In Defence of the Practice of Yoga Nidrā
A joint declaration of independence for Yoga Nidrā Shakti
The purpose of this statement is to inform, educate, and reassure. Our intention is to support and uplift practitioners and facilitators of all forms and methods of yoga nidrā worldwide, whilst calling to account all the organisations which promote this practice. We offer our perspective on the current context of yoga nidrā teaching, including a summary of our understanding of recent and historic abuses in all major yoga nidrā organisations. We also reveal, in brief, some neglected and hidden histories of yoga nidrā, in order to provide a broader, more nuanced, and complete context of understanding of this diverse and ancient practice.
We intend to inspire practitioners and facilitators to reclaim the experience of yoga nidrā as a human birthright. Our statement ends with an affirmation of our efforts at The Yoga Nidra Network to uphold integrity in our facilitation of yoga nidrā, and an invitation for other facilitators to reaffirm their own commitment to an ethical practice and sharing of yoga nidrā. This statement is an extract from the Introduction to the Nidrā Shakti Encyclopaedia of Yoga Nidrā which we have been researching for the past eleven years.
Yoga nidrā is a practice of value, merit and healing for millions
We write in defence of yoga nidrā as a practice of value and merit for many people. We write to affirm that the experience of yoga nidrā is neither intrinsically manipulative nor inherently triggering or dangerous. We write to distinguish the diverse variety of experiences of yoga nidrā from the many standardised, trademarked, and branded methods of yoga nidrā practice promoted in the commercial yoga marketplace.
We write to liberate by distance the vast spectrum of precious and often restorative experiences of yoga nidrā from the unethical behaviours of prominent teachers who promote their own brands of yoga nidrā practice methods. We seek to free individual and collective experience of yoga nidrā from the often abusive and controlling power dynamics of yoga nidrā schools and institutions that have been established to promote trademarked methods of practice. We observe that the original and intended purpose of yoga nidrā practice is to invite us to encounter in freedom those meditative, liminal, healing, and inspirational states of consciousness that are every human’s birthright, and that these states of consciousness ought neither to be trademarked nor owned by any individual or organisation.
Sadly, the practice of yoga nidrā in the transnational, transactional yoga world has become commodified to such an extent that it is now intimately associated with the commercial brands owned by those who profit from the promotion of their own trademarked methods of practice. There are very many good individuals within all of these organisations, sharing valuable work with skill, kindness, and compassion. It is, however, important to observe that founders and lead teachers of these organisations have proven histories of a variety of abuses and harassments of their students, and so the association of yoga nidrā with these institutions has tarnished the reputation of yoga nidrā since many people only know the practice through trademarked methods that have been promoted by these organisations and by prominent teachers with well-marketed brands. These organisations and schools tend to promote origin and discovery stories of yoga nidrā that privilege their own founders, and/or neglect to inform students and practitioners of the older, indigenous roots of the practice. They also tend to marginalise or exclude those aspects of yoga nidrā history (including evidence of abuses within their own organisations) that do not enlarge and affirm the power of their own founders and lead teachers.
We write in defence of yoga nidrā because we feel a duty to state clearly that none of these organisations and individuals accurately define the hybrid history or truly diverse and inclusive nature of the practice they have standardised, trademarked, and branded.
Some preparatory definitions
For clarity of meaning around the terms used in this statement, please know that when the term yoga nidrā is mentioned, it may refer to one of three main categories, because there are three different meanings to the term yoga nidrā: 1. a description of particular state/s of consciousness described in traditional yogic literature as yoganidrā; 2. a divine personification named Yoga Nidrā Devī/Yoga Nidrā Śakti [Shakti]; or, 3. recently developed practices of yoga nidrā as currently taught in contemporary yoga schools, institutions, and other organisations.
Each of these three different meanings of the term yoga nidrā has value and import. Sadly, in most recent writings about yoga nidrā, only the third meaning of the term [contemporary practices of yoga nidrā as currently taught in transnational yoga schools, institutions, and other organisations] is usually ever discussed. This limits our understanding of the experience of yoganidrā and the techniques used to enter that state and dishonours by neglect the original indigenous sources of contemporary practices intended to invite us to experience the state of yoganidrā. It also dishonours by omission the goddess Yoga Nidrā Shakti who is the active ingredient of all forms of yoganidrā.
