Yoga Nidra Script - Dream Exploration

DREAM EXPLORATION YOGA NIDRA

Internalization: Gross to Subtle – Stage 1 – 3 minutes
a) Remove wrist watches, glasses and anything tight on the body
b) Get a blanket, pillow under head, support for knees, get as comfortable as possible
c) “It is best to stay still during the practice ..but if you have to move, move mindfully and quietly and come back to stillness as soon as possible.”
d) Awareness of body and breath
e) Say to yourself mentally “I am practicing Yoga Nidra . . . I will stay awake for Yoga Nidra.”
f) Body preparation – alignment of the body
g) Release for Gross tensions – 3 deep breaths – say to yourself “letting go”
h) Awareness of the body – body floor contact points, body parts supported
i) Sounds around you – far to near
j) Awareness of breath – sound of breath in the nostrils
k) Awareness of the heartbeat

Sankalpa
a) Short positive statement in present or future tense
b) If you do not have a Sankalpa /Resolve or intention or today’s practice say “I will stay awake for Yoga Nidra”
c) Repeat 3 x with the exact same wording

Body Rotation – Stage 2 – 6 minutes
a) Same rotation each time
b) Good pacing
c) Right side, Left Side, Front, Back, Major Parts.  Whole Body

Breath  Awareness – Stage 3 – 4 minutes
a) 2 minutes Noticing the rise and the fall of the breath at the navel
b) Counting backwards from 9 to 0
c) If the count is lost start again at 9
d) If the count reaches 0 begin again at 9
e) Stay with the counting minutes at the navel
f) Stay with the breath at the navel
g) 2 minutes noticing rise and fall of the breath at the chest
h) Noticing the rise and the fall of the breath at the navel
i) Counting backwards from 9 to 0
j) If the count is lost start again at 9
k) If the count reaches 0 begin again at 9
l) Let go of the counting
m) Let go of the awareness of the breath at the chest

Opposites
a) Heavy
b) Light
c) Heavy
d) Light

Visualizations
It is time to re-enter your dream you are working with today. The dream you are painting is this workshop.

Enter the dream as if you were entering a familiar place
- Go to any location within the dream
- Maybe where the dream began
- Maybe another place in the dream
- Walk through the dream
- What do you see?
- What does it look like?
- Are the colors vibrant or dull?
- Is it crowded or spacious?
- Is it dark or light?
- Do you see anything that you did not see before
- What does it smell like?
- What does it taste like?
- What do you hear?
- Who else is there
- Who do you meet?
- Approach anything and anyone who can offer information about the questions you have and ask them about your dream
- Ask them questions like: who are you?  Why are you here? What are you wearing?
- Ask them about anything that you don’t understand

2nd Sankalpa
a) Time to repeat your Sankalpa
b) If you do not have a Sankalpa or intention for today’s practice  use again the Sankalpa “I will stay awake for Yoga Nidra”
c) 3 x with the exact same wording and the belief that it will come true

Externalization – Stage 4 – approximately 3 minutes
a) Awareness of Breath
b) External Environmental  Awareness – Sounds – near to far
c) Remember . . room, ceiling, walls, floor
d) Awareness of the Body – Body floor contact
e) Repeat the Practice is over
f) Begin to move – wiggle toes and fingertips, roll wrists and ankles,
g) Make movements larger but be mindful of what is around you
h) Roll over to fetal position and take 3 deep breaths
i) Push up to seated and join me in the chanting of Om

Creativity Coaching - Lesson 5 - How to better join with yourself to support your creative efforts an creative life?

I think what would help me better join with myself to support my creative efforts and creative life?

a) Journaling

I feel more centered and joined with myself when I journal.  I consider answering these questions as part of my journaling process.  I liked the idea the person in your example did with having a separate journal for inner critic. That is something I may play with.

b) Doing Yoga

I get a lot of my most creative ideas in savasana at the end of yoga.  My stress level inhibits my creativity and yoga is one of the biggest destressors I know.

c) Meditating Consistently

When I meditate consistently I really change. I am more positive.  I feel better and my creativity as it a higher level.  I also hear less negative criticizing self talk.

Matangi and Me

om hrīṁ aiṁ śrīṁ  namo bhagavati ucchiṣṭacāṇḍāli  śrī mātaṅgeśvari sarvajanavaśaṁkari svāhā

“Reverence to Adorable Matangi, the outcast and residue, who gives control over all creatures.” (Frawley, p.143)

I have been exploring the Southern Asian goddess for three semesters in the LMU Yoga Philosophy Certificate program.

