Counting Breaths For Nighttime Anxiety

This meditation uses the simple practice of counting the breath to steady the mind and ease nighttime anxiety. By gently following each inhale and exhale with a number, your attention has a safe anchor, helping thoughts slow and the body settle. Over time, this rhythmic focus can quiet worry, creating the conditions for calm and restful sleep. While the meditation offers a seated posture, this meditation can also be done lying down.

Transcript

Let's begin with getting into the body at your own pace with this emphasis on grounding down through the sits bones and the legs and then gently lifting up through the top of the head so there's a sense of upliftedness regalness in the posture itself once you feel settled in the body notice how the breath is flowing for you today this is not about doing anything with the breath or controlling it in any way just notice how it's been flowing all along some people might find the breath easiest in the nose or in the mouth some might find it in the rise and fall of the belly wherever you find the breath the easiest is fine just rest your attention there breathe and know that you are breathing at this point we'll begin to count each breath so the way that we do this is we notice the full cycle of the breath the in breath the out breath and at that end of the out breath there's this little gap in that gap we would silently say to ourself one two another breath comes and goes three we'll continue to count in this direction until we reach 10 if or when we reach 10 cycles of the breath we just start again at one we don't need to climb higher than that we're not trying to achieve anything or get competitive with ourselves we just get going again at one the reason we count the breath is to just show up for each one as a unique act and of course if we get distracted which is something that we likely will do we gently acknowledge that we got distracted we just come back to the breath if it's helpful we can silently and very gently say thinking to ourself just to acknowledge what we were doing thinking totally normal having said thinking to ourself in our own head come back to the breath starting again at one we get distracted that's okay thinking and then we come back to the breath noticing the full cycle starting again one two just in our own head and then we're going to take a few deep breaths in through the nose out through the mouth breathing in and out in once more in and out allowing these breaths to transition us out of the meditation and into the rest of our day