Recovery Miles Yoga

You spend so much of life giving, doing, anticipating, and holding everything together. This 27-minute sensual Yoga Nidra invites you to experience your body from within—not as something to evaluate, improve, or compare, but as a beautiful living home worthy of tenderness, pleasure, care, and love.

Here, sensuality means returning to your senses: warmth beneath the skin, the weight of a blanket, the touch of air, the rhythm of breath, and the subtle pleasure of feeling fully present in your own body. Beauty is not presented as a standard to meet or something granted by an outside gaze. It is discovered through your aliveness, softness, strength, history, and capacity to feel.

Through gentle breath awareness, a full-body rotation of consciousness, and an immersive candlelit visualization, you will be guided toward the intentions:

My body is worthy of love.
I am safe to receive tenderness, pleasure, and care.

This practice may be especially supportive when you feel disconnected from your body, critical of your appearance, uncomfortable receiving care, or ready to recognize the beauty that is already yours.

Guided by Darren Couch, Yoga Nidra and breathwork teacher.

Choose a safe, comfortable place where you can fully rest. Please do not listen while driving or doing anything that requires your attention.

After a long run, your body may be tired while your mind is still running. This 20-minute guided Yoga Nidra helps runners and active people downshift toward deep rest, sleep, and recovery.

Settle in with gentle breathwork, a full-body rotation of awareness, and a soothing evening visualization designed to help you release pace, distance, splits, and performance. Tonight, there is nothing left to prove and nowhere else you need to go.

This practice may be especially supportive:

• After a long run, race, or demanding training day

• When your body feels tired but your nervous system still feels alert

• When recovery-day guilt makes it difficult to rest

• When you want to reconnect with your body without measuring or judging it

Guided by Darren Couch, runner and Yoga Nidra teacher.

Choose a safe, comfortable place where you can fully rest. Please do not listen while driving, running, or doing anything that requires your attention.

Take a tender journey through the chapters of your life and honor the person who carried you here.

This deeply relaxing yoga nidra invites you to reconnect with the past versions of yourself who endured uncertainty, protected what mattered, changed direction, began again, and quietly kept moving forward. Through gentle body awareness, soothing imagery, spacious silence, and compassionate reflection, you’ll recognize your resilience without having to relive your most difficult experiences.

Let this practice remind you that strength is not only found in what you survived. It also lives in the moments you chose yourself, welcomed joy, accepted support, and allowed life to become softer.

The intention for this practice is:

I honor the person who carried me here.

Find a comfortable place where your body can be fully supported, and give yourself approximately 30 minutes to reflect, soften, and rest.

This practice is intended for relaxation and should not be used while driving. You are always welcome to change an invitation, open your eyes, or end the practice.

Follow Recovery Miles Yoga for more guided practices supporting rest, recovery, resilience, and connection.

You do not have to earn rest, connection, or the right to feel alive in your own body.

This 24-minute guided yoga nidra invites you to soften out of performance and reconnect with a quieter kind of confidence—the confidence of belonging fully to yourself. Through body awareness, gentle breathwork, warm sensory imagery, and spacious silence, you’ll explore what it feels like to be supported, seen, desired, and completely your own.

In this practice, sensuality simply means awakening to sensation and inhabiting your body with kindness. Nothing is forced, and you remain in control of your experience throughout.

The intention woven through the practice is:

“I am worthy of rest, connection, and desire.”

Featuring an original ambient soundscape with singing bowls and delicate chimes, this episode is especially supportive when you feel depleted, disconnected from your body, or tired of measuring your worth through achievement.

Find a comfortable place to lie down, use headphones if available, and give yourself permission to receive.

Please do not listen while driving or doing anything that requires your full attention.

Running can be a powerful source of relief, structure, confidence, and community—but it cannot be expected to carry everything.

Created while preparing for Run Wichita’s Mental Health 101 for Runners panel, this episode explores what we really mean when we say, “Running is my therapy.” I discuss healthy discipline versus compulsive exercise, injury and identity, race pressure, social comparison, the importance of belonging, and how to check in when another runner may be struggling.

The episode concludes with a brief longer-exhale breathing practice to help you slow down and reconnect with your body.

Running can be therapeutic without replacing therapy. Healthy discipline includes the ability to rest. And a runner’s belonging shouldn’t disappear when their mileage does.

This episode is educational and is not a substitute for professional mental-health care. In the United States, call or text 988 for crisis support. Call 911 for immediate life-threatening danger.

What if your breath could help you gently shift from low energy to greater clarity and presence?

In Session 3 of the Recovery Miles Yoga Breathwork Lab, we explore Brahmana—the expanding, nourishing, and gently energizing quality of breath.

We begin by noticing your natural state, then explore:

• spacious three-dimensional breathing
• equal 1:1 breathing
• a gentle 5:4 inhale-to-exhale ratio
• how emphasizing the inhale can influence energy, focus, and alertness
• when an energizing breath practice may—or may not—be appropriate

This session complements Session 2: Downshift, where we explored Langhana and the settling effect of a longer exhale.

