Yoga Nidra: Enlightened Sleep

Yoga Nidra: Enlightened Sleep is a six-day yoga nidra retreat at Menla Mountain Retreat Center in Phoenicia, New York, in the Catskills, led by Rod Stryker. It is open to people new to yoga nidra, to long-time practitioners, and to those ready to teach, and it also serves as the foundation for certification for anyone called to guide others.

Yoga nidra appears in Buddhist, Vedic and Tantric lineages. Rod Stryker teaches it as more than a technique: a state of higher awareness in which the nervous system settles, the mind clears and essential being reveals itself. This retreat approaches it through five templates, healing, clarity, resolve, transformation and awakening, and through four ascending levels of depth, rather than as a single script.

What to Expect

Each day weaves several guided yoga nidra practices together with theory, reflection and group discussion, building from the foundations of the practice toward its most subtle dimensions. Because you enter the teachings repeatedly, what first makes sense intellectually has the chance to become something known directly.

The teaching draws on two traditions. Tantra is the living lineage the training is rooted in, supplying the principles of the practice along with the templates and maps used here. Vedanta enters through the Mandukya Upanishad, one of the few texts to speak directly to yoga nidra as turiya, the ground from which waking, dreaming and deep sleep arise.

You will learn how careful preparation of body, breath and mind opens the way to deeper rest and awareness, how each of the five templates serves a different aim, and how to move past relaxation into the territory where yoga nidra becomes a catalyst for healing, insight and change. The retreat also explains why the highest states need to be experienced to be understood, and why embodying them is what allows a teacher to transmit the practice. What you leave with is meant to be a deeper capacity to enter the state itself, and, if you teach, to guide others from direct experience rather than a script.

The rhythm of the days is steady. Arrival and check-in happen on the first afternoon, followed by dinner and an evening welcome program. On the full days, breakfast is at 8, the morning program runs from 9:30 to noon, lunch is at 12:30, the afternoon program runs from 3 to 6, dinner is at 6, and an evening program or activity begins at 7:30. The final morning includes breakfast, a last morning program and lunch, with room check-out between 7 and 11. The schedule is subject to change.

About Rod Stryker

Rod Stryker is an author, speaker and yoga educator, and a world-renowned meditation teacher. He has mentored thousands of students and hundreds of teachers worldwide, and has written two books. He has taught yoga nidra for more than thirty years, and that long practice shapes the depth and structure of this retreat.

The Setting

Menla Mountain Retreat Center sits in the Catskills near Phoenicia. Contemplative practice has been rooted in this ground for decades, and Rod Stryker describes the place itself, its mountains and its rhythm, as part of the teaching. Its stillness supports the clarity and freedom the practice reveals. Past guests describe the rooms as comfortable but not ostentatious and the food as made with attention and care.

Before You Go

All levels are welcome, from complete beginners to experienced practitioners and those with years of yoga nidra behind them. The curriculum progresses from foundational understanding to subtle dimensions, so each participant can work at their own depth. The retreat is taught in English.

The stay includes accommodation at Menla, all meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), the daily guided yoga nidra practices, and the theory, reflection and group discussion. Transportation to and from the venue is not included, and spa services are available separately at Menla.