  Of all the goddesses I learned about so far Matangi is the one that resonates the most with me. She is called on to achieve command over speech, creativity, music, knowledge, and fine arts and to remove disharmony and achieve harmony in life.  For me, what is most important about Matangi is that she is both goddess of arts/creativity as well as being an untouchable, dark Sarawati.  As a brown artist yogini interested in creativity and the creative process,  Matangi and I connected.

“Matangi is the dark mystic, ecstatic or wild form of Saraswati. . . Saraswati is often a goddess of only ordinary learning, art and culture. Matangi rules over the extraordinary, which takes us beyond the boundaries of convention…She is that part of Sarasvati that is allied with the transforming energies of Kali.” (Frawley 1994: 140)

In the many descriptions of Matangi, she holds in her four hands: a noose, a sword, a goad and a club. I think of the noose as an instrument to hang the demons and deterrents to my creative process and personal growth including getting in my own way. The noose may kill my scared self-deprecating self in order to make room for the new, true and authentic self. The sword cuts through fears and opposition and allows me to be the heroine of my own story filled with strength and fearlessness. The goad, like a hook, encourages me to move forward and remove all obstacles and troubles from my dharmic path. The club, one of the simplest of all weapons, reminds me to trust my intuition, celebrate my primitive nature, and to stay strong against self-doubt and any other enemies. The club also symbolizes my devotion and surrender to a higher power.

Another of my strong identifications with Matangi is her status as an untouchable.

I consider myself in many ways untouchable because I am mixed race and not just mixed race but a combination of black and Jewish, two things that a lot of people don't like (or even hate).

Caste painting of a mulatto marriage

 I was in India traveling through some villages around Jodhpur my host pointed to the untouchable camp with disdain and disparaging words and all I could think was: they are me.

That's what people say about black people in America (especially in the past, but still in the present).  I explained to my host how in the 60s there were different water fountains for blacks and whites and how if a "colored" person went into a white person's swimming pool, the whole pool would have to be drained and scrubbed to get our pollution out.

White man throwing bleach into a swimming pool with blacks in it

When I was looking for places to study yoga in India, I hated all the schools that wrote this teacher was a Brahman, blah, blah.. I thought what do I care about that, I want to go to a school where the teacher is a Dalit like me.  I don't want to hear about how pure anybody is.   What do I care about that? I am not pure. I am not seeking purity. Everything is not pure - a dirty Jew, a lazy n word - that's me.  THAT'S ME!!

 In America, I always have identified with being both the pollution and the polluter. Being a black/Jewish artist yogini, to find a goddess who is an outcaste and a goddess of creativity helps me not feel so alone and isolated.

Matangi urges me to go very deep into self- exploration, explore my darkness and find my unique voice that comes out of my personal narrative. “Matangi represents the power of women’s creative voices to overturn or unsettle the patriarchal patterns of accepted female behaviours and opinions. She pushes the boundaries and extends the limits of our horizons so that when we manifest the power of our creative energies, we can express what has previously been prohibited or reviled, and we can reveal what has been hidden and forgotten.” (Dinsmore-Tuli)

 Matangi is yama, the dark one. She encourages me to slow down and just sit and rest. “Creativity may involve ecstatic outpourings that are joyous and free, but it always also involves spending time in uncertain places which are frightening and unknown, times when all there is to do is to wait (for the seeds to germinate), for the bread to rise, for the editor to get back with the comments on the manuscript). All these, aspects of creativity are part of the process.  Matangi’s great power is to be equally at home in all these phases.” (Dinsmore-Tuli, p. 309-310)

Matangi is worshipped with "food from stained hands and lips,” which is a huge reversal of Hindu rituals that are usually obsessed with purity. She asks for leftover food, which is normally considered highly polluting, because she emerged from leftover food. I find a great relief in embracing what is not pure and exploring the darkness, the wild eroticism, being untamable, going beyond those places any of us would mention in polite conversation and experiencing the creativity that is there is what I want to do (and may in fact be doing). “Her special siddhi is the capacity for abundant creativity and the expression of unique vision.” (Dinsmore-Tuli, p. 309)

  Matangi is beautiful and unapologetically sexual. One of her names according to Kinsley is “she whose limbs are intoxicated (with passion).”  Mata means thought, opinion, wild, and passionate. “Creativity and sexuality are two sides of the same coin.” (Dinsmore-Tuli, p.309)  Matangi is an avatar of  Parvati when she dressed as an untouchable to seduce Shiva.For me this seduction story reminds me of the desire for the Other in both passionate and horrible ways.

