Lie down in your bed and make sure that everything is just right so that you can get comfortable.
Pull the covers up close to your head so you're all warm and snuggly underneath your blankets,
Preparing yourself to relax your body and hopefully allow yourself to fall to sleep.
Take a big inhale in through your nose,
Breathe out nice and slow,
Start to slow down the way that you breathe,
Try and take longer,
Deeper breaths.
This will start to allow your body to respond in a relaxing way,
Also it will send signals to your brain that it's time to be calm and still and quiet,
So your brain will slow down and be quiet also.
Close down your eyes if you haven't done so already,
And with your eyes closed,
See if you can relax the muscles in your face,
Soften any tension across your forehead,
Relax the space around your eyes,
A lot of the time our jaw is tense,
See if you can relax your mouth and soften your jaw,
Pull your shoulders down away from your ears,
Let your arms and your hands get heavy.
Every time you breathe out nice and slow,
Let your body sink deeper into your bed,
Softening into the mattress below your body,
Relax your back into your bed and your legs,
Allow your legs to feel really heavy and tired,
Starting to wake up your imagination as you visualize the things I suggest.
With your eyes closed,
Imagine that you can feel yourself walking down a nice country road,
It's a pleasant day outside.
Imagine that the country road is just a one way road and occasionally a car will drive by,
But you're walking on the path next to the road and to your left there's bushes and beyond the bushes there's fields and fields,
Some of the fields have cows munching away on the grass and some of the fields that you can see off in the distance are just empty,
Maybe the farmer's growing crops in those fields.
You know this path,
You've walked it many times,
So you feel safe and secure.
Imagine in your mind that you're just walking on a path next to a road that leads to a very friendly village,
The day is warm and the sky is clear up above your head,
There's birds tweeting in the background,
But other than that it's quite a quiet walk that you're on and this allows you to enjoy the peace and quiet as you walk,
Feeling the ground underneath your feet.
Step by step you can see the village up ahead,
You can clearly see the church because it's got a long tower with a clock on,
You can see the tops of other buildings and the first place that you come to before you even get there,
You can smell it,
It's the bread shop,
The bakery.
You start to get a very strong smell of baked goods,
Cakes,
Bread,
Doughnuts,
Cream buns,
Your mind starts to get creative about all the different beautiful tasty things that are always there in the bakery shop and your tummy rumbles just a little bit as you've not had breakfast yet,
But that's quite a ways still even though you can smell the bread,
You've got a couple minutes walk before you get anywhere near the bakery shop,
You notice that there's more and more sounds and the road that you're walking on opens up and now you can hear more traffic,
More cars driving by.
As you come closer to the bakery shop you decide to just stop in the window for a second and stare at all the different cakes and buns,
This fresh made bread that's been made into sandwiches,
There's hot warm sausage rolls and pasties there in the window and you can see the steam coming up off them,
It makes your mouth water just a little bit,
But this isn't why you came into the village today,
You came to do something very special for yourself,
So you keep walking,
You walk by the butcher shop,
You walk past the small quaint post office,
There's quite a few people on both sides of the road,
Across the road there's a small supermarket,
You smile at a couple of people that go by and then you get to where you're going,
Down the side of one of the buildings there's a snicket that you can walk through,
You could say it's a shortcut to where you're heading,
You turn left and start to walk down the snicket between two buildings,
You walk down the snicket for a couple of minutes until you come to the opening,
Behind all of the different buildings there in the village,
You start to walk back out into nature on a new path,
The path is like a dirt path and there's trees,
Big tall ones to your left and the right of the path and behind those trees there's fields again,
Fields on the left and fields on the right,
The path that you're walking on goes straight forward,
You know that you're going to be on this path for a few minutes so you decide to just take some deep breaths and enjoy the nice day,
The sounds from the main road in the village are becoming more distant,
Softer as you walk further away and the birds get louder once again,
There's a wooden fence that looks like it's been there hundreds of years,
Up off in front of you and that's where you're heading,
You know that you have to climb over that fence because you've done it many times but it's nice to see the fence waiting there,
You wonder how many more years that fence will be there and how many people have climbed over it so far,
You get to the fence and climb over a couple of the railings,
Hop over the top and climb back down the other side and land on the ground once again,
Now you have to go down a hill,
You're glad that you're wearing your comfortable shoes,
You start to walk down the hill and as you look up at the sky you notice there's a few clouds now,
One big giant white one,
It looks just like a puffy white flower would look floating up there in the sky,
You get to a point on your walk where there's always ducks by the river on the side of a cottage house right there,
The house is covered in vines and ivy and it has a bright red door that's quite small,
You'd have to be a tiny person to make it look like a normal sized door,
Anyone who was normally sized would have to bend down as they walked through the doorway,