The goal isn't to take the biggest breath or reach the perfect count. It's to learn how your body responds—and to choose the breath that fits the state you're in.

Listener Reflection: Use the Session 3 worksheet after the practice to compare your energy, attention, and response to Brahmana with the Langhana practice from Session 2.

Breathwork should always remain comfortable. If you feel dizzy, lightheaded, short of breath, anxious, or uncomfortable, return to your natural breathing.

Recovery Miles Yoga
Awareness before regulation.

Ready to downshift?

In Session 2 of the Recovery Miles Yoga Breathwork Lab, we move from simply observing the breath to intentionally regulating it.

This guided pranayama practice explores longer-exhale breathing and the yogic concept of Langhana — practices with a releasing, reducing, and settling quality.

We begin with balanced 1:1 breathing, progress to a gentle 4-count inhale / 6-count exhale, and, if comfortable, explore a 1:2 breathing ratio.

In this session, you’ll practice:

• Natural breath awareness
• Diaphragmatic breathing
• 1:1 balanced breathing
• 4:6 extended-exhale breathing
• An optional 1:2 ratio
• Using Langhana principles to move from activation toward greater ease
• Noticing how your body and mind respond before and after breathwork

The goal is not to make your exhale as long as possible.

The goal is to find the most appropriate breath for the state you are in.

Session 2: Downshift Listener Reflection

Learn the foundations of breathwork and pranayama in Session 1 of the Recovery Miles Yoga Breathwork Lab.

This beginner-friendly guided breathing practice focuses on breath awareness, diaphragmatic breathing, relaxation, stress relief, and mindfulness. Before learning advanced pranayama techniques, we begin by understanding how you naturally breathe.

In this session, you’ll explore:

• Your natural breathing rate
• Diaphragmatic breathing
• Chest, rib, and abdominal breathing patterns
• Inhale and exhale awareness
• A gentle 1:1 breathing ratio
• How slow, intentional breathing can support relaxation and focus
• How pranayama can prepare the mind for meditation

You’ll also take a simple two-minute breath count and begin noticing how your breathing may reflect your current physical and mental state.

The goal of this first practice is simple:

Awareness before regulation.

This session is ideal for beginners, runners, yoga practitioners, meditation students, or anyone interested in using breathwork to reduce stress, improve body awareness, and create a calmer mind.

No breath retention or advanced breathing techniques are used in this session.

If you feel dizzy, lightheaded, short of breath, or uncomfortable at any time, return to your natural breathing.

Recovery Miles Yoga — movement, breath, mindfulness, and recovery, one breath and one mile at a time.

Download the Recovery Miles Yoga - Breathwork Lab Session 1 Listener Journal

What if feeling beautiful isn’t about becoming younger, changing your body, or returning to who you used to be?

Still Desired is a sensual, deeply restorative Yoga Nidra for reconnecting with your body, your confidence, and the part of you that still wants to feel seen, appreciated, attractive, and fully alive.

Through traditional Yoga Nidra techniques including body awareness, breath, opposite sensations, intention, and visualization, this practice gently guides you away from comparison and self-consciousness and back into your own skin.

This episode explores beauty in a different way—not as something to preserve or prove, but as something that deepens through experience, confidence, tenderness, presence, and the life you have lived.

You’ll be invited to reconnect with:

• feeling at home in your body
• sensual awareness and presence
• confidence without comparison
• receiving attention without shrinking
• the experience of being seen and desired
• gratitude for a body that is still feeling, changing, and living

Your Sankalpa for this practice:

I am at home in my body.I am worthy of desire.I am fully alive.

Put on your headphones, lie back, close your eyes, and give yourself permission to feel beautiful—not as you once were, but exactly as you are now.

What if becoming a stronger runner isn’t about getting back to who you used to be—but learning to trust who you are becoming?

This deeply restorative Yoga Nidra is for the runner who has ever compared her body, pace, progress, or age to someone else—or even to an earlier version of herself.

Through traditional Yoga Nidra techniques including rotation of consciousness, breath awareness, opposite sensations, intention, and visualization, you’ll be guided away from comparison and toward something more powerful: trust in your body, gratitude for everything it has carried you through, and confidence in everything that may still lie ahead.

Together, we’ll explore the runner you are today—not as a body that needs fixing, but as a woman still growing, discovering, experiencing, and becoming.

Whether you're training for your next race, returning after time away, navigating changes in your body, or simply wondering what your next chapter might look like, this practice is an invitation to stop chasing another version of yourself.

Your strongest years don't automatically belong behind you.

There are still places to go.
Experiences to have.
Finish lines to cross.
And miles to run.

Your Sankalpa for this practice:

I trust my body.
I believe in myself.
I am still becoming.

Put on your headphones, lie back, close your eyes, and meet The Runner You’re Becoming.