Back Pain And Visualisation

Also known as guided imagery, you could direct your dreams. Think of a peaceful, beautiful setting - its nice isn't it. With Yoga Nidra, the idea is to tune into your body (and your mind). The colour emerald green is considered the most relaxing colour. The emerald green concept is really much part of the Yoga Nidra technique. Using visionary guidance centred on your body and its organs, Yoga Nidra lets you stay with a vision for several minutes, with the wonderful emerald green colour, until you feel your mind and body relax. With the assist of the audio file, you could practice visualization to guide you into a deep relaxing state.

As well as back pain, the practice of yoga during pregnancy is perhaps the most helpful exercise a woman with child could undertake. It is slow, strong and gentle. It prepares the woman's body and breath to open as it would need to open during labour and childbirth. Yogic techniques of breath, movement, sound, and visualization offer a confident basis for smooth passage through this most powerful of life experiences.

With back pain, labour and delivery are unknowns. No predictions could be made by anyone as to the type or length of labour. Pregnant women who practice yoga develop confidence in their body movements and become more comfortable with the unpredictability of labour and delivery. They know that staying in the moment would propel them forward, releasing any resistance to the unknown. Students of mine have actually gone on to do their own movements during labour. Yoga is about the individual, not about attaining perfect postures. Any movement that brings in focus and relaxation is yoga. This concept is especially significant during labour because the demand is for the woman to follow her breath and intuition in regard to labour and movement.

For Yoga Nidra, hypnosis is a trancelike state of deep relaxation while your mind stays restfully alert and open to suggestion. Ordinarily it also involves deep breathing and visualization. With Yoga Nidra, use is made of a powerful yet really subtle mantra. This is the background mantra sung in a purely relaxed way on the audio file. The fear people might have about hypnosis comes from its being used on the commercial stage, says Jahnke. And of someone else controlling your mind. Visualise being free of back pain.

Beginners, at any level of health and fitness, could practice yoga. Be kind to yourself. Take it slow and watch your progress. You would be amazed at your improvements. Yoga is a preventive medicine that is an investment in your future health.

In India it used to be said (and perhaps still is) that the mother could sense the baby's sex by the third month of pregnancy. The practice of yoga encourages the mother to trust her intuitions, to acknowledge and release her fears, to express through her body what words cannot say. She may, during moments of deep relaxation after an invigorating yoga session feel her baby communicate with her, reassure her, share the untold bliss that only a fully-supported being in an edgeless womb of a universe could experience - with her. For even proverbial love is a two-way street.