Hello,
This is Rony and this meditation is one of my favourite meditations for helping myself to fall back asleep if I'm either having trouble falling asleep at night or if I've woken up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep.
It can also be used anytime through the day where you feel like your thoughts are just a bit sticky and you're having trouble disconnecting from them,
But it's a beautiful one to use for settling the mind so that it's ready for sleep.
It's called Leaves on a Stream and it originates from a school of therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which is also known as ACT.
So let's begin.
The first thing that I want you to do is make sure that you are super comfy.
So move your body,
Get into a position that feels just right for you.
Don't tolerate any discomfort,
Do whatever you need to do even to make yourself 5% more comfortable.
Just get snug and warm and ready.
The next thing I'm going to ask you to do is I want you to bring to mind a body of water that's moving.
So it could be a slow trickle of a stream,
Might be a rushing river.
Perhaps you've been somewhere and the water that you're visualising is somewhere that you've actually visited in real life.
But you can also pick something that comes just from your imagination.
Just some kind of moving water.
Once you've settled on the right sort of stream or river or waterfall,
I just want you to imagine walking over to this moving water and finding somewhere to sit where you can watch it.
You might be sitting on a rock or maybe just on some grass.
Imagine just sitting somewhere comfortable as you watch this water slowly moving.
I want you to really bring this scene to life in your mind's eye.
Notice what else you might see as you look around,
The temperature that it might be in this scene,
The sounds you might hear or even the smells.
Just really flesh that scene out in your mind's eye.
Now I want you to imagine that as you're sitting there in this beautiful scene,
That you notice some leaves floating along the stream.
Whatever sort of leaves come to mind is fine.
Big or small,
Brown or colourful.
Just notice these leaves floating on the water and drifting downstream.
And what we're going to do now is we're going to place our thoughts on these leaves.
Some people imagine actually putting each thought onto a leaf,
Other people imagine the letters dropping out of the sky.
However it works best for you is fine.
But we're just going to have a go at any thought that we notice in our mind,
Placing it on a leaf and just watching that leaf drift downstream and then noticing what the next thought is.
And whatever thought you have in mind goes on a leaf.
So it might be that the first thought you put on a leaf is,
This exercise sounds silly,
Or this isn't going to help me fall asleep.
You might put on a leaf,
I've done this before,
Maybe it's,
This sounds boring.
Whatever thought comes into your mind just goes onto the leaf.
Maybe you're thinking about something that happened during the day or yesterday.
Maybe you're wondering what you're going to do for dinner tomorrow night.
Maybe your shoulders sore,
Or you notice there's an annoying fly in the room.
Just whatever thought next comes,
Put it on a leaf and watch it float downstream.
Sometimes you might put on a leaf,
I don't know what my thought is,
I don't know what I'm thinking,
Put that on a leaf.
At other times you might put the same thought on several leaves in a row,
That's fine too.
Sometimes you might find that your mind's wandered off to start thinking about something else and you've forgotten about the leaf exercise.
That's fine,
Whenever you remember just come back,
Place that thought on the leaf,
Watch it float downstream and then just wait for the next one.
One of the biggest barriers to sleep is our busy minds and so this exercise is a beautiful way of diffusing from our thoughts and not latching on to them and going down the rabbit hole,
Just noticing them,
Placing them on a leaf,
Letting them float downstream.
And so I'm going to leave you now,
Leave you in your comfy snug spot,
Watching your thoughts land on the leaves and float downstream.
And you can roll with this exercise for as long as you need.
My wish for you is that at some point the next thing you notice is that you're waking up and you must have fallen asleep while doing the exercise.
So just stay there watching the stream,
Placing each thought on a leaf,
In a gentle and curious way,
Patient and calm.
And may this help your mind and your body feel calm and restful and eventually drift off into a sweet sleep.
