 Hello and welcome to day 56 of today's mindfulness challenge at 56 days in here we go and today we're going to be dealing a lot with sleep and mindfulness Around sleep and some of you may be sleeping very well at the moment Some of you may be struggling a little bit But the energies that are around us at the moment all working towards the new moon on the 22nd You know we're all we can have these bits and pieces that are going on energy dips and etc And there's a lot of things that are floating through our mind at the moment and and When we go to bed and I want us just to think about some things really is that you know to make the room conducive I Believe that some of the best ways to sleep for me is I don't like the bedroom to be messy I like all the doors closed. I like it to be dark. I like it to be cool I like a cold pillow. I don't know whether you do and and I just I just lay there and just Just focus on my breath. I have no problems whatsoever ever dropping off to sleep and that's just a I'm lucky on that on that way with some other people do struggle a little bit But I think you need to get yourselves into patterns because some of us, you know Like most things we give in easy So if we can't force I'm gonna get up or I can't do this I can't and it just then clouds the mind and we need to get into routines You know, I've got a great app on my watch that tells me that I need to go to bed at a certain time If I want to get my seven hours of beauty sleep and God, do I need them? But what I want you to do is really it's think about how you can, you know How you can weave your mindfulness practice. You've woven this daily practice on day 56 now You've woven this patch practice into a day But as soon as you lie down in bed, you notice that your mind begins to race as you settle down for the evening You know, the mind may not always read the situation accurately So with the stimuli that we have through our daily life The mind can seem louder than usual especially when we start to go quiet Then we might feel some aches and pains and all of these things So this exercise can be used in the moments to help settle our mind And as our body really starts to prepare for sleep Okay, and and that preparation really is is is the key to that success and the exercise is Is as I said to allow us to prepare and to settle our minds And and we can create that beautiful Environment where it's just conducive to a sleeping So what I want you to do is and you may be able to do this now Or you may do it later on or if you want to pause me and and and again take me to bed And when you're when you're ready to go to sleep, okay? We can do this But it's about what I'd like you to do Is And this you know explain to your partner if you've got a partner if you're on your own, that's fine But just stand next to the bed. Okay, and just take a few deep breaths in Just just stand next to bed and sent to yourself and Sent to yourself into the present moment bring in your awareness to the body as it is Okay, and then when you climb into bed Remain aware of what's occurring in your body and as you lay down into your bed Feel and assume that resting position. So Just feel that you're using the breath to bring the mindfulness to the body and cultivate that level Of relaxation and as you breathe in when you're laying in bed You can fill your lungs with that air and you can start to feel yourself checking in and when you exhale Feel the body completely soften Within the mattress and picture yourself falling deeper into the mattress So what I want us to do now is we're going to practice that. Okay So stand next to your bed taking three very deep breaths Focus on your breath and put a picture up. Okay Focus on your breath focus on your breath Now I want you to lay down in bed and focus on your breath again And as you lay down just feel how your body just relaxes into that bed And just again breathing in and breathing out And allow your body now just to become more comfortable than what you thought was possible Just keep breathing and feeling That beautiful Bed around you and as you feel your breath now just Coming in and going out. It's a beautiful way to just completely relax your mind And feel yourself just your energy just dissipating into the bed Now in your mind's eye I just want you to bring now to your mind's eye this beautiful loving glowing feeling and color. Okay And this beautiful glowing feeling and color It's just starting to wrap around you as you lay in bed and as it does now I just want you to slowly open your eyes. Okay, so we've got ourselves into a beautiful relaxed state But I want us to slowly open our eyes and as we're laying down now I just want you to pick a spot. Okay a small spot to gaze at Somewhere comfortably in front of you and I want you just to focus on that spot and don't let your eyes turn away And as you look here I'm just going to slowly ask you to close your eyes As slowly as you possibly can Just close in your eyes slower and slower and slower Until you're virtually fighting to keep your eyes awake Open And as you bring it down you feel this beautiful energy just pushing down All over you and it's relaxing you in your eyes now Just close Allow them to