We have chosen neither to trademark nor otherwise to own or brand the methods of yoga nidrā practice which we call Total Yoga Nidrā. We use this term as a descriptor, not a brand. The term ‘Total’ Yoga Nidrā indicates that we embrace the totality of the experience of yoga nidrā, yoganidrā, and yoga nidrā shakti as essentially interconnected and interdependent components. Total Yoga Nidrā is not a trademark, it is an accurate description of our inclusive, diverse, and intuitive approach to the practice. Total Yoga Nidra is not a brand; it is an approach to practice that offers a spectrum of diverse liminal experiences and honours the rich and ancient hybrid histories of yoga nidrā.
A summary of hidden histories
This statement, like the encyclopaedia from which it is excerpted, intends firstly to re-contextualise experiences of yoganidrā, reclaiming and widening understanding of the ancient Indian histories and indigenous roots of contemporary yoga nidrā practices. Our intention is both to honour Yoga Nidrā Shakti (the divine personification of the power of sleep) and to affirm that there are multiple experiences of the states of consciousness of yoganidrā, which can be accessed by contemporary practices. We also intend to reveal with respect the roots of the practices that lead to these states. Yoga nidrā exists within a global context of many related wisdom practices, all of which respect and cultivate Nidrā Shakti, the power of sleep, dream and the places in between.
It is important to understand, contrary to popular opinion, that the practice of yoga nidrā was neither invented by, nor solely ‘rediscovered’ by Swami Satyananda Saraswati (1923-2009). In fact, as we have discovered in our research over the past eleven years, Satyananda’s book Yoga Nidra (1976), which is often claimed to be the first book on yoga nidrā, was pre-dated by a French publication (Dennis Boyes, Le Yoga du Sommeil Eveillé, 1973) and was clearly also influenced by many practices developed over a century by an array of psychologists, therapists, and hypnotists from around the world.
The development of contemporary methods of yoga nidrā rests upon the work of people such as Chicagoan psychiatrist Edmund Jacobson (1888-1983; author of You Must Relax, 1934, and creator of Progressive Muscle Relaxation), Massachusetts relaxationist Annie Payson Call (1853-1940; author of Power through Repose, 1891), and the Scottish surgeons and medical hypnotists James Braid (1795-1860; author of Neurypnology or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep, 1843) and James Esdaile (1808 – 1859; author of Mesmerism in India, and the Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine, 1846), who all developed various forms of proprioceptive and hypnotic relaxation techniques from 1846 through to the 1960s.
The yoga nidrā techniques presented by Swami Satyananda and Swami Rama (1924 – 1996, Founder of the Himalayan Institute) are all clearly influenced by this work. But because there are no references to this body of research in the presentations of the yoga nidrā practices promoted by the organisations they founded, few followers of these Swamis’ methods appreciate the wider context of their practices. Most practitioners are led to believe erroneously that their own tradition is the sole guardian/discoverer or re-discoverer of the practice of yoga nidrā.
Ignorance of the truly complex hybrid history and development of yoga nidrā has led to a fiercely protective proprietorial attitude within the major yoga nidrā organisations, and we believe that revealing the hidden histories of the practice may do much to offset the ownership claims and rigid controlling of the practice by such organisations. Scholarly work on the history of yoga nidrā by Mark Singleton and Jason Birch helpfully present evidence of this genuinely hybrid history, and reveal its roots in ancient Indian texts.
The earliest history of yoga nidrā does not begin, as most yoga nidrā organisations claim, in the Upanisads or the Tantras. In fact, the origins of the practice of yoga nidrā can be traced back to the Mārkandeya Purana (circa 250 CE), where the very first textual reference to yoga nidrā describes the power of the goddess Yoga Nidrā Shakti Devī, who is praised in the Durga Māhātmyam (circa 550 CE). The power of sleep (nidrā shakti) is also honoured in other texts from the Shakta (goddess worshipping) traditions of India, and in the epic Mahābhārata (circa 3rd century BCE), where the goddess yoga nidrā is seen to be an all-powerful force whom nobody can deny. These written references to the power of the deep feminine manifesting in Yoga Nidrā Shakti are predated by ancient indigenous practices and wisdoms which were transmitted orally, often through matrilineal lineages of goddess worship.
Reaching beyond India, experiences of yoganidrā-like states of consciousness are connected to a global network of indigenous wisdom rituals and ceremonies that all use words and sounds to invite practitioners to inhabit liminal states of awareness, including lucid dream, conscious sleep and trance. Such practices include the Dreamtime practices of Aboriginal Australian peoples, the lucid dream techniques and meditations of the ‘dream warriors’ of the Mexican Toltec tradition, the healing dream incubation practices of Ancient Greece, and the ancestor-connection practices of African spirituality, including Egyptian dream work and Xhosa Sangoma trance work, amongst others.
