is funny about leaning too close to the computer. I actually just talked to my eye doctor about that because I wear contacts and she was saying how “perfect” my sight was with them, and what a “perfect” candidate for corrective surgery I am. So I told her about how hard it is for me to focus on the computer screen. I mean, I set up my work station just like they tell you, I have an ergonomic chair adjusted just so, and I take breaks every couple hours, and I STILL have to lean in like it’s a paperback. What gives? She told me I should get +1 OTC glasses like they sell at the drug store for folks who can’t read good
She said that computer screens are notoriously hard to adjust to, and that it’s best to have “special” glasses for them.
Of course that advice blows if you aren’t a contact lens wearer, because you’d look pretty funny with two pairs of glasses on
But hey, at least its not just you!
(I have this odd way of not making anyone feel any better. I realize this.)
September 25th, 2007 at 9:50 am
*bows head in shame* I haven’t been to my Yoga class in months. I sorta blame plantar fascitis, which made walking to and from class (I don’t have a car) very difficult for a little while.
Also, the laziness.
I should start up again.
Were you really enjoying the class otherwise? That’s what the deal breaker would be for me.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I gotta admit, that sounds a little scary, Diana. And strange.
The sleep part (or deep meditation or whatever) sounds awesome though
September 28th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Sirshasana makes my eyes feel like they are going to explode sometimes.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I have an audio book of Yoga Nidra and I find it awesome for helping me wind down at the end of a particularly stressful day. Because I do it when I’m already in bed getting ready for sleep, I find it usually puts me to sleep, but I wake up long enough to hear the coming out of it part before I fall back asleep again.
October 1st, 2007 at 8:08 pm
How scary is that???
As much as I want the laser eye surgery, a general phobia of screwing ‘em up even worse has kept me from moving forward with that. I’d've prolly freaked out in the middle of Yoga had that happened to me!