Monthly Deep Rest meditation class
Life can be challenging, deep rest mediation can help.
Do you get caught up in negative thinking spirals that make you feel overwhelmed, worried and uneasy? These opinionated voices in your mind that just won’t let your rest and are interfering in your day? Your body and mind that influence each other.
Have you ever experienced the following?
A thought pops in your head out of nowhere, let’s say someone’s dog. Then depending on who or how you are, you create a story around the dog. Like ‘it’s a nice dog, and it’s so fluffy I’d love to have one of those’, or ‘it’s so annoying, barking all the time’ or whatever story you create. Then depending on the story emotions and feelings come up, there is joy and your body relaxes because the story is nice. But it can also be that frustration arises and your body starts to tense and feel uncomfortable.
Thoughts create feelings and feelings create thoughts.
Looking at it the other way around also works. You wake up feeling heavy for whatever reason, you call that feeling sad. Then you start thinking ‘why am I feeling sad?’ and this whole thought machine starts giving you ideas for why you might be feeling sad, even though it just started out as a heavy feeling. And if the story is good enough, it might leave you feeling upset and even more sad for a longer time. Maybe even ruining a good part of your day, or worse, leading to burnout or depression.
Experiencing these unpleasant though-feeling cycles a lot, can lead to stress and physical discomfort or worse. And trying to stop the mind and body, to not think or feel, never really worked, ever…
Deep rest meditation is a form of yoga nidra. During this practice you are invited to lie down comfortably, which allows you to explore your body, mind, thoughts, beliefs and emotions.
First you make an affirmation or set an intention for your practice and create and find your safe space. Then you sense your whole body as it is in that moment. There is no need to change anything or to create opinions about what you’re experiencing. And from there you can explore thoughts, beliefs and emotions through inquiry. This enables you to explore what happens on different levels and helps to create more neutrality towards your experience.
This practice brings together yoga, yoga nidra, meditation, mindfulness and modern neuroscience, into a therapeutic practice. It helps you to understand yourself, feel better and it gives you tools to create more balance between mind and body. Would you like to try it out for free? Discover the 30 minute deep rest meditation practice available on my Youtube channel.
Every 1st Wednesday of the month at 16:45 CET I share a Deep Rest meditation session live online via Zoom.
This years’ classes will be:
July 3rd
August 7th
September 4th
October 2nd
November 6th
December 4th
This is a group class, for which you will receive the Zoom link a day before class. Feel free to leave the camera off if you prefer. Make sure you are in a comfortable place and you have support available for yourself during practice but also after practice if something comes up for you. Feel free to reach out if you want to share about your experience or if you have questions. You can do so by sending an email to rianne@riannewolswinkel.com