This rich global indigenous history, and the deep roots of the Indian tradition of worship of the goddess Nidrā Shakti as a powerful manifestation of the deep feminine, are rarely honoured or even mentioned by those who train teachers of yoga nidrā within the main yoga nidrā organisations. Instead, either through ignorance or wilful denial, simplified histories are told that valorise the founders of these organisations and omit to include the power of the goddess, the ancient Indian roots, or the indigenous practices at the roots of yoga nidrā. These simplified histories privilege the power of those founders of the schools who present edited versions of how yoga nidrā developed by centring their own roles in the process of ‘discovery’ or ‘re-invention’ of practices that they then trademark and commodify.
Programmed rigidity and fear vs intuitive responsiveness and kindness
In the thirty years we have been sharing yoga nidrā, and training others to facilitate this practice, we have observed that facilitators who are trained to replicate authoritarian practices out of fear (and/or ignorance of any other approaches to yoga nidrā) tend to disempower the practitioners with whom they share yoga nidrā. Facilitators who are trained in a vacuum of ignorance of other methods and/or historic or indigenous means to experience the states of yoganidrā, also tend to disempower the practitioners with whom they share yoga nidrā. This happens because the facilitators have been instructed always to utilise the same scripts, phrases, and formats developed by their guru or the founder of their school and, in trusting ignorance of any ‘other ways’, are thus fearful of departing from the strict edicts that ‘this’ way of sharing yoga nidrā is the correct and only way. Ignorance of the hybridity and diversity of the history of yoga nidrā contributes to fearful adherence to a single method of practice.
All this can create rigidity in the methods of facilitating yoga nidrā, a kind of bossy formality, and/or prescriptiveness that is rooted in the certainty that there is only one way to do yoga nidrā: the way in which that individual facilitator has been trained. Such rigidity permits no room to honour the indigenous roots of the practice as every human’s birthright and limits both the intuitive creativity of the facilitator within the practice, and the practice of kindly responsiveness to the needs of the people for whom the practice is being facilitated. This can trigger trauma and fear in practitioners listening to yoga nidrā scripts. We believe that rigid hierarchies of control and oppression, the mis-telling of the histories of yoga nidrā, and the silencing of dissent within yoga organisations all contribute to the rigid limitations of traditional and contemporary trademarked methods of sharing yoga nidrā.
In contrast, yoga nidrā facilitators who are empowered to connect to their own intuitive and creative capacities are more likely to give practitioners agency to access their own intuitive healing resonances. The openness and trust necessary to empower facilitators to develop their own personal intuitive and creative relationship with yoga nidrā, and in turn, to share this with the practitioners for whom they facilitate the practice, cannot thrive in environments where there are coverups, control, and the denial of abusive histories. Closed, secretive, and controlling institutional structures cannot tolerate the openness and transparency that is necessary to enable facilitators to cultivate trust in their own intuitive capacities to share the beneficial aspects of yoga nidrā.
Recent and historic abuses, silencing and unethical conduct
There are proven historic and recent instances of sexual violence, sexual harassment, systemic bullying, and emotional and financial abuse by prominent teachers in all of the major yoga nidrā teaching organisations. We believe it is important for everyone who is putting their trust in the teachers and trainers of yoga nidrā to be fully informed about the nature of the behaviours of those who founded or lead the organisations with whom they are training and practising.
There is a very broad spectrum of behaviour that constitutes unethical action. Our intention here is to highlight all such actions, in so far as they are connected to the sharing of yoga nidrā. The spectrum of unethical acts extends from the most egregious and violent harming of students to the denial of teachers’ agency by requests that they do not deviate from given scripts. We also regard as unethical actions which might be considered by some to be acceptable ‘standard US corporate practice’, for example, the signing of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). We believe that transparency is the foundation of trust. We observe a lack of transparency in yoga nidrā organisations whose prominent teachers or founders have committed unethical acts because these organisations choose not to share information about those acts. As independent teachers and trainers of yoga nidrā, we note that information about the unethical acts committed by the teachers and founders of all the leading yoga nidrā organisations is not prominent in the self-presentations of these yoga nidrā teaching organisations to the wider world, for example on their websites and in their social media postings. This is why we feel a duty to draw attention to this information here.
