Hey,
Friend who's about to be asleep,
Welcome back to the Grounded Sleep Podcast,
And tonight is a very special episode.
We are on episode number 60,
And it's only taken me a few years to get here.
I'm a bit slow at recording these,
Maybe I spend too much time asleep.
So get into bed,
Let's get comfortable.
And before we jump in,
I just want to mention that all the sleep meditations and all my other content,
All my meditations and video courses are all available at MeditationSchool.
Us,
Or if you download the Meditation School app,
Which is available on Apple and should be out on Android any day now,
Just waiting to hear back from my developers.
That's what's keeping me up at night.
No,
Not really.
I fall asleep like a little baby.
So when you're ready,
Go ahead,
Close your eyes,
Get under the blanket if you need one,
Make sure all the lights are off.
And in tonight's episode,
I want to share a bit about some more travel I just did and some teaching in Spain.
So let's take a little journey down story lane with David.
Let your body relax into bed first before I jump into it.
Maybe you can even notice if there's any tension in your jaw and let your mouth be relaxed.
Notice if there's any tension in the back of your head or in your shoulders or your hands.
And every time you take a deep breath in and then a soft sigh out,
Just let each of those areas begin to relax a bit deeper.
So I was teaching a retreat in Montana a couple of years ago.
And one of the students,
Brian,
Had a really nice time,
Apparently.
And he is an American guy who lives in Barcelona,
Spain,
Which is somewhere I lived for a year a long,
Long time ago when I was a 23-year-old knucklehead.
And he messaged me and he said,
Why don't you come teach a retreat in Spain?
I've got a nice spot.
And so I said,
Si.
And I called my buddy Scott Stabile,
Who's a wonderful author and has hosted,
Guest hosted episodes of the Sleep Podcast.
And shout out to Scott,
Who has a new book coming out called Enough As You Are.
And I asked Scott to teach this retreat with me.
And he said,
Yeah.
And so off to Spain we went.
That's the short version of how it unfolded.
And we had a beautiful group of people in Spain.
And lucky for me,
There was a wonderful piano I got to mess around on.
And it was out in the mountains near a place called Montserrat.
It's an incredible rock formation with a monastery on top.
And as a group,
We took a cable car up all the way to the top,
Which was a bit scary if you don't like heights.
And we went into the church and saw a statue called the Black Madonna.
We did some hiking around the rocks.
We ate some good gelato.
We sat and meditated for a while in the church.
And we spent seven days meditating.
Scott was guiding breath work.
We did some yoga.
We ate a lot of food,
Probably too much.
And most of all,
We laughed.
We made friends.
And we had a really good time.
And on this retreat,
Just like on all the retreats I teach,
I really try to create a space for everyone to have their own experience.
Some people are there to cry.
Some people are there to laugh.
Some people are there to heal.
And some are there for all of the above.
I try to do my best to not tell people what I think the truth is about life and just teach them the tools to find out for themselves.
And I hadn't been back to Spain since I lived there when I was 23,
22 and 23.
And I was teaching English during the day.
And I was running bar crawls at night.
I took people bar to bar to bar and then dancing at the end of the night.
And that was one of my jobs.
I don't think I ever really drank much alcohol again since that year.
And there's something very special about Spain,
The energy,
The people,
The food,
The siesta.
There's a kind of relaxed energy that I noticed more of than I'm used to,
Almost a laid-back energy.
And of course,
Spain is a big,
Diverse country.
In Barcelona,
They speak Catalan.
And you have an area,
San Sebastian,
Where they have their own ancient language.
As you move through Spain,
So many cultures,
So much history.
You can go to the south,
To Sevilla,
And notice where the Moors came and had an effect on the culture.
After the retreat,
Scott and I went and spent a few days on Menorca,
Which is an island east of Barcelona.
And it's next to another island called Mallorca.
And I didn't realize,
But Menorca has a deep,
Deep,
Rich history.
And it also has a tough history.
It's been invaded and conquered by the Greeks and the Romans,
And on and on through the millennia,
Finally by the Spaniards.
But the beaches are pristine,
The food is amazing,
The people are nice.
It was a really good way to relax a bit after teaching for seven days.
And it was a good time to reflect,
To just be playful,
And to hang out with a good friend of mine.
And as I go on and on with my story,
Let yourself just start to melt into bed.
If you can,
Let the day go just a bit more.
I would love for you to have a really peaceful,
Gentle,
Relaxing sleep.
And so I'll finish the story by sharing that at the end of our trip,
We spent a few days in Amsterdam,
Where I dragged Scott to every bookstore I could find.
And we went into this last bookstore,
And I was asking the guy who owned the store if he had some antique books.
And boy,
Did he ever.
In fact,
He had the entire original collection of one of my favorite philosophers,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
And Rousseau was a philosopher in the 18th century,
And some might argue we might not have a French Revolution and American democracy and all the democracies around the world without his philosophy.
And my favorite work by him is the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.
Anyway,
He had the entire Lifeworks of Rousseau from the 1700s,
And he gave it to me for an incredibly reasonable price.
And I was so elated,
So nerdy,
So elated.
I can't even read them because they're in French,
All the books.
Maybe one day I'll learn.
But I'm just so happy to have them,
And I'm going to do my very best to keep them safe so they can continue on.
Then I made my way to New York and New Jersey,
Where I visited my family.
I went upstate to hang out on my brother's farm for a few days.
And then I came back to Boulder,
Colorado,
Where I live.
And I love,
Love traveling so much.
Feel so lucky to be able to get to travel and see the world.
And I also love coming home to my bed,
And to my office where I can record,
And to my friends,
And to the mountains.
I think we all have a favorite terrain,
And mine is definitely the mountains.
Make sure you're still breathing nice and slowly and deeply.
Let yourself start to fade off into the night.
My only future travel plans are to travel on the astral plane in the near future as I sleep.
So notice tonight,
As your body goes to sleep,
You can travel as a spirit.
I was teaching a class this week,
And I mentioned that every night when we fall asleep,
In a sense we disincarnate.
And every morning when we wake up,
We reincarnate.
So let yourself go tonight,
And then let yourself come back tomorrow morning.
Let that breathing get slower and deeper,
And just allow yourself to be at home in your human,
Calm form.
And allow yourself to be at home in a restful place,
In a restful space,
And let yourself just fall asleep.
Get a really,
Really good night's rest,
And I'll see you on the other side.
Be well.
