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Join our restorative, yin and nidra teacher Natalia Vasquez as she’ll lead you through a 1 hour yoga nidra practice, a guided meditation in savasana. This is a great practice to do on its own, or after an asana practice for deep relaxation. It is thought that 30 minutes of a yoga nidra practice is equivalent to 4 hours of sleep.

In the practice of yoga nidra it is possible to enter a state between wakefulness and sleep. As your body settles into stillness for the duration of the practice you can tap into the realms of your mind and your emotions and begin to non-judgmentally observe what’s happening in your inner world.

Before you begin:

Find a quiet and comfortable space you can lie down on your back. Take a moment to settle into savasana. You can place a bolster below your knees but make sure your feet are touching the ground.

You can cover yourself with a blanket in case you get cold, or to place under your head. Make sure your neck is neutral and that your body feels completely supported.

If you do not want to fall asleep completely, maybe it’s a good idea to set an alarm.

Happy practicing! Namaste.

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Kino is back on Chat & Chai: Yoga Talks from Miami Life Center for a talk she gave our students on the difficulty in maintaining a daily practice.

In Ashtanga Yoga we are asked to practice 6 times a week, except moon days. Why is it so hard? What type of foundation must we establish to make this possible and allow our intentions to manifest in a real way?

Maintaining a daily practice over a long period of time becomes possible when we approach the practice as a ritual of compassion towards ourselves.

Coming on to the path of yoga, as Kino explains in this episode, is like making a U-turn in our lives. It’s a sort of paradigm shift. How do we know this U-turn moment is something were yearning for, or ready for? Being on the path can look different for everyone, but this U-turn is a defining moment for every sincere yoga practitioner.

Once we’ve made this U-turn, what are we after in the practice? How does it change our relationship with the world around us and the world inside us? Listen in to learn why consistent practice over time, and the difficulties that come with it are necessary for these changes to take root in our lives and extend beyond the mat.

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For this last episode in our series on the 8 limbs of Ashtanga Yoga according to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Natalia Vasquez talks to us about the last limb of Samadhi, or liberation. It is the final state in meditation or complete absorption. The eightfold path we’ve gone through is one of the paths prescribed for reaching this liberated state. Patanjali has provided us with a detailed map to this higher consciousness, by looking into the nature of the mind and how the mind can be transformed. This stage of Samadh is especially difficult to put into words and explain, since it’s through experience that true understanding comes. Listen in as Natalia expresses her understanding of the theory of Samadhi presented in The Yoga Sutras.

Natalia leads our Yin, Nidra and Restorative program at Miami Life Center. Her self-studying and self-loving approach to healing is carried through to her students. Her classes have become an integral part of MLC, serving as a beautiful compliment to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga.

This wraps up our talks on the 8 limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, taken from talks we had going on this past summer where we took a closer look at some of the key teachings of yoga, to gain a deeper understand of why we step on our mat.

Stay tuned for more podcast episodes coming soon! With Kino, Tim, MLC teachers and special guests.