A compilation of evidence including links to court papers, statements, and investigations conducted into abuses perpetrated by Swami Satyananda of Satyananda Yoga (previously known as the Bihar School of Yoga), Swami Rama of the Himalayan Institute, and Amrit Desai of the Amrit Yoga Institute, are all presented here https://yonishakti.co/the-movement in a document prepared for Yoni Shakti the Movement for the eradication of abuse of women in yoga (YSTM).
We at YSTM and at the Yoga Nidra Network have been shocked by recent revelations of sexual harassment of a female student and employee by Richard Miller, and by the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) by the iRest yoga nidrā institute (IRI). We draw your attention to statements by IRI relating to these issues, which can be found here:
Richard Miller’s personal account of his sexual harassment of the female student and employee, and the purpose of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she signed after leaving iRest can be found here: PDF.
Following our first publication of this statement, Richard Miller urgently instructed us to remove the entire post immediately. We refused to remove the whole post, on the basis that only ten per cent of this statement relates directly to iRest. Instead, we redacted those portions of the statement that discussed the details of the sexual harassment and the NDA signed when the victim of the harassment ended her employment at iRest. Richard Miller has since contacted us to emphasise that he regards these two incidents as entirely separate, and he states that the NDA was unrelated to the sexual harassment. Miller asserts that the signature of an NDA was, at the time, standard IRI corporate policy for all departing employees. He says that the NDA was purely intended only to protect iRest’s trademarked teachings and that it was signed as part of a separation agreement when the victim of the harassment that occurred in 2012 left her IRI job in mid-2013. Seven years later, the former employee’s request to be released from the NDA was denied by IRI.
We salute the bravery of the victim in speaking out about her experiences. When we first learned about what had happened, we reached out to her to offer support and to understand the situation from her point of view. It is important to note that her perspectives on what happened at IRI differ from the official IRI statements and from Richard Miller’s personal account. It is correct to observe that there was sexual harassment and that the victim of that harassment later signed a non-disclosure agreement when she ceased to be employed by IRI. She decided to leave IRI after being sexually harassed by Richard Miller, and she regards this harassment as one of the facts giving rise both to her departure and to the NDA. The agreement she signed prohibited her from discussing the circumstances of her departure with anyone except for the very few friends that she had already told. She was also disallowed from training teachers in the iRest method of yoga nidrā, even though she had already done so and was one of IRI’s top trainers.
We have taken the time to listen both to the opinions of Richard Miller and to the experiences of his ex-employee and student. We have been asked to report what we have learned from our listening by members of the yoga nidrā community who were dismayed and confused by the presentation of these incidents in social media and on the official channels of IRI communication. In response to these requests, we can report, from our independent standpoint, only that which we have learned. We offer this report in so far as it may be helpful for wider understanding, and we invite you to draw your own conclusions from what we are able to share from our research.
We observe that whilst the NDA and the sexual harassment are clearly regarded by IRI and Richard Miller as totally separate incidents, it is clear that in the lived experience of the person who signed this particular NDA, there can of course be no such distinction, because the experience of harassment was one of the key circumstances that gave rise both to her departure from IRI and to her signature of the NDA. In the interests of protecting the iRest brand through the NDA, it appears to us that this former employee has been prevented from discussing the circumstances that led to her departure from IRI with anyone other than a tiny circle of people. From the outside, it seems that the victim of the harassment has in effect been silenced from speaking out about her experiences, which is one of the reasons we have given space to report this here, at the request of people in the yoga nidrā community who wanted greater clarity on the nature of these incidents and how they impacted upon their capacity to understand the motivations of the IRI.
After these incidents came to public attention, Richard Miller resigned. The ex-IRI employee has welcomed Richard Miller’s resignation and has voiced a sense of optimism about the IRI Board’s current response, which she regards as a move towards healing and proper restoration: Statement from IRI Board of Directors.
Both the Yoga Nidra Network and Yoni Shakti the Movement to eradicate abuse of women in yoga (YSTM) welcome these recent announcements from IRI. We also have concerns that the latest IRI statement serves partly to erase public awareness of the reasons that prompted IRI’s response. The upbeat board of directors’ announcement centres the ‘growth and development’ of the iRest brand, marginalises the harm that led to it, and replaces the previously published apology. New initiatives in institutional accountability are identified by the IRI board as a positive step forward in the global growth of iRest as a brand. The directors present the recent changes to the iRest institute as a natural evolution of the IRI’s growth towards wisdom and accountability, when in fact they are a reaction to the considerable public attention which has been drawn both to the sexual harassment and to the use of NDAs by IRI.