I think of the inestimable rapes of black women in America during slavery and beyond by white men, as well as, loving mix raced relationships that were not legal in all of the US until 1968.  I think of the countless rapes of Dalit women in India.

Matangi is also about using our sexuality when we (as women) want not for the power, pleasure or spiritual awakening of men.

Matangi brings awareness of the ebb and flow of the creative process.  We can’t force ourselves to create when it is not the time. “Just as there is no point in pressing a woman for sexual intercourse if she is too tired, or too premenstrual or otherwise at the wrong time of her particular cycle, so too there is no point in pushing for productivity in the reflective or evaluative phase of the creative cycle.” She reminds us to be in the present moment and take it for what it is. Her seat in the human body is the throat, the fifth chakra. It is in the throat chakra that we speak our truth. “She also resides in the tip of the tongue, the place wherein speech is articulated and wherein we are able to taste the essence of things.” (Frawley, p.142) In addition, Matangi, the elephant goddess, is related to the ear and our ability to listen and understand.

According to Kinsley, Matangi has a few other origin stories besides the Parvarti-Shiva seduction. The first form is a Buddhist tale about hunter Matanga and his daughter Prakrti (an early form of Matangi) who falls in love with Ananda.  Ananda first encounters Prakrti when he is looking for water. She refuses to give him water because of her low caste. Ananda responds “I am not asking you what your caste is, I am only asking for water.” Affirmed as a person who is not just an outcaste, she becomes instantly enamored.  Prakrti uses her mother’s magic to attract Ananda, who falls for her but later resists her with the help of the Buddha. Impressed by the power of the Buddhist teachings, Prakrti becomes a Buddhist nun.

There is also the story Uccista-mantangi, who animates from remnants of the food Vishnu and Lakshmi gave Shiva and Parvarti  at a dinner party. Shiva blesses her with the ability to grant people to control their enemies and obtain objects of their desire by repeating her mantra.  Matangi is also sometimes considered the daughter of the Rishi Matang/Matanga and she was given to him as a boon for his merits as a sage. “Playing a ruby-studded vina, ecstatic, delighting in sweet speech, I remember the daughter of the sage Matanga, who has soft dark- emerald limbs.” (Frawley, p.142)

Because the guru instructs through the spoken word, Matangi represents the teachings of a guru and the guru tradition. “Matangi’s voice is brave and terrifying to those who are constrained by fear to live their lives according to propriety and expectations.  She rattles people, pokes holes in their comfortable boxes of convention, and embarrasses the cowed and silent by singing loud and clear.” (Dinsmore-Tuli, p.312) In several festivals, Matangi is the jester.  She is like the boy in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes who says the emperor is naked. “…. her status as an outcaste gives her the power to inhabit the outer regions of consciousness where no-one else will go, to say outrageous and alarming things, to be vilified, despised and humiliated, and through it all to remain surrendered with a clear pure heart so that what needs to be manifested can find its way out.” (Dinsmore, p. 309-310)

“The Tantrasara at several points says that by meditating upon, reciting the mantra of, or worshipping Matangi one gains power over others, the power of having everything one says come true, and the power of attracting people.” (Kinsley,  p.220) As a yantra maker, I will connect with Matangi by making her yantra.

In Harish Johari’s Tools for Tantra, I learned about the form and colors in Matangi’s yantra. The bhupur is dark olive green perhaps reminding us of her connection to the forest and the wild. The yantra’s eight petaled lotus symbolizes the eight fold prakriti (the five elements and the three internal organs. The colors of the lotus petals are pink, which I consider the color of the yoni and remind me of our sexual nature and the connection between sexuality and creativity. The yantra has a six pointed light yellow ochre star with a touch of emerald green and is set in a neutral white background. The six pointed star is a union of Shiva and Shakti, masculine and feminine, and represents our human place between heaven and earth. The yellow ochre perhaps represents  turmeric and the power of the sun and the green the Anahata chakra. The golden bindu represents Matangi herself.

And as for Matangi and me, our journey together,  I am sure she will always be with me. I don't know how I have lived 45 years without knowing her.  But I have found her now. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to my life Matangi!  Please come in, the door (or the yoni) is open!

om aiṁ namaḥ ucchiṣṭacāṇḍāli mataṅgi sarvasaśaṁkari svāhā

Books that I cite:

Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses by Dr. David Frawley

Yoni Shakti by Dr. Uma Dinsmore-Tuli

Tools for Tantra by Harish Johari

Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas by David Kinsley

Creativity Coaching Question Week 4 - How can you “put that (my negative childhood) behind you”

It is hard to let go of the negative aspects of my childhood.  I sometimes hold on to them very tight as if I enjoy the misery and/or find it as a convenient excuse for not doing something well or not following through on things. 

