This meditation is meant to help you feel relaxed.
It's meant to help you have a deeper and more prolonged sleep.
Allow yourself to find a comfortable place to listen to this meditation.
If you're sitting upright,
Placing a blanket or a pillow under the sit bones.
If you're lying in your bed,
Let your head rest on the pillow and relax your arms and legs.
Allow the eyes to fall heavy and close.
Scan the body now from head to toe and notice if you're holding on to any tension.
We typically store tension in the space behind the eyes,
In the jaw,
In the shoulders and in the hips.
Take a breath and let any tension that you store,
Either in the areas that I just mentioned or anywhere else,
Fade away and be grounded into the support beneath you.
Throughout our meditation,
You may notice the mind switching on.
You may notice the thoughts drifting off in different directions.
This is an opportunity when you notice the thoughts drifting away.
Bring them back,
But do so with kindness and with gentleness.
Now I invite you to clear the mind completely.
Imagine yourself walking down a beach.
Imagine that you're walking along the edge of the water.
Beneath your feet is soft,
Soft sand.
Sand so fine that it feels like silk beneath your feet.
Imagine the sun peering down from the sky.
And a gentle wind,
A warm wind,
Dancing around every curve of your body.
There's no one else on this beach.
It is only you.
And you walk slowly at your own pace.
Little sounds will appear in the distance,
Reminding you that life exists beyond a little bubble of peace.
The sounds of happy children playing.
The sounds of the waves crashing on the sand.
The sound that the wind makes as it whistles through the trees.
You also hear the sound of your own breath.
A sound that,
Combined with all the other sounds,
Creates a beautiful symphony.
After walking down the beach for some time,
You find a place suitable and you sit.
Allowing your sit bones to rest easily on the soft,
Soft sand.
In front of you is a beautiful black stone.
You reach down and pick it up and hold that stone in your palm.
It is smooth.
It shines as the sun peeks down upon it.
As you turn that stone over again and again,
You think of all of the different elements that went into making a stone so perfectly round and so perfectly soft.
You know that it was the wind that had something to do with it.
That it was the sea and the movement of the waves that softened this rock in such a way.
You know that back at the origin,
The birth of the stone,
There was heat and there was pressure.
There was a force so powerful to create something so solid.
And all of the forces at play that went into creating a stone so round,
So soft and so perfect now rests in the palm of your hand.
It's beautiful to think that something that had such energy and such force behind it is now peacefully sitting with you in a quiet moment on the beach.
The rock represents something so much more than a stone.
And just like that stone,
Many forces are at play within you.
Gently place the stone back down on the soft,
Soft sand.
And you slowly move to stand back up.
You walk back to the edge of the water.
This time instead of walking on the sand,
You walk with your toes and the soles of the feet drenched in the cool ocean water.
You walk back the way you came,
This time noticing something different.
You notice the breath of the ocean,
The crash of the waves and the receding of those same waves.
You notice the sound that comes from the ocean,
Power,
Ease,
Continuity.
You look out at the horizon now and stand very still.
It is as if the ocean goes on forever and the sky and the ocean meet in a distant land far away.
The sky now is beginning to turn colors.
From the day that you had with a shining bright sun to now the edge of a setting sun.
And the colors start to emerge,
Deep,
Deep pink,
Fiery orange,
Lilac purple and the encroaching indigo of the night.
In the distance you see a glowing gold moon rising from the horizon.
The moon is full.
It shines down on the sea creating what looks like a path.
