Major Points:

• IRest Yoga Nidra, supported by research studies, helps those with stress, anxiety, depression and is used to help returning veterans in the US with pain and PTSD.
• IRest Yoga Nidra is a structured relaxation practice based on the Pancha Maya Kosha model for students to find their wholeness through this practice.
• In the practice, students develop their own sankalpas based on a three part system.

00:47                                     This is episode 118 of Changing the Face of Yoga. And my guest today is Gina McCauley and Gina has graciously agreed to be part of my meditation theme and she has taken training and is an IRest meditation teacher. We're going to discuss Irest but let's hear a little bit about Gina. She began as a student in the late eighties, and she's been teaching since 2009. She feels there's no one practice, no one style for everyone. She offers different things for different people so that they can take what they need. She has an advanced diploma in Yoga teaching through the Academy of Yoga Learning, a graduate certificate in Yoga therapy through The Australian Institute of Yoga Therapy and is a certified Irest Yoga Nidra teacher. She's on the faculty of the Academy of Yoga Learning and Australia Institute of Yoga therapy. She runs her own teacher training and she is undertaken studies with Indian teachers, A.G. And Indra Mohan and Saraswathi Vasudevan. I hope I said that right. She's a senior registered teacher with Yoga Australia and has served on the Yoga Australia Victorian Committee. She is continually studying and practicing yoga and is currently inspired by Lee Blashki, Paul Wood and Richard Miller. Welcome. Gina. I'm so glad that you agreed to come on and talk about this and is there anything you would like to add to that?

02:32                                     Oh, well thanks Stephanie. Thanks for inviting me. When you string it all together like that, it sounds bigger than how it actually is. No I have nothing to add to that.

02:44                                     All right. It is still an impressive list.

02:50                                     Well, it makes me feel a little bit more important than what I actually am. Everybody doing their own thing to the best of their abilities. As I go through that, I do bits of training here and there that support where I'm at. So when you string it together it does sound impressive.

03:13                                     Good. I'm glad. We're going to talk about IRest and I think it will be good. I'm sure almost everyone has probably heard of it, but it probably be good to have just a little background about it and maybe what makes it a bit different from other types of meditation.

03:32                                     Yeah. Irest is Yoga Nidra, basically. It was developed by Dr. Richard Miller and Richard tells how he rocked up to a yoga class to meet people and Yoga Nidra was part of that class. He was trying to fit into a community. And it turns out that, this little class was silent. So he didn't actually get to meet any other people, but he got to meet himself with his little story that he tells through Yoga Nidra. And he knew that Yoga Nidra was the method.

                                                He just really had a deep connection to it in that first instance. And so over the years, he started practicing it and eventually started teaching it. And really that was really his thing and through, students and through other people, he was teaching Yoga Nidra to ex-serviceman. And they were going back to their peers and saying how much they were getting benefit from this practice of Yoga Nidra. And eventually the military approached him and said we have been hearing about this thing you're doing and the results you're getting. And we'd really love to, see how it works and do some studies and see if it would support other veterans. And so he started this research program in the military, but they said to him, you can't call it Yoga Nidra, you can't call it yoga because we're the military.

05:08                                     Right.

05:12                                     He spent some time with what can I call this thing, what is it? And when he came up with was essentially what they doing is, well, what he was doing was integrative restoration. So really, and that's what Yoga Nidra is - it's restoring and reintegrating ourselves to our fullness, our wholeness. He just started to call it IRest and the military loved it. They loved it, they thought it was great. They did this study and that was quite successful. And they said, oh, love this. We want to make this part of an option for returned servicemen when they come back to help support them with pain and PTSD etc. And they said, you can call it anything you like. We love it so much you can call it whenever you like that. Then Richard said, Irest Yoga Nidra is what we call it, or IRest Yoga Nidra meditation, but essentially Yoga Nidra is meditation and I love it too.

