Operating Ethics

This statement is the result of our collective efforts since 2009, when we first began to share Total Yoga Nidra. It shares the foundational beliefs which have shaped our work and continue to inspire our choices. We at the Yoga Nidra Network are an independent post-lineage collective of teachers, trainers, practitioners and students from all over the world and we strive for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  1. We know the experience of Total Yoga Nidra can offer an encounter with freedom.
  2. We share Total Yoga Nidra as a liberatory practice that, at its best can offer practitioners the freedom to be fully at home to themselves, and completely free to be whoever they are, just as they are.
  3. We affirm that Black Lives Matter. To love and desire freedom and justice for Black people is a prerequisite for wanting freedom and justice for all. The Yoga Nidra Network is an anti-racist collective and we stand in solidarity with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BBIPOC) communities, who have been disenfranchised, marginalised and violently harmed for far too long. We lend our voice to the growing call for meaningful change worldwide.
  4. We developed Total Yoga Nidra and the Yoga Nidra Network as our response to the exclusionary, harmful and limiting experiences we encountered in traditional yoga nidra lineages, and we seek to provide an antidote to those harms we and others have experienced. We seek to make our work accessible and available to all who may benefit from it.
  5. We share a practice of liberation, and we renew our continued commitment to liberation for all people. In our teaching, in our sharing and in how we conduct all of our business, we are working for collective freedom. Only when Black Lives Matter can all lives matter; only when black teachers and students matter can all teachers and students matter. Only when there is justice and freedom for all will there be justice and freedom for any one. We believe the equitable sharing of the liberation practice of Total Yoga Nidra is part of a call for freedom and justice.
  6. Every day, we recommit our practice of Total Yoga Nidra to healing ourselves and each other, and to co-creating a world where each person feels seen, heard, and supported. We believe that Total Yoga Nidra can be a vital part of this healing.
  7. We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate the differences and commonalities in everyone coming to practice, share and teach within the Yoga Nidra Network.
  8. Since 2009, we have intentionally built, and continue to nurture a beloved community. The Yoga Nidra Network is bonded together through the beautiful and restorative practice of Total Yoga Nidra. We know this practice to be of deep nourishment to those who fight for freedom and we welcome everyone to our community.
  9. In the Yoga Nidra Network we have always, and continue to welcome all students and teachers and trainees who wish to learn and share about Total Yoga Nidra. We value everyone equally, regardless of actual or perceived heritage, sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location.
  10. We have always, and continue to build and maintain spaces that affirm all women and we seek for these spaces to be entirely free from sexism and misogyny.
  11. We have always, and continue to make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents and carers to fully participate with their children. This includes our sister camp, Santosa Yoga Camp, and the trainings and workshops offered by the Yoga Nidra Network. Within these gatherings we support each other as an extended family, collectively caring for one another, especially our children.
  12. We welcome people of all ages into the practice and sharing of Total Yoga Nidra. We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to share and learn.
  13. We are a queer‐affirming network. We welcome LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans- queer and intersex) teachers, students and practitioners of Yoga Nidra. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking. We make space for LGBTQI brothers and sisters to participate and lead.
  14. Within the Yoga Nidra Network and in our trainings and workshops we practice empathy and trauma-informed practice. We engage all our students and teachers and trainees with the intent to learn about and connect with their lived experiences.
  15. In our Network we endeavour to embody and practice justice, liberation, and peace in all our engagements with one another, and with our students, teachers and trainees.
  16. We have in the past called out harmful systems of oppression, and we shall continue to increase awareness of abusive power structures, structural racism, everyday sexism in all of our trainings, workshops and retreats, and through discussions and lectures related to Total Yoga Nidra.
  17. We have previously asserted, and repeat here too, that the patriarchal hierarchies of the ashrams and yoga communities within which systematic abuse continues to erupt are supported and enabled by both colonialism and capitalism. Raising awareness of these powerful and entrenched structures is one of the most crucial anti-racist, decolonising and radical-feminist projects
  18. These structures are implicitly exploitative. Exposing their power structures helps us to prevent future abuses. We support the Yoni Shakti the Movement initiative to heal these harms.
  19. We at the Yoga Nidra Network see ourselves as part of the global family, and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted upon by oppression, as well as the many ways that we are privileged with freedoms and power denied to others. We also know that colonialism, patriarchy and industrial capitalism are further responsible for violent exploitation of the Earth herself, upon whom this human family lives. We stand as Earth Protectors to affirm and assert the rights of the earth, and all her life-forms, and to eradicate Ecocide as part of the call for freedom and liberation for all.  We consider Yoga Nidra to be a re-connective practice that supports human connection and respect for the earth.

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