The new initiatives at iRest position the institution as an ‘ethically informed’ organisation of integrity that is willing to listen. This is a very welcome move. We are hopeful that real accountability is possible. And we shall watch with interest to see what long-term changes this will bring within the iRest community and its methods of teaching, training, and brand promotion. Meanwhile, the current landing page of the iRest website makes no mention of any of the recent revelations, and its presentation of its director and founder neither refers to his resignation nor does it mention the reasons for it: About iRest Institute.
On the spectrum of unethical actions, what has happened at iRest is very far distant from the behaviours of the late Swami Satyananda and other abusers within Satyananda Yoga (previously known as the Bihar School of Yoga), or the abuses and improprieties of which Swami Rama and Amrit Desai were convicted. But it is important to recognise that in all of these organisations, the people at the top prioritise the promotion of their brand above the individuals within the organisation who may threaten the success of the trademarked form of yoga nidrā which the organisation is seeking to promote.
Actions in defence of yoga nidrā
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite practitioners and teachers and trainers to inform themselves about the true histories of yoga nidrā and related methods, and to acknowledge the indigenous roots of practices that have become trademarked and ‘owned’ by powerful organisations.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of you who may have been trained by organisations who have trademarked the practice, to ask questions about the origin and creation stories you may have been told about yoga nidrā.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of you who train yoga nidrā teachers to share good information, to clarify understanding, and to question the erroneous histories that privilege the owners of the trademarked forms of yoga nidrā as ‘discoverers’ or ‘originators’ of a practice that has its roots in indigenous practices worldwide, and in the ancient histories of spiritual practice in India.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of you who may be students or associates of organisations with histories of abuses to call these institutions to account: ask their leaders to make clear statements about previous unethical behaviours. Do this so that all who come to receive teachings in the future may be able to do so fully informed about the actions of the past. It is only with transparency that current and future students may be fully reassured that the administration and teachers have addressed any institutional and systemic power structures that permitted the abuses to have occurred in the first place. Honesty is the basis for relationships of trust that are at the heart of the experience of yoga nidra.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of you who work within these organisations to model honesty and transparency when students ask about the backgrounds of prominent teachers and founders. Tell the truth.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of you who are members of these organisations, or who have been trained by these organisations, to request that their websites signpost previous unethical behaviours so that new students and clients do not stumble upon this information years later, after they already have invested trust in teachers and practices promoted by organisations that have hidden abuses and unethical actions in their histories.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite practitioners and teachers of yoga nidrā to free ourselves from the need to protect and promote trademarked versions of a practice that truly belongs to everybody.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we call on organisations that have registered trademarked forms of the practice of yoga nidrā to consider the ethics of their behaviours to protect these trademarks. We invite such organisations to consider putting the welfare of the individuals and communities who share and benefit from the practice of yoga nidra above the promotion and protection of your own particular branded versions of the practice.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we celebrate and honour the many independent providers of yoga nidrā trainings and practices that are often marginalised in the commercial marketplace by the promotional power of the major brands and trademarks. We encourage practitioners and teachers to explore those independent providers that neither owe allegiance to any major trademarks, nor seek to own the practice that belongs to us all.
In Defence of Yoga Nidrā, we invite those of us who practice yoga nidrā to retain a positive relationship to a yoga (nidrā) practice, even if we may lose trust in the integrity of those who have taught it to us. The practice is still everybody’s treasure, regardless of whoever first shared it with us.
We encourage practitioners to continue to be nourished and supported by making yoga nidrā their own, and/or cultivating alternate, perhaps self-guided, approaches to the technique. Such individually responsive ways to practice yoga nidrā may help practitioners to facilitate or renew their continued connection to the technique’s capacity for nurture and healing. This is too important a resource with which to lose contact in these uncertain and challenging times, when yoga nidrā may be exactly the most needed and helpful practice to support resilience.
As post-lineage, independent trainers of Total Yoga Nidra facilitators for the Yoga Nidra Network, we offer this statement as part of our collective efforts to ensure that the precious practice of yoga nidrā is not adversely impacted by the actions of prominent teachers or their organisations. We present this statement on behalf of The Yoga Nidra Network and in association with Yoni Shakti The Movement to eradicate the abuse of women in yoga and to reclaim yoga as a tool for planetary healing and justice.