                                                It's I what I love about it is it is a beautifully gentle form of meditation. So it's not forcing the body into some position that isn't quite right. And you know, not everybody as you would know, with the people that you've been speaking to. Sometimes certain things aren't available for people. Sitting still with your legs crossed on the cushion is not available to a lot of people. So are we saying that you can't do meditation if you can't sit like that. One of the things I love about Yoga Nidra is that you can do it anywhere, anytime, any position, any way you like sitting, standing, lying, walking. And it is so beautiful and restorative. And I think personally meditation should be about that. Restoring, reintegrating, that kind of thing. The kind of practice of coming back to your wholeness. One of the things that Yoga Nidra does that helps in that journey is as people might know, it is within this framework of the Pancha Maya Koshas, the five layers or shields that veil our true nature essentially.

                                                So Yoga Nidra takes us through these five layers, which are the physical body, the energy body or the breath layer, the mind that processes that kind of information from our senses, where feelings and emotions kind of sit. The deeper wisdom mind that is that place where we have the wisdom and the Aha moments. It's also the part of the mind where we hold our habitual patterning and the joy or bliss layer that covers all of those five layers that cover out true nature. The process of Yoga Nidra, any Yoga Nidra takes us through these five layers to help us reconnect back into our wholeness.

                                                To be able to have this study though, Richard had to be very clear about a protocol. These sort of studies must have a protocol to prove your point, I guess. And so he developed some very clear processes, a 10 step process that includes the journey through the koshas to come to your wholeness. It's through this model that the IRest protocol has been developed. It's very specifically taught and trained. so shall I keep going on about that?

09:12                                     That's great. I didn't realize all this. It's the first time I've noticed IRest has Yoga Nidra after it? All right, go ahead. No, I would continue. I think it's very interesting.

09:32                                     That's a great point about not realizing that Yoga Nidra is IRest. One of the things with Yoga Nidra is it has those elements of it. And if you think about a traditional Yoga Nidra we, we do our sankalpa which is clarifying our intentions, our sankalpa, our mission or dharma if you like. It has, generally an instruction from the teacher that asks us to maybe set an intention to remain aware and awake. It's talks us through a body scan. Usually every yoga nidra has this lovely body scan associated with it. And then some kind of breathing practice like a breath counting practice and then feelings, it goes through feelings generally or something like heavy, light, hot or cold.

                                                And then in a traditional yoga nidra, you might go into something like a visualization, which is when we're working on those secret layers of the mind. But one of the things with visualization, it can be problematic with certain types of trauma A little bit of visualization; they might be walking through a forest or in a garden or in the ocean or about water. All these different kinds of associations can actually be a little bit triggering for some people. The IRest protocol has a very specific process through that area where we don't, so much do the visualisations. There are definitely some that we can but generally we're looking at the functioning of the mind in terms of emotions and thoughts and long held beliefs and we work with opposites as you do when doing Yoga Nidra. And then we come out through the process, same as you would in a normal Yoga Nidra through the intention and I guess your sankalpa and re-integration.

                                                But to make it have a specific way to train and, and to have it have a specific protocol, we kind of take out that potential trauma issue that could be triggering to some people and we add this more specific work with our emotions and with our thoughts. So really looking at our deep held thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and about the world. Seeing if there can be an alternative or an opposite to that that can help us to break free of some of that patterned conditioning. It's often part of issues when dealing with our emotions and things. Our conditioning can really get in the way of that. So it's a lovely way to help break free of that. And as I said, it's very gentle when we go through the whole relaxation process, the body scan, we're interested in people sensing what's going on in the body, re-integrating a felt sense of themselves that somatic sense of themselves, which we often come away from. We kind of tend to not listen to our messages from our body.

13:16                                     True. Especially if trauma is involved. Obviously since the military liked it, there must have been a positive result from the protocol that he put together. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like?

13:33                                     They loved it. I'm just gonna tell you a little bit here. This is from the IRS website. I'm actually just going to read straight from it. "Based on the current studies, these IRest in the military, the defense center of excellence has approved IRest as a complementary and alternative medicine warranting continuing usage for its use in the treatment of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). In addition the US Army surgeon general has listed Yoga Nidra (based on the research with IRest) as a tier one approach for addressing pain management in military care. IRest has been shown to be effective in scientific trials for conditions including chronic pain, sleep problems, depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress." So there's a lot.

