Podcast: Tracee Stanley, Radiant Rest and Yoga Nidra

Tracee Stanley doesn’t want you to fear rest. Stanley is a yoga Nidra lineage holder, meditation and self-inquiry teacher, and co-founder of the Empowered Wisdom Yoga Nidra School. Her new book is Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity.

Be sure to read Stanley’s essay, “Embrace the Transition” which appears in the May/June 2021 issue of Spirituality & Health.

“We have been out of balance for quite some time, and I think that the pandemics—the multiple pandemics—that we find ourselves in right now, whether it be COVID, whether it be racism, whether it be climate crisis … they all to me have a thread of not honoring the divine feminine.”

In this episode, Rabbi Rami and Stanley discuss yoga Nidra, “the yoga of sleep,” as it connects to the divine feminine, the earth, and the self. They explore the essentiality of the divine feminine and the return to the mother—and how such a return can offer humanity a “new story.”

Later they discuss the necessity of yoga Nidra practice in recognizing the Self, and how the practice allows the expansion of Self in the face of oppression.

They close out their conversation with the idea that yoga Nidra is the act of total surrender, that the practice of yoga Nidra is counter-culture to the grind mentality, to trauma, and that it is okay to let go and just rest.

“Yoga Nidra is this process of completely non-doing and releasing of thought—it’s a place of no thought.”

Read more from Tracee Stanley: “What Does It Mean to Relax?”

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