gently close And notice when you do so this is beautiful gentle relaxation of sleep The sweeps completely over you It's getting a well rested night's sleep is very important to you Sleep is our rest state and awake is our active state But we must have this good flow between resting and activating resting and activate activating And as we lay here now, I just your eyes closed you feel so relaxed And imagine that in front of you there's a set of stairs going down And these stairs lead you to the knowledge of a restful and rejuvenating sleep And when I begin to count down from 10 You will start to walk down these stairs Feeling more and more relaxed with each step you take 10 Begin your journey of insight into sleep 9 8 Feeling so relaxed with each step 7 6 5 More and more calm 4 More and more relaxed in the mind 3 2 And 1 And as you step off the last step you step into this beautiful white sand It's so soft and warm under your feet And the feel the sensations that your feet are on this sand Now in your mind's eye I want you to look up and see more sand in front of you and you can hear the ocean And I want you to walk towards the sound of the ocean And as you're walking you can feel the sun on your skin Perhaps you can feel a light breeze as well and you notice the smell of the beautiful saltier And as you look around you see the ocean peek over the sand dune And you're walking towards the ocean now and you notice the sand under your feet gets firmer Because it's saturated with the water from the sea And you get to the shore where the ocean meets the sand and you see the little waves coming up and down up and down And as the waves come and go you see some things in the sand like shells pieces of seaweed Your footprints and then you see a piece of driftwood that's the perfect size for writing in And again you're going to pick up this driftwood and draw your name in the sand where it's moist Writing out each letter noticing the sound it makes when you scratch the sand Now I want you to step back and look at your name And as you see your beautiful name that's carried you through your whole life You notice a little wave coming closer And this wave catches part of your name and washes it away as it goes back into the ocean And another wave comes and washes away even more And another comes and washes it away And another Until all you can see in the ripples in the sand is where your name used to be And that's good. That's beautiful We're going to continue walking along the beach noticing the surroundings What kind of sounds can you hear? Can you hear the seabirds flying over or the wind gently blowing? Can you feel the warm sun on your skin? How does the sand feel under your feet again? It's nice, yeah? And maybe you can even smell the smells of the ocean You finish I'm walking along this beautiful sand just as the beach you are today. It's just beautiful And as you've walked you've learned a lot about how beautiful this beach is and and you're ready for a rest So you look around and notice that it's the perfect spot for you to lay down and take a gentle nap In the life-giving sun rays So go ahead and lie down And before you close your eyes and rest them you look onto the ocean And you watch the horizon and how the ocean meets the sky and this is the most beautiful scene you've ever witnessed And as you gaze along the big blue and allowing yourself To fall asleep naturally You listen very closely to what I have to tell you because it is very important to your overall well-being Sleeping is natural for everyone. The only thing keeping you from instinctual sleep That you deserve Are your thoughts And you've allowed your mind to push you around making you restless when you go into bed or Thoughts keep coming louder and louder and repeating themselves over and over So loudly that you can impossibly relax with that noise in your mind. But now You are done. You are allowing your mind for no longer to boss you around From now on when unwanted thoughts arise you may in your mind you just say enough stop And that's it If another brother brother some brother some thoughts arises you immediately say enough stop And you'll find that training the mind is like training anything. We learn from our mistakes and we test our boundaries Yet we listen and we train ourselves And we train our thoughts To move away that keep us up at night So let me say this again so that it's perfectly clear When any thoughts comes into your mind no matter how many times Just say enough stop And just slowly fall asleep And when a loving and relaxing thought comes in Just go with it follow the dream as you lay on the beach you feel so tired and so relaxed Your body now is so soft and your eyes are so heavy And you're just going to slowly drift and float Into this restful and rejuvenating night's sleep And when you rise in the morning you feel brand new And as we lay here now just falling away We ask our angels to come close our helpers our guides our healers Just to give us this loving and conditional healing energy So then we wake up in the morning we're ready to start a brand new day But in this moment and over the next couple of hours Our body is going to get some beautiful rest As we just drift away