My mother always did a million things coming home exhausted and spread too thin.  I learned later she did this because she didn’t like being home and was afraid if she were home she would get depressed.  I find myself just like my mother constantly in motion without true priorities.

Both my parents had many demons and I spent a lot of time raising myself.  I think they both did what they could as parents but didn’t really know how to be parents themselves. My father spent much of his child in an orphanage, my mother’s father said he was getting a pack of cigarettes and never came back. Both my parents were raised by single mothers who were mentally ill. My parents also struggled with an interracial relationship in a time when it was not acceptable.

My parents were very much against me being an artist and I was thrown out of the house for awhile until we made amends. I ended up not following through on my dream to be an artist because I wasn't able to stand on my own two feet without their approval and dropped out of art school and moved back home and studied to be an architect which the found much more acceptable. Later, I studied to be a Set Designer, one step closer to being an artist than an architect but still not what I truly wanted.

I, like many women, was molested by a friend of the family at a young age and later raped by a person I thought was my friend.  These early traumas have been things I have been dealing with for the past 30 + years.

But what can I do to put all that behind me?

1) Attempt to not see myself as marginal because of being biracial combination of black and Jewish. See myself as worthy as everyone else.  Embrace my unique background as a place where my personal story, drive and creativity comes from.

2) Know that I need to stand up for myself and not try to avoid any confrontation because it reminds me of the turbulent arguments I saw as a child.  Realize taking a stand for myself and what I believe in is fine.

3) Boost my self-confidence and self-esteem move beyond my little girl thinking I don’t fit it anywhere.

4) Let go of never being good enough and be grateful for what is working in my life.

5) Be ok with staying still sometimes and nesting and self-nurturing.  Realize that ideas need to incubate. Not live my mother’s story of constantly moving to avoid depression but create my own based on what is happening in my own life.

6) Realize it is GREAT to be an artist even if my parents didn't approve 30 years ago.  My father has been dead since 2005 and my mother has changed a lot from the mother I grew up with.  I need to live for me not shadows and experiences of long ago.

Kamala and Creativity

Creativity is one of the things that I am most interested in life.  How to stay creative, feed my own creativity and develop as a creative being, as well as, how to help others awaken their creativity, feel safe enough to create and be open to creative energy and ideas?  These are the things that most attract me to Kamala.  Getting in touch with the creative force that supports us humans in whatever we desire to do.  Exploring how do I give permission to myself and others to be creative? This is what I desire to be apart of and hope to create in my yoga studio, a center for creativity, where the mind, body, and spirit are celebrated.

 I started an online program to be a Creativity Coach in the hopes and answering some of these questions. I see many people filled with talent and desire not creating anymore. They are afraid to create, too tired to create, blocked or disenchanted with all the rejection involved with being an artist.

I taught The Artist Way this winter.  I taught a couple Art/Yoga Fusion Workshops in the fall: Heart Mandala for Self Esteem, Gratitude Yantra for Thanskgiving and Dream Exploration hoping to awaken and support people (and myself) in their creativity by fusing art, yoga and meditation.  My idea was to relax and open people with Yoga and Meditation so they could really make art from a different level of consciousness.

Laskshmi has never been a goddess who has interested me much.

 I think of her mainly in her form as the "good wife" or people asking her for money.  I like the idea in the lecture of seeking her for wealth of spiritual knowledge as opposed to material wealth and that true wealth is generosity.

I am very interested in the Kamala - Kali cycle of the Full Moon and Dark moon, pleasure - non-attachment cycle.  I would like to read more about this, somehow balancing life between Kamala and Kali.

I love that the lotus is the journey of the aspirant and it reminds us to trust in our path.  I embrace the idea of pleasure in the body and the senses.  I wrote before how I reject this idea of the body is impure and something to be reviled or ignored.  I want to delight my sense and feel joy in being alive.  I don't relate to the path of austerities even though disciple in something that is very important to me.

Finally, in the graphic novel I have been working on for so many years (without much to show for it) one my characters is named Kamala.

She is the obsession of the hero.  She is a prostitute who he falls in love with, is separated from, pines for for many years and finally is reunited with to only discover she is lesbian and never loved him.  I didn't  know anything about Mahavidya Kamala when I wrote the story.  I just knew in a dictionary of names Kamala meant desire. I think after this  lecture I want to make sure she is fully developed to honor her name and not just a foil for the hero without her own unique story.