Free 40 Minute Yoga Nidra Script for Chronic Pain Relief [PDF]

Preparation and Settling In

Begin your practice of Yoga Nidra in a comfortable position, arranging your body so you feel completely supported to enter a deep state of rest and self-inquiry. Allow your legs to be apart, arms away from your body, and palms turned upwards. Have support under the back of your head so that your chin remains below the level of your forehead throughout your practice to assist your thinking mind to relax. Support your back by placing a blanket under your knees or thighs. If helpful, place an eye bag over your eyes … If you could be five or ten percent more comfortable, make any adjustments to bring ease and well-being throughout your body and mind … Releasing the body into the support of the surface underneath it.

Welcoming Messengers

During Yoga Nidra, welcome every experience as a messenger that’s inviting you to explore particular sensations, emotions, and thoughts, or the recognition of being spacious awareness. Welcoming and responding to each messenger that arrives in your guesthouse of awareness with curiosity and openness … And setting everything free to be there, just as it is. (Pause.)

Intention for this Practice

Note your intention for this practice … Perhaps to remain alert and attentive …Or to inquire into a particular intensity of sensation that you wish to work with today … Open to what is … perhaps abiding as joy, Being, or awareness … Fully welcoming and affirming your intention for today’s practice with your entire body and mind. (Pause.)

Senses Wide Open

Now, welcome the space of the room around you … The sense of the body resting into the surface supporting you … Bring attention to your senses, allowing each perception to come to you … Sounds around and within your body … without grasping toward sound … The nose smelling … The mouth tasting … The inner eyes open to seeing … The touch of air on your skin … Sensations within your entire body … Sensing the vibrant aliveness, or vital life-force, of the body that gives rise to an underlying pulse or hum … This life force arising as a smooth, steady heartbeat … just as it is.

(Pause.)

Sankalpa for Your Heartfelt Desire, Calling, or Mission

As you open into the heart space, inquire into your deepest heartfelt calling or mission … Asking, “If you are a unique expression of life, how does it want to live through you? …” Abiding as an open curiosity to this heartfelt calling that gives life a sense of meaning and purpose … A spontaneous desire that you wish to manifest more than anything else during your lifetime … Perhaps for health, compassion, or awakening … Affirming and experiencing the felt sense of your heartfelt desire as true in this moment.

(Pause.)

Sankalpa for Your Inner Resource

Bringing attention to your inner resource … Resting back and experiencing the felt sense of unchanging Being or feelings of well-being in your body … A safe haven or refuge that helps you feel secure and at ease … Welcoming the felt sense of Being and well-being as spacious … open … timeless … perfect …familiar … unchanging, yet fresh and always present … Perhaps a feeling of inner stillness or calm … If helpful, invite in people or images—a wise person, power animal, object, or place in nature—that nourish feelings of being secure, peaceful, and at ease … And the felt sense of Being and well-being throughout your body … Let the images fall away and stay with the felt sense of Being and well-being in the body as sensation … Know that you can return to this felt sense of the inner resource at any time, day or night, and throughout your practice of Yoga Nidra … Whenever you feel the need to feel totally secure and at ease. (Pause.)

Rotation of Consciousness with Breath and Energy

Welcome sensations inside the mouth … The inner walls of the cheeks … A pool of sensation in the center of the tongue … Sense the center of the jaw … The inside of the ears … Sense the inner cave of the ear canals, spiraling along the curves to the outer ears … If there is unnecessary tension … Sensing right into the center of the tension … And note what happens … The skin of the face … Pure sensation … The eyes … sense both eyes as two spheres of sensation resting inside the head … Feel back behind the eyes to a center point deep inside the head … Feel the forehead … Crown of the head … Back of the head … Sense the whole head as a tingling or vibration … All the while, a deep peace and inner stillness … The ease of Being and well-being. (Pause.)

Note the breath just inside the nostrils … The caress of each inhalation and each exhalation as pure sensation … Follow that current of an inhalation as it enlivens sensation into the throat … For several breaths, feel this sensation enlivening the throat. (Pause.)

