A self-paced online journey through the inner architecture of Yoga Nidra

The Inward Path is a deep exploration of the framework of Yoga Nidra and a spacious unpacking of its individual stages through teaching, direct experience, and guided contemplation.

This course was created after many years of studying, practicing, and guiding Yoga Nidra.

I wanted to slow the practice down.

Rather than moving through its stages within a single Yoga Nidra session, I became interested in spending time inside each one.

What is this part of the practice actually asking us to explore?

What do the traditional teachings say is happening here?

What do the Koshas offer as a map of human experience?

And what happens when we enter that map directly through practice?

The Inward Path grew from those questions.

The Koshas as a Map

One of the central frameworks explored throughout this course is the traditional yogic teaching of the five Koshas.

The Koshas have been described as sheaths or layers through which different dimensions of human experience can be understood—from the physical body through increasingly subtle dimensions of experience.

Within some yogic and Vedantic traditions, these layers are understood in relationship to Atman, Self, or the awareness said to remain beyond identification with them.

This course explores Yoga Nidra through the Koshas and the understanding of Self found within the traditions that informed my work.

When I created The Inward Path, I was deeply immersed in these teachings. I had spent years exploring them through practice, contemplation, study, and my own spiritual experiences.

Throughout the course, I share the maps as I understood and worked with them, alongside the practices that allowed me to investigate them experientially.

You are invited to do the same.

Learn the map.

Enter the practice.

Pay attention to what you actually experience.

And allow your own inquiry to remain part of the journey.

The Traditions That Shaped This Work

My introduction to Yoga Nidra was deeply influenced by the Bihar School of Yoga and the Satyananda tradition.

That became an important foundation for my understanding of the practice.

Over the years, my inquiry also moved through other contemplative, mystical, yogic, and spiritual traditions. I have always been interested in the places where different maps appear to point toward similar experiences—and equally interested now in where their interpretations differ.

That wider exploration found its way into The Inward Path.

So while the Koshas provide the primary architecture of the course, you will also encounter teachings and language concerning Self, non-self, awareness, Oneness, energy, transcendence, and the nature of consciousness.

These ideas are part of the spiritual and philosophical context within which this body of work was developed.

I invite you to encounter them as maps worthy of exploration rather than conclusions you are required to adopt.

Who This Course Is For

The Inward Path is an exploration and deeper study of Yoga Nidra.

It is particularly suited to Yoga Nidra guides, yoga and meditation teachers, experienced practitioners, and those who want to investigate the inner architecture of the practice beyond its use for relaxation.

Some familiarity with yoga, meditation, Yoga Nidra, or contemplative practice will be helpful, as I teach through these lenses throughout the course.

If you are looking for comprehensive foundational instruction in Yoga Nidra or want to learn how to construct and guide the practice, I recommend beginning with Awakening From Our Sleep.

If you already have that foundation and want to slow the map down, enter its individual layers, and explore the philosophy and experience more deeply, The Inward Path was created for you.

THE SEVEN-WEEK JOURNEY

Each module contains a teaching and discussion followed by a full-length experiential practice.

A new module is released each week, giving you time to experience and contemplate one stage before moving into the next.

Module 1 — Turning Attention Inward

We begin with intention and the internalization of awareness.

This module explores the movement from predominantly outward-facing attention toward inner experience and introduces some of the perceptual shifts associated with entering Yoga Nidra.

Through teaching and practice, we begin examining what changes when attention itself changes direction.

Module 2 — Sankalpa

This module explores Sankalpa and its place within Yoga Nidra.

We look at traditional and spiritual understandings of Sankalpa alongside questions of intention, identity, desire, and the relationship between an inner recognition and what eventually takes form in our lives.

This teaching reflects an earlier stage of the Sankalpa work that I would later continue to investigate and develop much more deeply.

Module 3 — Rotation of Consciousness & Nyasa

Here we explore the rotation of consciousness, one of the most recognizable components of Yoga Nidra, alongside some of the spiritual traditions that informed its development.

We consider its relationship with Nyasa—the practice of placing awareness, mantra, or sacred attention within or upon the body—and explore what happens experientially as attention is moved systematically through the body.

The accompanying practice gives you an opportunity to investigate this directly.

Module 4 — Breath, Vitality & the Pranic Map

This module explores breath awareness and the role of breath within the inward movement of Yoga Nidra.

We also examine the yogic concept of prana and the subtle or vital body as they are understood within the traditions informing the practice.

Through direct experience, you are invited to explore changes in breath, sensation, attention, and felt experience while keeping the traditional interpretation visible as the map through which these practices were developed.

Module 5 — Opposites, Duality & the Feeling Nature

Yoga Nidra frequently works with opposite sensations and experiences.

In this module, we explore this aspect of the practice through the wider yogic and contemplative questions of duality, identification, reaction, and suffering.

What happens when opposing experiences can be consciously encountered without immediately moving toward one and away from the other?

The practice becomes an opportunity to investigate our relationship with sensation, feeling, preference, and resistance.

Module 6 — Image, Memory & the Mind

This module explores imagery, visualization, memory, association, and the creative capacities of mind.

We look at traditional interpretations of the deeper mind alongside the ways images and associations can shape perception and experience.

The accompanying practice gives you an opportunity to observe what arises when imagery is intentionally introduced and when the mind is given space to reveal its own associations.

Module 7 — Awareness & the Question of Self

The final module enters the territory toward which the traditional map of this course has been pointing.

What remains as the different layers of experience become increasingly quiet?

Within the traditions that informed this work, this territory is described through language such as Pure Awareness, Self, Being, or unconditioned consciousness.

Rather than defining in advance what you should discover there, this final practice invites you to enter the inquiry directly.

What is present?

What is aware?

What happens when there is less content to identify with?

And what, if anything, can we say about what remains?

The inward movement then turns outward again.

The practice ends.

The senses return to the environment.

Ordinary life continues.

And perhaps one of the deeper questions of Yoga Nidra begins there:

What relationship does what we encounter inwardly have to the way we perceive and live when our eyes open again?

A NOTE FROM ME

The Inward Path captures a particular period of my own spiritual inquiry.

When I created it, I was deeply immersed in the maps of Yoga Nidra, the Koshas, Self, awareness, and the mystical traditions that had informed much of my life.

I taught those maps sincerely because they reflected both the traditions I had studied and the way I understood many of my own experiences at the time.

My relationship with some of those interpretations has continued to evolve.

Today, I am increasingly interested in the distinction between an experience and the framework through which we understand that experience.

That evolution does not make me want to erase this course.

It makes me want to locate it honestly.

The Inward Path offers an opportunity to enter a rich contemplative map that I spent many years studying and experiencing deeply.

You can learn from the traditions.

You can enter the practices.

You can encounter what arises.

You can question.

You can discern.

And you can allow the map to remain a map while discovering what the territory reveals through your own experience.

Course Details

7-week self-paced online course

Each module includes an in-depth teaching and a full-length experiential practice.

Modules are released weekly beginning from the time of purchase, allowing space for practice and integration before the next stage becomes available.