Lie down,
Get comfortable,
Make sure that everything is just right in your room so that you can relax your body and let go of your day.
Close down your eyes and shut out the rest of the world.
With your eyes closed,
Start to feel into your body,
Feel what your heart is beating like.
If your heart feels as if it's beating just a little bit too quickly,
Take a nice big deep breath into your heart.
Pull your breath all the way down into your heart space and imagine that your heart is being calmed and relaxed by your breath.
Set an intention on your breath that your breath is carrying a magical power so when you breathe in it brings in relaxation to anywhere that you want to breathe it into,
Any part of your body that you want to relax.
Imagine all you have to do is breathe in and watch in your mind's eye as your breath travels through your body to different places.
Your mind is very very powerful so just setting a simple intention to make your breath more than just your regular breath,
To make it so that your breath is magical,
Sets a whole new intention on breathing during your meditation.
Breathing in once again a nice big deep breath down into your heart space,
Slowing down your heart,
Calming down the rhythm inside of your heart.
Breathing down into your tummy,
See if you can soften and relax the muscles in your stomach.
Watch in your mind as your breath flows down through your arms,
Starting at the top of your shoulders,
Rolling down into your upper arms,
Rolling and flowing through down into your elbows,
Down your forearms to your wrists,
Breathing all the way down into your fingertips,
That magical relaxation.
Breathe deep deep down past your abdomen,
Down through your hips,
Down into your legs,
Breathe and pull the relaxation down through your knees,
Down into your lower legs,
A big deep breath down into your feet.
And now that your body feels like it's full of your magical relaxation breath,
See if you can soften all of your body at once.
The next time you breathe out,
See if you can imagine that your body's falling deeper into your bed.
You breathe in the relaxation and you breathe out and release.
You let go and fall into a deeper place inside of yourself.
Now as your whole body is relaxed,
Pull your attention up into your mind,
Into your mind,
And as you have your eyes closed,
Let your imagination take you into the story as if you're following along.
Charlie couldn't sleep.
It was late at night.
His mind was racing about all the different things.
It was racing about things he had to do,
Conversations that were spoken earlier in his day,
Things he still wanted to say to people.
His mind was racing so much that his body wouldn't relax.
He was laid in bed trying to go to sleep,
But he spent most of his time just staring at the ceiling,
Watching as the fan on his ceiling just kept going round and round in the dark.
It was a full moon outside and the light was shining in through his window.
He could see,
Because there was enough light,
The different shapes of the furniture in his bedroom.
He could make out the fan on his ceiling.
The light from the moon sent in a silvery light that made everything look like it had a tinge of grey and silver.
He got up and went to the bathroom and then came back and got back in bed.
He laid there for another twenty,
Thirty minutes,
Still couldn't fall to sleep.
Charlie decided he was going to go downstairs.
He got out of his bed,
Put on his slippers,
Grabbed his big,
Comfortable bathrobe and wrapped that around his body and went down the stairs.
The moonlight was shining through all the windows in the house.
And that's when,
For some reason,
Unbeknown to Charlie,
He had an urge,
A deep urge inside of himself to just go out of his house and go for a walk.
Charlie locked his front door behind him and put the key in his bathrobe pocket.
It was really,
Really quiet outside.
It was like everyone else in the world was asleep already.
It was just Charlie and the moon.
He walked the streets of his neighborhood.
He didn't have a direction or a destination in mind.
He just walked.
It was light outside because of the moon,
So he could see clearly where his footsteps were landing.
It wasn't pitch black.
And also the nightlights were on on the streets.
The air around him felt cool and damp,
A little bit misty,
But there were no cars.
There were no people on the street.
There were barely any sounds coming from anywhere,
Just his footsteps as they hit the ground.
He could hear his breathing.
There was a very faint electric buzz in the air as if he could hear the lights,
The street lamps.
Everything else around him seemed to be just covered in a blanket of mist and the night air.
Charlie ended up walking into an open plot of land.
He found himself walking towards a tree.
It was a big tree.
The shadow of it looked like it was a big,
Tall,
Bushy tree.
As Charlie walked closer,
He could see that it was a willow tree.
The willow tree looked like a big,
Giant mushroom,
Like a canopy.
The leaves and the branches all bowed over to create what looked like an umbrella.
He found himself walking under the leaves and the branches.
It was like being under a giant umbrella,
But the umbrella was the tree.
It was like being in a cave that was a tree,
Or a den that you make.
Your own den,
Surrounded by the willow tree as if it's keeping you warm and safe from everything else in the world.
Charlie walked into the place that would be right there in the middle.
He sat down next to the bark,
The trunk of the tree,
And looked up.
It felt very cool to be in there.
It reminded him of being a lot younger when he would make a fort and put a blanket over two chairs in his bedroom.
He felt very safe there,
Protected from the elements.
It wasn't misty or foggy inside of this space.
The air was very still and a lot drier than what it felt like when he was walking.
The earth beneath him wasn't damp,
It was dry and soft.
And because there was no breeze or no cold night air coming into the canopy,
It was like it was warmer in there.
Warm,
Dry,
And safe.
He leaned his back against the trunk of the willow tree,
And his shoulders relaxed for the first time that night.
He closed down his eyes and took a big,
Deep breath.
And as he breathed out,
The sound seemed so much louder because that was all that he could hear.
He breathed in again,
And breathed out big and long and deep.
The sound was very relaxing and soothing to his ears.
You could say it was mesmerizing,
Like white noise.
He kept doing it,
Breathing in and breathing out,
Quite exaggerated.
The slow,
Deep,
Speed and tempo of his breath really,
Really relaxed his body.
And he felt as if on every exhale,
He was letting go of all of the worries and stresses he had.
Like the willow tree in the space that he was in was taking all of his stress from him.
He was totally safe there,
Protected from the elements,
Protected from the real world.
The sound of his breath started to trail into one big sound.
He relaxed more and more,
Until eventually,
Charlie fell to sleep.
Right there,
In the safe space underneath the willow tree.
He slept deeply and soundly that night,
As if he traveled somewhere else in time and space.
His dreams and his sleep were so deep.
When he woke the next morning to the sunlight shining through the cracks,
He didn't remember any of his dreams.
It was still quiet.
There wasn't any hustle and bustle sounds coming from outside of his safe space.
It must have been really early morning.
Maybe the sun had just come up.
Charlie stood up and stretched his arms up over his head.
He leaned forward and bent down and touched his toes,
Stretching out his spine.
And when he came up,
He had a very gentle smile on his face.
He didn't know why he was smiling.
He just felt really good,
Rested,
Rejuvenated,
And ready for a whole new day.
The end.