Following each exhalation as a current streaming through the shoulders … The hollows of the elbows … The palms and fingertips … With each inhalation, stay with sensation as it reveals itself … Letting go of memory … Open into pure sensation, feeling from within the hands, arms, and shoulders themselves.

Riding the next current of exhalation as it enlivens the torso … Expanding on inhalation … Releasing on exhalation … For several breaths, sense the inner walls of the torso front and back … left and right … floor of the torso … ceiling of the torso … At your own rhythm, sensing the whole torso … Radiating inwardly and outwardly in all directions.

Following each stream of exhalation as it enlivens the hips … hollows of the thighs … knees … lower legs … feet and toes … For several breaths sense both legs and feet—one feeling—as vibrant sensation. (Pause.)

Sense the legs, torso, arms, and head … Feel the whole body, globally, in all directions … Sensing the left side of the body … right side … front of the body … back of the body … above … and below … The whole body radiating inwardly and outwardly. (Pause.)

Welcome everything just as it is … Sensations arising and dissolving … All the while, feeling yourself as Being … Secure and at ease … Interweaving an inner resource of Being and well-being throughout the entire body … Resting as Being in which all the changing sensations are unfolding.

Sense all that you are now aware of … How sensation is a movement in awareness … Feel back into awareness itself … sensing yourself as spacious, unchanging awareness in which all of the changing sensations are arising and dissolving … Changing sensation, revealing unchanging awareness. (Pause.)

Meeting Pain with Awareness of Sensation, Breath, Energy, Emotions, and Cognitions

If it feels right, invite an intense sensation in the body … It might be an area of pain that has been present for some time or there may be an area of sensation that is wanting to be seen, felt, and heard in this moment. (Pause for 15 seconds.) 

As you allow this sensation to be here, peel off the label of “pain” and meet it as pure sensation … Noticing if this sensation has a particular shape or texture. (Pause for 10–15 seconds.) Is it sharp … piercing … contracted … or diffuse? … How old does this sensation feel?

(Pause.)

Welcome any emotions, beliefs, or images that might arise with this intensity of sensation. (Pause for 15–30 seconds.)

Feeling how these may resonate in the body … Knowing you can interweave the inner resource of Being and well-being at any time. (Pause.)

If it’s helpful, notice if there is a color or substance, notice if it’s like a mist, liquid, or an image that’s resonating with the sensation … If not, you might assign a color, or substance, to it … Then, join an inhalation, riding its current of breath as sensation just as it is—all the way into the area of intense sensation. (Pause.)

As you’re inhaling, assign an opposite or different color or substance to coincide with the inhalation … Allow the inhalation with its assigned color or substance to come right into the center and the intensity of sensation with its distinct color or substance … During the pause at the top of the inhalation let the colors or substance blend … Upon exhalation, safely exhale out this new blended color or substance either down through the soles of the feet or up through the crown of the head in all directions.

(Pause for 10–15 seconds.) 

Continue in this manner, noting intense sensation with its particular color or substance … inhaling a new color or substance into the center of the sensation … The colors merge during the pause … and the blended color or substance goes downward or upward through the body and out in all directions. (Pause 30–60 seconds.)

Sensing and breathing this blend of colors, substances … and notice if there’re any emotions, thoughts, or images that might spontaneously bubble up … Welcoming everything just as it is … Knowing you can anchor into the inner resource, this field of Being or well-being that is available … ever present … On the next exhalation, releasing the color either through the crown of the head or feet … flowing out in all directions … Setting the breath free to come back to its own natural rhythm. (Pause.)

Sheath of Pure I-Ness

Sense all that you are now aware of … How sensation, emotion, or an image are a movement in awareness … Feel back into awareness itself … Sensing yourself as spacious, unchanging awareness in which all the changing sensations are arising and dissolving … Changing sensation revealing unchanging awareness. (Pause 1 minute.)