The windows on the cottage are lead glass windows,
It looks like hundreds of diamond shapes,
You stop and smile at the ducks on the little river that runs next to the house,
There's a bridge that you go across and that's where you stop,
It'd be nice to live in that house next to this small little river in the middle of nowhere,
Not too far away from the main part of the village,
It's quiet and tranquil and there's so many different trees all over,
There's a washing line on the house's backyard and you watch the clothes blowing a little bit,
It's not very windy today,
The ducks are quacking making noises and you look back at the ducks as if they're calling you to take a look at them,
But this isn't where you're going today,
You're close but you're not there yet,
You carry on walking down the hill and you see another fence that you have to climb over,
You get to the fence and you climb over just like the last one and you know that you're really,
Really close,
About 20 steps forward it normally takes,
You start to count in your mind,
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five,
The earth is quite spongy underneath as the trees have formed a canopy and all the leaves have fallen from the trees and landed on the ground and it makes it cooler and darker and squishier underneath your feet,
8,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
You can see the dams there in front of you,
That's where you've been going,
15,
16,
You start to walk out of the trees into an open area,
17,
18,
19,
20,
You're here,
You're in a place called the dams,
The place could be described as like a small lake or a bigger pond,
It's definitely not a big lake and it's definitely not a small pond but the water is covered in lily pads,
There's spaces here and there where you can see much more of the water but most of it is covered in big ginormous lily pads,
The lily pads are that big that you're able to do what you're going to do next,
You sit down by the water and this is where you use your imagination because maybe it wouldn't be so safe to do it in real life but you can definitely do it when you do this,
When you imagine,
You close your eyes there by the dams,
By the side of the water and you imagine that you take off your socks and your shoes and you step on the closest lily pad,
The water feels cool in your toes and it comes up to your ankles but you don't sink any deeper than that,
As if by magic you're walking on water and the lily pad can hold your weight,
You start to play with the lily pads like stepping stones because there's one in the middle of the dam that's big,
Very big,
Big enough for you to lay down on and it's calling your name,
You hop over all the different lily pads until you get to the one in the middle,
You've picked the perfect time of year to do this you can see the lotus flowers all over the top of the water along with the giant lily pads and it looks like something from a Disney movie,
Imagining frogs that would pop out and talk to you at any second or maybe they'd want to kiss and turn into a prince,
You sit down on the giant lily pad in the middle of the dam and then you lay down and you make a star shape with your body and stare up at the sky,
The lily pad welcomes you and starts to curl up around you so that you stay dry and warm as the sun shines down on your body,
This is your favorite place,
You watch the dragonflies,
There's so many of them,
The perfect wings and some of them get close enough so that you can see what looks like veins on the wings,
You can see the sky through the wings as the transparent and clear,
At one point a tiny ladybug flies close enough to your eyes that you recognize it's a ladybug and then it flies and lands on your shoulder and just sits there for a while,
There's butterflies,
Dragonflies,
Ladybugs,
There's birds flying higher in the sky,
If you listen really carefully you can feel the water beneath your body singing songs,
Talking,
It's a faint buzzing sound,
A humming and it sounds soft like angels singing,
You close your eyes and start to let your body really,
Really relax,
There's no other place like this in the world,
Every time you come and lay down on the lily pad in the middle of the dams,
Right there,
Just far enough away from the main busy part of the village,
Every time you come here you feel more and more at peace,
Totally happy,
The lily pad moves just a little bit as if you're laying on a water bed and the gentle movement and rocking helps you to really,
Really relax,
It feels like you've been snuggled and held and every time you open your eyes to take a look around you find yourself once again surrounded by all the wonderful little insects as if they're all coming to be with you for a spell of time to join you in your little escape from the rest of the world,
To keep you company and as you start to drift off into sleep your body feels floaty and light as if you can no longer feel the lily pad beneath your body,
As if you're starting to float up away and into the sky,
You imagine that as hundreds and hundreds of dragonflies gently picking you up and flying you up into the clear blue sky with the odd cloud just here and there,
You get lighter and lighter,
Lighter,
Feeling your body rising up higher and higher,
You feel weightless and calm and very,
Very comfortable like you're going on a whole other journey,
On another adventure somewhere in the sky,
Leaving everything else down below,
You imagine that you can see the village from up there where you are,
The village and the people below look so tiny and you're floating around up there like a balloon that a child let go of by mistake,
You see them sometimes in the sky,
Just a balloon flying all on its own,
Who knows where it's going,
Maybe it's going to a whole other world,
You sink deeper and deeper into sleep as you float off into the world of dreams,
The end.
