Another Yoga Nidra Postcard for you, this time from a beautiful native forest clearing in the South Island of Aotearoa where we camp every summer for a couple of weeks. It is a place without phone reception or electricity and has become our annual reset in nature. As I sat in this particular spot on one of the lesser known walking tracks at Totoranui in the Abel Tasman national park, I felt a complete sense of calm and inner resource. I was reminded of a poem that I have read many times by Wendel Berry:

Peace of the Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

So it is with this sense of freedom and rest that I was inspired to freestyle this Yoga Nidra as an offering to you. Set yourself up comfortably in a seated or lying down position for a 35 minute deep relaxation to release tension and find ease with the help of the sounds and messages from the forest.