Prepare For Sleep: Release And Relax Mind And Body

Do your thoughts get in the way of your meditation or sleep? With these six simple steps of mindful breath and thoughts, your body and brain will totally relax and release tension, stress and anxiety, leaving you ready to meditate deeply or fall fast asleep.

Transcript

If you have trouble getting to sleep,

If you have too many thoughts,

You find it difficult to relax,

Then this practice really addresses the thoughts and helps you relax even if you are having a lot of thoughts.

So there are six steps.

The first three will be mindfulness of the breath and the second group of three mindfulness of thoughts.

So to begin with,

Simply become aware of your breath.

So a couple of things I like to remind myself when doing a mindfulness practice like this is to really feel the breath,

Feel the physical sensations in the body as I breathe.

Just making sure it's not a mental or conceptual exercise,

But I'm really feeling the breath in the body.

And the second thing I like to remind myself to do is not to concentrate or focus,

Not to try and exclude everything else apart from the breath.

So we're taking a particular interest in the breath and the physical sensations of the breath for a few moments.

We're trying to do that without effort and tension,

So keeping the awareness nice and light and open.

So I like to think of this as gently keeping the breath in the center or the foreground of my open awareness.

And still aware of thoughts,

Sounds,

Other sensations and emotions,

Still aware of my environment.

Allowing all these things to happen around the breath or just in the background.

So let's spend a few moments just really enjoying the sensations of the breath in the center of your open awareness.

So the second step is to not change the breath in any way.

So allowing the breath to breathe itself,

Allow the breath into the body without restriction and let go of the breath without holding onto the breath at all.

So consciously choosing to really allow the breath to flow freely through the body.

And if we can really get a sense of the breath flowing freely,

Allowing the breath.

And you can begin to get a sense that it's not that you are breathing,

But that your body is being breathed.

See if you can feel the body being breathed by the breath.

There's no effort needed for you to breathe,

The breath is occurring within the body,

Flowing freely through the body.

And the third step is just to check the body for any tension.

If we're holding any tension in the body that will be maybe just subtly,

Maybe just by a little bit,

It may be restricting the breath.

So if you're holding tightness,

Tension or stress in the body that will be restricting the breath a little from being able to really flow as freely as it would like to.

So have a quick scan through the body,

If you find any areas of tension or tightness,

Just allowing that part of the body to release and to relax,

To ease.

So now when we breathe in,

Feeling the breath flow freely into a relaxed body.

And as we breathe out,

Not just releasing the breath,

But releasing any residual tension from the body.

So experiencing a effortless breath flowing through a relaxed body.

Okay,

So for the second part of the meditation,

We're going to apply these same simple principles to the mind and our thoughts.

So the first part will be simply to become aware of your thoughts.

So allowing the breath to join the sounds and other sensations and emotions and the awareness of your environment just in the background.

And gently bringing your thoughts into the foreground of your awareness and allow your thoughts to be in the center of your open awareness,

Remembering not to make effort to concentrate or focus.

Simply being aware of the experience of thinking within your open and light awareness.

And noticing what it feels like to be thinking and being aware of your thinking at the same time.

So a different experience to just how we would experience thinking normally.

So really exploring what it feels like to be thinking whilst you're being aware of those thoughts.

Can feel a little strange or confusing to begin with because we're usually so identified and attached to our thoughts.

So seeing if you can treat your thoughts just as we were with the breath,

Just another experience happening within our awareness.

And if it helps including the breath as well as your thoughts within your awareness.

So the next step is to do what we also did with the breath and that's not try and change the thoughts in any way at all.

That can be quite an easy step with the breath but sometimes it's a bit more challenging with our thoughts.

So the invitation is to really give your thoughts complete freedom so you can think anything at all.

Don't try and change your thoughts in any way.

Don't try and slow them down.

Don't try and stop them.

Don't try and redirect them.

Don't try and think more positively or more calmly.

Have that attitude of complete freedom for your mind,

For your thoughts,

Completely allowing and welcoming any and all thoughts into your awareness.

Just as they are,

No matter what they are.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And see now if you can notice what we noticed with the breath.

After choosing not to change the breath in any way,

We were beginning to feel the breath was breathing itself.

The breath was breathing the body.

There was no effort needed from us to breathe.

So the same is true for the thoughts.

You don't actually have to make any effort at all to think.

The thoughts will occur all by themselves,

Naturally,

Spontaneously,

Automatically.

And because we are not making any effort to redirect or change them,

Because we are welcoming every thought,

This gives us the opportunity to experience the thoughts occurring to us,

Arriving and arising within the mind,

Within the awareness,

Without any effort.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So the final step is to do for the thoughts what we did for the breath,

Where we really consciously relaxed the body,

Just to make sure there was no effort needed from us to breathe.

Just to make sure there was no restriction to the breath,

So the breath could really flow freely through the body.

So what we are going to do for the thoughts,

Just to make sure that they can really flow freely,

So that they are really liberated and have all the time and space they need,

Is to see if we can consciously relax the brain.

So to begin with,

Just become aware of the face and feel all the muscles in the face,

Maybe particularly around the jaw,

Around the eyes,

Forehead.

And allow all these muscles and allow your face to completely relax,

Really notice how that feels to allow the face to relax totally.

And now include the top back and sides of the head,

So the scalp and the skull,

And allow all these parts of your head also to completely relax.

And now treating your brain just as you would any other part of your body,

Allow your brain to completely relax.

Feel your brain relaxing totally and completely and effortlessly.

And allowing your whole head,

Face and brain to all be completely relaxed.

Really allow your thoughts to flow completely freely through your relaxed brain.

Just as your breath continues to flow completely freely through your relaxed body,

It takes no effort to allow the breath to flow through a relaxed body,

And no effort at all to allow your thoughts to flow through your completely relaxed brain.

Just as your breath continues to flow completely freely through your whole body,

It takes no effort to allow your thoughts to flow freely through your whole body,

Reviews

Found that very relaxing and helpful thank you, the waves did distract me a bit at the end as I prefer a quiet background but still a great meditation. 🙏🌟

I liked how the meditation was broken down ino bite size pieces. you helped me relax more into what it means to meditate

🙏

Bless you! 🙏🙏
I received a wonderful FULL NIGHTS SLEEP after listening to your beautiful meditation. I can’t thank you enough 💗💗💗💗
The rest and rejuvenation were desperately needed 🥰😘💖

Nice! Second meditation from you I’ve fallen asleep to

This was beautiful. The beach sounds at the end were heavenly 🙏🏻❤️

I slept. Thank you