If there is a moment of fusing with a changing sensation, daydream, or image, notice how any changing phenomenon is like a cloud simply drifting through the sky … Feel yourself as vast openness, like the sky itself … A field of Being or unchanging awareness. (Pause 30–60 seconds.)

Something here that’s utterly still. (Pause 15 seconds.)

Whole … (Pause 15 seconds.)

Complete, just as it is … Untouched by all that’s coming and going. (Pause 30–60 seconds.)

Note if there’re any movements of expectation or anticipation … If so, can you feel it as a reverberation … and set it free, like sugar dissolving into water, to be absorbed as unchanging Being or awareness. (Pause 1–2 minutes.)

Sheath of Joy

As you sense your essential nature … the source of Being and awareness … vast, open … note if there is a sense of equanimity or a touch of joy naturally arising. (Pause 10–15 seconds.)

Perhaps a sense of happiness or pleasure that might be arising … If it feels right, invite in equanimity, pleasure, joy … As it spontaneously arises, notice how it has a distinguishing mark … a sensation that is felt in the body or in the field of Being … If joy is not present, simply meeting what is most calling attention. (Pause.)

If helpful, imagine a loved one … a child playing … or laughing with your best friend … An image or memory that brings a touch of happiness, joy, or delight … Then give up images and become completely absorbed in the feeling of pure joy and happiness throughout the body … Feel it as a warmth, radiating from the heart … and with each exhalation, let it spread through the entire body … A touch of happiness or joy saturating every cell of the body … Sense the heart smiling … Perhaps your lips gently smiling … The whole body saturated with happiness, joy, or equanimity … How it may permeate the space beyond the body … Saturating the space of the room around you. (Pause.)

If helpful, interweave your inner resource of unchanging Being into your experience of joy and well-being. (Pause 15–30 seconds.)

Perceive how every perception, including joy, is arising in awareness … Feel back into awareness itself … sensing yourself as spacious and unchanging awareness in which all these changing perceptions are arising … changing perceptions revealing unchanging awareness. (Pause.)

Welcoming Everything, Just as It Is

Reflect back upon the journey you’ve just taken … Welcome the qualities that are or have been present … Feelings … emotions … thoughts … beliefs … sensations … and unchanging awareness in which everything is arising, unfolding, and dissolving. (Pause.)

Heartfelt Desire

All the while, the inner resource … a felt sense of unchanging Being and well-being … opening into the heart space … You might sense once again the heart’s deepest calling that brings a sense of aliveness and purpose, to which the whole body says “yes!”… And welcome any intentions that support living this heartfelt calling in daily life. (Pause.)

Reawakening and Closing

Imagine yourself going about your day while feeling your inner resource of unchanging Being and well-being … And yourself as unchanging awareness, in which all the changing activities of your life are unfolding … Emotions … thoughts … beliefs … sensations … your personality …

And this indescribable sense of being unchanging awareness … Sensing the paradox of being both spacious and vast as awareness—without border or boundary … All the while being this personality that has location, center, and periphery … Your body, mind, and personality free to be just as they are … Sensing and affirming how in each moment you always know the exact and perfect response to each situation that you encounter in life.

(Pause 15 seconds.)

Take your time now as you transition into your waking life … Allowing the senses to come back online … Allowing gentle movement to arise naturally throughout the body … Perhaps wiggling toes or fingers … Smaller movements expanding into larger stretching … When it feels right, opening and closing your eyes several times while feeling your inner resource of unchanging Being and well-being … Coming into a comfortable position and returning to your eyes open state of waking consciousness … Alert … awake … Grateful for taking this time for yourself and the practice of Yoga Nidra … Coming fully back to your eyes open, wide-awake and alert state of consciousness and Being.

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This script has been crafted with love and formatted in a clear, organized layout, making it easy to read aloud for individuals or groups. It is suitable for personal and professional use, including YouTube videos and monetization, and for voiceover recordings.

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