                                                And then from the IRest website there's links to a whole heap of studies being done on that. Things like IRest meditation for older adults with Depression, Effectiveness of integrative restoration or IRest Yoga Nidra for mindfulness, sleep, pain in health care workers, Effects of Integrative Restoration IRest on perceived stress in in workers, Comparative effectiveness of three occupational therapy sleep interventions: A randomized controlled study. There are all kinds of different research, but the people who are really quite interested in that kind of thing and really getting to the in to the depths of it. There is lots of research now on IRest specifically because of the protocol would help people to so you could a handle on them. It’s a huge benefit.

15:08                                     Great. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

15:12                                     The training, is quite extensive to be an IRest teacher. So you had to have had the practices obviously meditation to start with. We have level one and level two training and a certification process. The level one and level two, are very extensive, intensive week long training, a huge manual. I remember when I said I was heading off to do level one IRest training. My students are like a week of IRest. And I kind of felt the same myself for a while. Then I got there I was like, oh my gosh, this is a really full on. It's very extensive and it was great. But it was it was a full on training program. Which I wasn't quite expecting so I didn't get to spend a whole week of IRest.

16:09                                     No, doesn't sound quite relaxing. Did you go to the States for it or was it here in Australia?

16:19                                     No, I was so lucky that I got to do my level two and level one IRest training with Richard as he, I think he's only offered the training himself once and I was just fortunate enough to be able to be on both of those courses. but he doesn't do the training in Australia anymore. We have quite a few people in Australia now who can do the training. We do have training in Australia, in most of the capital cities. Fuyuko Toyota is a senior IRest trainer in Australia. She's in Brisbane; no, she's on the Gold Coast. To be honest with you. I'm not 100% sure, but I think she's on the Gold Coast. She offers trainings, Leigh Blashki also offers trainings at Irest Level one and two as well. The certification process is done through a supervisor and a mentor. It is a two year program with extensive study and in-depth training and study. My mentor was Fuyuko here in Australia, but, when you sign up for certification, you could get a mentor from anywhere around the world.

17:41                                     I used to teach seniors and I would always do a yoga nidra at the end. And I found what you said about the visualizations. I stopped saying what you had to do. I picked an emotion and say find some place where you feel happiness or where you feel calmness or where you feel joy or something. And then they would pick the environment. Some people say, oh no, I don't want to go to the beach, or I hate that, or I don't want to be on a mountain top, or you know, I don't want to do any of that. I thought yes, we better back off on that one.

18:13                                     No, exactly. You're exactly right. And one of the parts, the early parts of the protocol is this thing called your inner resource. And for me personally that has been the most powerful part of this practice. And basically it's exactly what you've just said. Its giving people, our participants, our students the opportunity to develop their skills, their own kind of special place, their own favourite place that they like to go to, to feel safe and secure. We encourage them to use their own memory, their own kind of imagination. So yeah, if they don't like mountain tops and prefer babbling brooks, then they can go for that.

                                                We encourage them through a process of  kind of questioning and interviewing to come up with something that really, really touches them internally. And the essence of that resource is not so much the memory. So we might think of something that made us feel really beautifully safe, peaceful and have a sense of well-being. But what we're actually interested in is when we bring that memory to our mind, how does that make us feel? And that is essentially what an inner resource is. So to my mind with that, you can be feeding into your inner resource just about anything that you come across that gives you that little sense of aw, that's beautiful. All that makes me feel so nice or isn’t that lovely or I feel really safe in this place or I feel really peaceful here so we can see an inner resource.

                                                Sometimes for me, the simplest thing to really help me trigger that inner resource and really bring it forward is quiet, simple things and not the great big grand things that I might've achieved. It's when I take that first sip of tea in the morning and you get Ahh, or coffee or whatever that might be. You get that sense of Ah, thank God, I've got my cuppa here. Or you get home and the dog's so excited to see you. It turns itself inside out because they are so excited or you know, that cuddle you might get from a newborn or your partner or a child. It's like, ah, this is so lovely feeling of, okay, I'm home or I'm here or this is just right, nothing else.

