Love Letters to Our Bodies
Conversations on health, healing, and happiness for and by African American women. An exploration of the mind, body, spirit connection. and opportunities to hear from spiritual teachers and holistic health practitioners.
Love Letters to Our Bodies
Yoga Nidra - The Sacred Power of Rest
Rest as resistance? In a culture that profits from our exhaustion, reclaiming deep rest becomes a radical act of healing. Join us as we welcome Tracee Stanley, yoga practitioner of 28 years and author of Radiant Rest, for a transformative conversation about Yoga Nidra.
Discover how this powerful practice helps us access our authentic selves, heal generational trauma, and reconnect with our bodies through love. Tracee shares her journey to Yoga Nidra, how she adapts the practice for BIPOC communities, and why rest is a birthright we all need to reclaim.
You'll learn practical ways to get started with Yoga Nidra, overcome resistance to rest, and step into your most powerful self. Plus, Tracee discusses making ancient practices accessible, rejecting wellness industry concepts, and what her own practice has taught her about embodiment.
Key Points From This Episode:
• Introducing Tracee Stanley to the show to discuss Yoga Nidra.
• How Tracee found Yoga Nidra and how she discovered its power.
• She tells us about her book, Radiant Rest, and what inspired her to write it.
• How Tracee defines Yoga Nidra and how it differs from meditation or sleep.
• How the connection between Yoga Nidra and self-realization helps us access our true selves.
• The relationship between rest and healing generational trauma.
• Tracee's recommendations for a starting point to try Yoga Nidra.
• What happens in the nervous system during the Yoga Nidra practice.
• Challenging what wellness really means and rejecting the distracted mind.
• How she makes ancient practices accessible while honoring their origins.
• How her experience in South Africa awakened her spiritual journey.
Quotes:
“We want so desperately to define what exactly [Yoga Nidra] is, and it’s something that can’t be defined.” — Tracee Stanley [0:09:14]
“[Yoga Nidra] is a practice of deep relaxation that leads to a place of non-doing and resting in presence.” — Tracee Stanley [0:14:20]
“When we rest, we’re resting for everybody – whether we know it or not. Because our ancestors are there in our DNA, we’re resting for everybody who came before us and we’re also resting for everybody who’s going to come after us.” — Tracee Stanley [0:32:03]
“Yoga Nidra reminds you that you are whole, the overculture tells you nothing except, ‘You are not whole, you are not enough, you need more of this or more of that to be whole.’” — Tracee Stanley [0:45:16]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Luminous Self
Gwendolyn Mitchell on LinkedIn
MOYO Institute, Inc
Love Letters 2 Our Bodies is sponsored by Moyo Institute, Inc and the Lloyd Symington Foundation
Gwendolyn Mitchell on LinkedIn
MOYO Institute, Inc
instagram.com/moyoinstitute