Okay, we're going to go over some guidelines for the practice of yoga nidra before we begin, so if you have your book, you can turn to the general suggestions on page 74. And otherwise, listen to me, I'm going to go over them. First of all is having a quiet room that is comfortable for you to be in that you know, you'll be undisturbed. And that you can practice it, make sure the temperature is too hot or not too cold, as your body temperature will tend to drop during the practice. You also want to make sure that it's well ventilated, but it's not too breezy. So again, your body temperature will drop as in sleep, so you might want to light blanket to put over the body.

And you also want semi darkness for yoga nidra light has a very powerful effect on the brain. So if it's totally dark, you're more apt to fall asleep. And if it's really bright than your mind stays very alert and closer into the waking conscious states. So just send my darkness maybe, you know, close the blinds if it's daytime and dim the lights when we have a small light on if it's evening, just to make sure that you can kind of stay in that relaxed and in between alpha brainwave state. You want to make sure that your clothing is loose fitting and comfortable so that you don't have any tight like watches or hair bands or, you know, tight elastic waist or wrist, things that are going to disturb the mind during the practice. And you want to make sure that you're practicing on an empty stomach and generally that means about three hours after a regular meal or if you've just had a snack maybe a half an hour.

If you tend to get low blood sugar, you can have a little bit of you know juice or something right beforehand and that's fine also. So if you tend to fall asleep easily during meditations a good idea to take a cold shower beforehand, or do some light asanas to keep your awareness up. And I'm going to have a short section on a few great, awesome ways to practice Austin and stuff would be postures. To practice before you get into the yoga nidra. You also want to make sure that you are practicing under a qualified teacher, that would be me, or any, you know, if you take any other Yoga nidra from somebody make sure that they're qualified. It's okay to do it just with like a CD that you purchase.

But, you know, someone that that can guide you through from beginner to intermediate to advanced stages is important. So that's one reason I decided to do this online course is to make sure there was more instruction available for people who really want to get the most out of this practice. So one of the last few things is That's a great thing to use. If you're coming home from work, and you are transitioning into just being at home in the evening, you can just do a short Yoga nidra to help kind of refresh your mind. And the last thing to remember is not to be too concerned with going really deep into the practice. Just be comfortable and confident about relaxing your body and, you know, noticing what comes up.

If you do have negative images that come up, also don't be disturbed by them. The mind is detoxing, if you will, from any negative clutter that we've been carrying around, you know, our whole life and even generational information patterns that's, you know, that is held in our cells in our DNA, we're purging and releasing that so sometimes if we do remember a negative image, just, you know, you can be aware of that and think great that stuff is Coming up and out, it's not in there anymore. You know, I had a personal experience where I was falling asleep a lot during some of my first Yoga nidra practices. My instructor was telling us in the class that that was totally normal that sometimes we purge stuff that the conscious mind and the subconscious mind knows that would be best if we didn't remember that we were purging it so we fall asleep as a protective mechanism.

And I didn't really like that I wanted to be aware of what was coming up and out. So I drank a little cup of coffee before one of my classes and now I know. Now I know but I had to learn firsthand and that was I stayed completely alert the whole time. But I had a lot of disturbing images come up during the practice and after afterwards, I had to speak to my instructor you know, what is all this and she said, Just let it you know, kind of settle over the next few days write about it if you want but don't be too concerned about it because Is this is normal This is what the process of the practice is doing helping to clear. And the more I settled with it, the more I started to realize that this may not be all my own stuff, I was starting to think I had all these suppressed memories, but I also realized that there was collective memory that there was memory of all of humankind, that was stored in ourselves in our, in our DNA, and that I was accessing and clearing some of some of that that was very traumatic for stuff that, you know, hasn't even existed in my lifetime, like, you know, which is being burned at the stake and so forth.

These types of things. And, you know, I may have had a resonance with those experiences, you know, on some level of my being, but going through the practice and seeing those started to make me realize that we when we do this are not only healing ourselves, but there's a healing That goes back in time and I believe forward in time to, to, you know, our children when we do this practice. So this is amazing practice. So those are the main guidelines. You can see them in the book, or review this section. And great you're ready for the practice.