The Lying-Down Practice That Rewires Your Stress Response | Kelly Boys
Throughout your day, feel the entire back side of your body—head, neck, back, legs. This simple practice of 'resting back into awareness' interrupts overthinking and brings you into the present moment. You're not trying to control your experience, just letting it arise and pass while maintaining thi
1h 2mKey Takeaway
Throughout your day, feel the entire back side of your body—head, neck, back, legs. This simple practice of 'resting back into awareness' interrupts overthinking and brings you into the present moment. You're not trying to control your experience, just letting it arise and pass while maintaining this felt sense of awareness. This creates a nervous system downregulation, a sense that 'you've got your back,' allowing emotions and thoughts to come and go without resistance.
Episode Overview
Dan Harris interviews Kelly Boys, a mindfulness trainer and yoga nidra teacher, about this lying-down guided meditation practice rooted in non-dual yoga philosophy. They explore how yoga nidra helps practitioners get out of their heads and into their bodies, work with challenging emotions through 'parts work,' and access deep meditative insights about the nature of self and awareness.
Key Insights
Yoga Nidra Bridges the Gap Between Sleep and Awareness
Yoga nidra, meaning 'yogic sleep,' involves maintaining conscious awareness while the body transitions through different sleep states. Unlike traditional seated meditation where you're actively investigating experience, yoga nidra uses a lying-down posture to create receptivity rather than 'doing.' This makes it especially effective for working with the unconscious mind and achieving what Andrew Huberman calls a 'conscious nap.'
Parts Work Integrates What You've Been Pushing Away
Instead of trying to eliminate challenging emotions like anxiety or anger, yoga nidra encourages you to personify them as 'parts' that need something—connection, caring, or acceptance. By welcoming your anxious 8-year-old self or your angry teenager into awareness rather than suppressing them, you integrate these aspects into wholeness. This integration allows deeper meditative insights to land in your actual lived experience rather than remaining abstract concepts.
The Body Scan is an Insula Workout
The body scan in yoga nidra isn't mystical—it's strengthening your insula, the part of the brain responsible for interoceptive awareness (sensing what's happening inside your body). By systematically bringing attention to sensations throughout the body, you're training your ability to feel what's actually present rather than living entirely in your thinking mind.
Meditation Has Levels: From Juggernaut to Emptiness
Most people start by experiencing themselves as an undifferentiated entity moving through the world. The first level of practice reveals you contain multitudes—different parts with different needs. The deeper level shows there's an unnameable aspect of mind that simply witnesses the whole pageant. This awareness isn't 'yours'—recognizing this is where things get liberating and weird.
Spiritual Insights Without Psychological Integration Create Problems
Having a profound realization about emptiness or non-duality is one thing; living it out in your human life is another. If you carry unprocessed depression or anxiety while having deep meditative insights, the unintegrated parts can distort those insights. You might confuse emptiness with depression because parts of you haven't been welcomed. Integration takes time—often years—of working with what you've been avoiding.
Notable Quotes
"None of this is personal. It's amazing."
"You're doing the same thing in the yoga nidra practice but you start with an intention and then you check in at the end of the practice. How's that intention now?"
"So many of us want an escape route from the spinning, looping, fizzing stories in our head."
"Were I to in meditation turn towards the sad 12-year-old or four-year-old or whatever it is and welcome it in and learn what it needs and have it be an ally and be a part of who I am. Then when I have these spiritual kind of or meditative recognitions, they can point me back toward my wholeness."
"What this does is it takes a little bit of the doer out of it. You know, when you're sitting, you have a really strong feeling. I'm meditating. When you're lying down, there's a little bit more of a feeling of a receptivity."
Action Items
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1
Practice the Back Body Awareness Exercise
Throughout your day, pause and feel the entire back side of your body—back of head, neck, shoulders, back, legs. This simple somatic practice interrupts overthinking, downregulates your nervous system, and creates a sense that 'you've got your back.' It allows experiences to arise and pass without resistance.
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2
Try a Yoga Nidra Session
Find a guided yoga nidra practice on YouTube or the iRest Institute website. Lie down in a comfortable position and follow the guidance. If you fall asleep, that's fine—many people use it specifically for sleep. If you stay aware, you'll experience conscious rest while the body relaxes deeply.
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3
Personify a Recurring Emotion
Choose an emotion that keeps showing up in your life (anxiety, anger, sadness). In meditation, instead of trying to observe it neutrally, imagine it as a younger version of yourself walking through a door. Notice how old they are, what they look like. Ask what they need. Listen to their message. Welcome this part as an ally rather than something to eliminate.
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4
Set an Intention Before Meditation
Before your next meditation or rest session, set a clear intention—it could be to work with a challenging emotion, gain insight on a question, or simply to relax and sleep. At the end of the practice, check in: how is that intention now? This frames your practice and helps you notice what shifted.