Breathwork For Deep Sleep

Welcome to your wind down breath work session with me Jamie Clements.

I'm going to be taking you through some really simple breath work exercises to help you decompress,

Down regulate your nervous system,

Move into a really restful,

Relaxed state.

This is perfect to use before you go to bed to help you drift off to a nice peaceful sleep.

I'm just going to invite you to lie down in your bed or somewhere comfortable,

Lying on your back,

Closing down the eyes.

Just starting to bring your awareness to the breath.

We're not trying to consciously control it at the moment.

What we're going to start to do with our conscious breathing exercises,

After a long day,

We're just going to down regulate something called our autonomic nervous system and move into a parasympathetic state which is our rest and digest state.

How we do this is by breathing down into our belly and starting to slow down our breathing.

I'm just going to invite you to stay here a little longer,

Keeping your awareness on the breath and also taking this opportunity to check in with yourself and see how you're feeling at the end of a long day.

If your mind is still really active,

Just know that that's perfectly natural and hopefully over the course of the next 15 minutes or so,

We'll start to still the body and relax the mind and drift off to sleep.

Now we're just going to start to bring some more attention to the breath.

Just starting to take some deeper breaths in and out of the nose.

In your own time,

Just starting to focus more on those nice slow breaths in through the nose and out of the nose.

Now just following my count,

We're going to inhale for four,

Three,

Two,

One,

Out,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

In,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Out,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

In,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six.

In,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Out,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six.

Just keeping it cycling now.

Four second inhale and a six second exhale.

Really starting to slow things down,

Controlling the exhale.

It's the exhale that starts to move us into that rest and digest state.

Keeping that cycling now.

And if it's comfortable for you,

See if you can extend the exhale.

So keeping a four second inhale,

Starting to make that exhale even longer.

See if you can go for eight seconds now.

Really extending the exhale.

So letting that air leak back out of your nose,

Nice and slowly,

Nice and gently.

Letting each exhale,

Let your body soften even further into the embed.

And now after your next nice controlled exhale,

Just taking a deep clearing breath in through the nose and sighing out of the mouth.

And then allowing your breath to settle back to a comfortable natural state.

We're just going to move into our final conscious breathing exercise.

It's a personal favourite of mine that I use whenever I'm feeling particularly anxious and especially when I'm trying to get off to sleep.

So this is going to be a four second inhale through the nose,

A seven second hold and an eight second exhale out of the mouth.

So a nice slow controlled exhale out of the mouth.

So again,

Just following me,

We're going to go in,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Out,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

In,

Hold and out.

And now just keeping that cycling,

Controlling that exhale.

Letting yourself drift off into a restful sleep as that relaxation takes over your body and your mind starts to still even further.

Keeping it going as we let go into sleep.

And if you're still with me,

Just going to invite you to finish the round that you're on.

Bring your awareness back to the breath.

And just let your breathing settle back to its natural state.

And if it's helpful for you,

Just starting to count either the inhale or the exhale.

And as we come to the end of our session today,

Just knowing that you can come back to these techniques at any point during the day,

Or if you wake up in the night,

To help you move back into that restful state and still the mind.

Thanks again for joining me.

And I hope to see you again soon.