                                                Then we kind of realized that that really is our oh, deepest kind of truth and that is where we invite people to kind of wrangle those things in and feed them into your inner resource. And the reason we do this is so that in the practice, oh, in any time in your life when you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable, or more than a little bit uncomfortable, you've got this little tool within you that's always within you, that's always available that you can just tap into and know that there is a part of you that is unchanged, that is safe, that has this sense of well-being and peace and calm. Even though you're out in circumstances, like in the middle of a hurricane. We can have these kind of sense of deep peace within us, but it's well like everything and anything it takes practice to cultivate it. So as we cultivate that in the practice of IRest, we then have access to it more readily out in the world when we really need it.

21:51                                     Great point that, first of all, it takes practice and I agree with that. Secondly, that, if you do practice and have that available to you, that's very helpful when you really run into a lot of stress. Or whatever anxiety or just a bad day, you know, some days aren't great.  So did you teach Yoga Nidra before you got into IRest?

22:23                                     I did, yeah. And I taught that traditional, when I say traditional, probably what I taught was the Satchidanda Yoga Nidra, which I think is what most, most people are familiar with in Yoga Nidra, certainly where I coming from and all of my teachers and training is  Satchidanda Yoga Nidra, which is beautiful. And so yes, I taught that and I was always uncomfortable as a student in some of the visualizations and some of the associations as a teacher when I was teaching it.

                                                Knowing that there might've been people in the room, I remember once I had this lady who I knew had had an experience of almost drowning. I felt when we were doing the Yoga Nidra, I got to the visualization part and I didn't really realize until we were right in the middle of it, that there was this element of being in the water and then going under the water and you know, being completely safe and ok in the water. But it just really struck me that that would not be comfortable for me if I was in her position to have this kind of water visualization. And it just dawned on me in that moment that yeah, this isn't a one size fits all thing. What right do I have to be kind of imposing these things on people that may or may not be useful for them. And I think there's a fine line between it being a challenge and being useful to being a challenge and not being useful. So I don't think we can really judge that. So I came across IRest and that I discovered that through Leigh Blashki. I was just, Oh, this is so great because actually it gives people in the practice the option to choose their own so they can choose their own kind of emotion or they can choose their own feelings. But you might give them the option of choosing heavy and light or hot and cold or comfort, discomfort and that was really powerful for me. And I really have not taught that visualization in Yoga Nidra since I've learned IRest. And the people I teach it to when I started teaching it, lots of comments about how they enjoyed that. They didn't have kind of feel into that visualization that wasn't suited to them. But that they could kind of set their own framework for it really. That's powerful to people.

25:09                                     It is. Would you say that's the major difference between what we considered to be a traditional yoga Nidra and I'll leave traditional up to each individual and IRest or do you think there's other significant differences?

25:24                                     I think that is the main difference. There are other significant differences. So in that initial stage, Richard's broken the sankalpa if you like down into three parts. So whereas in the other kind of Yoga Nidra, we, the teacher might dictate what the intention is. So you might say and repeat to yourself, I'm practicing Yoga Nidra and I will remain aware and awake. That's kind of a common one that I would hear a lot and I would use a lot myself and then I would invite them to their own sankalpa.

                                                But Richard has broken that down into three. So he gives the student the option to set their own intention. So their intention might be, it might be to remain aware and awake, absolutely. But it might be: one of the things I often say is if you're here and you are exhausted and this is the only hour you have to yourself for the whole week and you need to rest, set your intention to rest deeply, there's nothing wrong with that. Having that big rest. It that might be to rest deeply, it might be to rest deeply while remaining aware and awake. It might be to explore a particular part of the practice. Maybe using the safe boundaries of the practice to experience a particular emotion that keeps arising might be a great intention. They might move into their own very specific sankalpa or we would probably call that, in the practice, it might be called your heartfelt longing or your heartfelt desire. But it's really that big picture intention of how you see yourself out in the world. What is the world asking of you? Is that kind of much bigger intention? Yeah, that's your sankalpa or your Dharma, your life purpose.

