Releasing Stress: Ep.5: The Grounded Sleep Podcast

Get into bed,

Close your eyes,

Unplug from the world,

And start to melt into that deep,

Deep state of sleep that gives us that rest,

That nourishment,

That emptiness,

And that brings us across the dark river of the night into the next day so we can start again.

Welcome to the Grounded Sleep Podcast.

I am your host,

David Gandelman.

I am your guide.

And hopefully I am that voice that will be so boring,

Or so calming,

That will put you to sleep.

If I was a professor during the day,

That would be a terrible quality to have.

But here in the evening,

I am happy to be the guy that puts you to sleep when I talk.

We have all had trouble sleeping.

Everyone has had trouble sleeping.

You don't need to feel bad,

Feel guilty,

Feel stuck,

Feel like you need medication.

Of course,

On a rare occasion we do.

But dot dot dot,

There very well may be an energy that you need to deal with.

If you are not unwinding from stress properly,

If you are not dealing with your anxiety,

If you are not managing your emotions properly,

If you are not being honest in your relationships,

If you are not dealing with regret,

Heartbreak,

Stuckness,

Resentment,

Then yes,

You definitely might have trouble falling asleep because you are not processing.

And at the very kind of outer layer of many of our feelings in the Western world,

We find this one called stress.

Oh,

The most common word of the modern vocabulary,

Stress.

Well,

Tonight we are going to look at stress,

We are going to say stress,

F you bro.

All right,

Maybe not.

Let me back up with that resistance and let's look at why we are stressed.

Start to take some of those rubber bands off that thick ball of rubber bands of stress.

Let's loosen our shoulders.

Let's let that energy start to melt away so we can go to sleep in a calm,

Calm space.

So when we move from stress to rest,

We can either do it consciously or we can do it unconsciously.

And tonight I invite you to move into sleep consciously.

So as you really start to relax tonight,

What is it that's been stressing you out?

We're not here to avoid it or to override it or to outrun it by sleeping.

That's not going to work.

You're just going to ruminate on it and sleep anyway,

Have nightmares,

Have weird dreams.

You know those dreams where that person that pisses you off or stresses you out just keeps showing up over and over or you're always late or you show up to school with no pants on.

Oh,

Is that just me?

Where is the stress feeling in your body?

Let's just start with the feeling.

Where is it?

Is it on your shoulders,

In your head,

In your stomach?

Did you spend all day absorbing all of the pain and energy from the people at work or from family or from friends like a sponge and then you don't even realize how much you absorb and now you're stressed because you're holding on to all these emotions that don't even belong to you.

So maybe we need to just ring you out like a sponge tonight.

You're going to wake up and be like,

Why is my bed wet with other people's stress?

David.

And we're going to take a radical approach to our stress tonight.

So can you have a warm,

Compassionate,

Loving attitude towards your stress?

Can you look at it without a critical eye and just say,

Hey,

I appreciate you.

You must have a message for me.

There's a reason you are here because the alarm bells are going off.

Something obviously isn't right or you wouldn't make me feel this way.

But aren't you familiar with howot紹f all the things about stress?

If you judge your stress,

It'll just get more stressed and then it will solidify even deeper and it'll be harder to figure out.

So it's a very loving,

Kind attitude towards yourself.

Just like if you were petting a kitten,

You can pet your stress.

Wait did you just hear that or was that just me?

Meow,

Meow.

Pet your stress,

Be kind to it and ask it.

What is it that I did not listen to today that I need to know,

That I need to work out,

That I need to resolve so that I can go to sleep quietly and deeply and feel comfortable?

Knowing that I dressed my issues,

I dressed my energy today.

Just like you don't get into bed dressed,

You don't get into bed dressed with energy still.

You have to undress yourself from all the energy of the day.

Let's each part of your body beginning to relax,

To settle in.

And as you deepen into your sleep tonight,

As you deepen into your rest,

That stress begins to slowly melt away.

It melts away like ice melts.

It doesn't happen all at once.

Over time,

You don't even realize it.

Just one drop and then a second and then a third.

And before you know it,

Your headache is gone.

Your obsessiveness of the future is fading away.

Your self-critical mind has taken a seat and is relaxing.

It just happens.

The way when you're a kid,

You grow and one day all of a sudden you could reach the sink and don't remember growing.

You just check and there it is.

You just check back with your body and some of the stress just melted away.

You may not be aware of this,

But you can actually get good at sleep.

You can actually get good at falling asleep.

You can actually get good at unstressing,

Of unwinding.

It just takes a little practice,

A little awareness,

A little amusement.

Why couldn't the skeleton go to the party?

Because you had no body to go with.

Well guess what?

You do have a body and you get to take it to the party of sleep.

You can go travel the dream realms,

Hang out with your friends.

You can go be creative or process emotion or you can dive deep into the restful,

Blissful place that we call deep sleep.

It seems empty but perhaps it is just full of dark calmness.

As you're starting to melt into your bed,

You're starting to let go of the day.

You're starting to let go of the day.

Really enjoy falling asleep.

Enjoy the journey and if you travel far,

Far away from your body,

Know that there is this almost like this cord that keeps you tethered to your physical body.

It's like a rope if you were to go kind of swimming with a life raft off the side of a boat.

You're always connected.

So let yourself get in the water.

Let yourself get on your back and just start to float into the depths,

The deep depths of sleep.

Free yourself from the constraints of your body,

From the constraints of time.

From the constraints of the material,

The daylight,

Waking hours that we call life and step into your other life,

One that's equally as valid,

Equally as important,

Equally as real.

Your sleep life takes up a good third of your entire life or more.

Let go of the stress of the day.

Really leave it behind and go from being stressed to rest.

When we fall asleep,

What we're really doing is coming home to ourselves.

Back from the communication,

The movement,

The relationships.

We're coming back to ourselves.

Coming back home for a rest.

You deserve to rest.

Notice that you have earned that space.

You go into that deep,

Deep silence of sleep and you will rejuvenate.

You will relax.

Your mind will stop wandering and ruminating.

You'll come out the other side fresh,

Awake,

And ready to create your day again.

Keep sleeping,

Keep resting,

Keep dreaming,

And I'll see you on the other side.