by Dana Demas

Picture Iraq war veterans and hopeful mothers-to-be lying together in deep meditative silence, discovering “Pure Awareness.”

According to Richard Miller, president of Center for Timeless Being, a nonprofit educational center in Sebastopol, CA, the scene is not as far-fetched as you might imagine.

“Yoga Nidra has been under the radar for decades,” says Miller, who is also a clinical psychologist and master yoga/meditation teacher. “But [now it’s being] brought to the forefront through clinical research.”

For the past two years Miller has traveled the country teaching the ancient Tantric practice, sometimes referred to as yogic sleep. And while Yoga Nidra may be coming soon to a yoga studio near you (see sidebar), Miller is most excited about the doctors, social workers and other mainstream practitioners who are attending his intensive workshops to bring the practice to their patients.

The hot new yoga trend is actually a 4000-year-old transformative process. In Yoga Nidra classes, students systematically uncover and discard self-limiting beliefs, paving the way to feel joy again.

And like every good vehicle, it’s a hybrid. “Yoga Nidra is a systemized form of yoga and meditation with a goal of awakening you to your true nature,” explains Miller. “It’s a program of deep relaxation, self-inquiry and restoration.”

After practicing and including the technique in his yoga classes since the ’70s, Miller adapted Yoga Nidra into a program called iRest (short for Integrative Restoration). He’s finding success using iRest with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After participating in a twice-weekly practice for nine weeks, patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC reported decreased insomnia, depression and anxiety and an increased sense of comfort and control in their lives. Results were so impressive that iRest is now a standard offering at the military hospital — and a large-scale, national clinical study is underway for 2008.

“Yoga Nidra helps people understand themselves as Pure Awareness, untouched by the trauma they have suffered or are suffering. They enter into a state of profound equanimity and peace that offers a vantage point they normally wouldn’t have,” says Miller.

He describes Pure Awareness as the part of the individual that exists outside of the mind-body complex — the part that never sleeps, and knows all the answers. Pure Awareness, says Miller, is an anchor to steady us through life’s storms — helping us to realize we are already exactly as we need to be.