                                                It fits into that second part of that heartfelt mission, the heartfelt desire. And the third part is the inner resource. So we start there. We have that kind of initial relaxation phase that then we go through this sankalpa , the intention, the heartfelt desire and the inner resource, with a firm foundation of safety within the boundaries of the practice. Which really give people that sense of security. And I've really found that in myself that when I've got that foundation, that clear intention and clear inner resource the rest of the practice is quiet. I'll say easy. That's not really the right word. You feel quite safe working through the rest of the practice. The other thing is that the practice is pretty much always the same steps. So as a student you can feel safe knowing that after the inner resource we're going to do body sensing, and then we're doing breath sensing, and then we are doing feelings and emotions. Then we're doing beliefs. Then we're doing joy and the whole time through the practice, what's woven in is understanding or beginning to recognize that there is a part of you, the witnessing part of you, that can recognize all of the things that we're experiencing, the sensations, the breathing, the emotion, the joy that they're all changing, coming and going.

                                                And we begin to tap into our deeper awareness, which if you think of the Pancha Maya Kosha model is what those five veils, five shades are covering our true nature, that optimal awareness. Whatever you want to call that, whatever your tradition might call that central entity that the five koshas are covering. So that's the journey as we take that through this journey to this deep sense of awareness. We come out in a very clear way as well. We kind of do a little integration practice and back through the intention, the heartfelt desire, the inner resource to help them. To really anchor it and give clear bookends; the real clarity of the practice is in those 10 steps. Whereas, I had never really been trained in another form of yoga nidra that was so clear. Like there was lots of freedom I felt in the other forms of yoga nidra. And when I look back at that now, probably not much safety for students, not in the way I was teaching it at any rate because it was always different, that could change and I didn't really feel like I had that container. Whereas in IRest, I really feel that there's a clear container for holding me as I go through this process. And it's a real trust you know that as well.

30:26                                     Yeah. Because they could feel very vulnerable. I mean I always had my students close their eyes and, and just kind of relax and listen. Some, some laid down, some sat; it was up to them. I hadn't thought about it in quite that way before, but I think you have a good point. We're almost at the end of the podcast, Gina. Is there anything that you would like to go into with more depth or something we haven't talked about it all that you would like the listeners to know?

30:59                                     I think the only thing that I would add is: if this is interesting to anybody, teachers or students alike have a look on the IRS website. Because anybody who's done the IRest training is on the IRest website. So you can find a teacher in your local area. And if you are a yoga teacher, or even a psychologist, lots of psychologists do these IRest trainings as well, I recommend seeking another teacher who is teaching the student course. It's a six week course that students can do just to begin to learn about IRest for themselves. And then if that interests them, then source some level one training. If they want to come get on that path, that's the pathway. Anybody who's interested, I strongly recommend you have a fully trained IRest teacher. It can be level one, two or three. But yeah, just make sure you have an IRest trained teacher to take you through the process. It's beautiful. You'd be, you wouldn't regret it.

32:05                                     Okay. Do you teach it as part of a class or is it a separate meeting shall we say? I mean you come to teach just IRest.

32:17                                     Both. I do both. I have one class a week where it's a gentle IRest yoga nidra class.. And we would do gentle yoga and we do IRest yoga nidra and we do that every week. I also run the six week course periodically at my studio. So they are 90 minute sessions where we go into more detail about the stages of IRest and then we do an IRest practice focusing on each of the stages over those six weeks. The other thing that I do which I think really works well and I really love is I also teach a lot of yoga retreats. I love Yoga retreats. And on my yoga retreat retreats. I teach the six week course in the week retreat. So each day we're focusing on a different part of the IRest protocol and we're doing a different IRest practice each day on retreat. And I get lots of great feedback about that as well. That immersive kind of way of learning. I've been back two weeks from Fiji and I had quite a few people on that retreat. I think there was probably eight or nine people who had never done IRest or Yoga Nidra even before. Had such great feedback from them on this process of getting to know themselves. I guess essentially is what yoga nidra is about, coming back to your wholeness. That's great. That's great.

33:44                                     Gina this has been really fascinating. I have not really had much experience with IRest Yoga Nidra, but I love Yoga Nidra in general. So I think I'll do a little more research on that, see if I can find myself at one of your retreats. I like that idea of just doing it for a week I really do. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us, the listeners. You did a really great job and I think you've explained it very well. I think I have a good grasp of what the differences might be.

34:17                                     Great. Thanks so much, Stephanie. It's been great. Thanks for inviting me and I love talking about IRest and waffle on.

34:27                                     Hey, good. All right. Thank you.