Better Sleep - Guided Meditation

Hello and welcome to today's podcast on the condition of sleep.

I know that many of you struggle with dropping off to sleep.

So today I want to address how you can move into an easy state of sleep.

How you can take yourself into a state of semi-hypnosis and slip from this conscious everyday experience into the condition of sleep.

To start off I want to give you the overview of the different states of consciousness.

So we have three states of consciousness.

We have this everyday thinking working in the third dimensional world.

We have a state of the subconscious which works into the state of sleep.

And then we have this super conscious state that is hyper awake,

Hyper alert and overviews more than just this third dimensional reality.

So with that very broad overview of the different states of consciousness,

When we think about sleep then we're moving on that cusp of awareness from our everyday conscious experience into the subconscious for sleep.

That transitioning can be quite difficult.

When I was six I realised that the state of sleep was just a bit like a film playing and that you could choose which DVD that you wanted to watch.

You could choose that you wanted to have a nice dream.

There were certain dreams that I had where I was being chased by some faceless unknown,

As many children do,

In fact many adults do,

But I realised that not only could I become lucid within the dream,

That I could choose that I wasn't going to be frightened and that I could turn around and face the monster and say no.

The illusion of that state would just dissolve in front of my eyes and I would wake up from the state of sleep.

So not only did I become conscious of how to move from one state of consciousness to another,

I also learned that you could program,

Before you went to sleep,

You could program what kind of dream you wanted.

You could tell your subconscious from your conscious state,

You could tell your subconscious what it was that you wanted and largely that was the kind of dream that you got.

You kind of program it in.

So I just want to put it out there to you just now that that is a possibility that you can program into your subconscious what kind of dream it is that you want.

Perhaps it's a dream that you've had before.

Quite often we have recurring dreams and it'd be a dream that you would like,

A dream that would be a pleasant and happy experience.

First of all,

Programming in what kind of sleep you want to have and then we're going to come into the techniques of how you bring yourself into the sleep state.

That is a conscious effort to bring yourself into the sleep state.

What I'm going to do is talk you through the technique and then I'm going to lead you through that.

So some of you may be listening to this lying down in bed which would be a useful aid to sleeping.

So I would suggest that before this that you're not operating any machinery in a safe place in a state to sleep.

The technique is one of self-hypnosis.

So you imagine that in your everyday waking experience if you were to have a countdown from 10 to 1 then that at the moment you were 10 and you would find some part of the body that was tired.

Now I would suggest that if you've got busy racing thoughts then it's probably not the head.

It would be somewhere in the body that is ready to sleep,

Somewhere that is tired and you take yourself into that part of the body.

For me it was always lower in the back somewhere,

The sacrum area,

Furthest away from the busy mind area which is usually somewhere in the brain.

So bringing your awareness down into the lower back somewhere imagine you were curled up ready for hibernation like a little squirrel in a nest.

Then you start your countdown.

So your everyday waking consciousness is a state of 10 and you imagine you're drifting into a 9 which would be for easier sleep and then an 8,

A 7,

6,

5,

4 and each time you imagine yourself even more into a deeper and quieter and calmer state of sleep.

And if you've managed to reach 1 and you still haven't achieved sleep then you don't start again from your everyday waking consciousness of 10 but you do start counting down from 10 to 1 again from that semi-sleep state that you've reached.

So you count down again.

You might count down from 10 to 1 two or three times.

Each time you're in a deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper state towards sleep until you just drift off.

It takes a little bit of practice but it is highly worthwhile achieving.

It's a tool for life.

I find that it's so useful now that even in a busy airport I can close my eyes,

Count down from 10 to 1 and I never reach any more than 5 and I'm asleep.

The other thing that I want to say before I lead you through that guided meditation down into sleep is that not only can you program in the kind of dream or sleep state that you want to have,

I.

E.

A happy,

Nurturing,

Restful,

Restorative one,

That you can also program in how long you want to sleep for.

So I tell my subconscious that I want to sleep for two minutes or I want to sleep for 10 minutes or if I'm sleeping for a whole night then I would say I want to waking up at six o'clock or I would tell it what time it is that I need to be up.

So I never use alarm clocks.

I just tell my subconscious what it is that I want.

If I need to be up for eight o'clock for instance then I tell my subconscious to wake me at half past seven.

It's incredible.

We're so tuned into a 24 hour clock.

Our whole body clock in fact are tuned into 24 hour cycles.

Whether we're conscious of that or not we are.

We're kind of aware of the seasons,

Aware of the times of the sunrise and sunset.

Even if that changes seasonally we're still sort of tuned into it.

Try that out a few times before you trust to not have an alarm clock if you feel the kind of person that needs one.

It is a very powerful and useful skill to learn.

Was learning to cope with cramming for exams at university.

I found this really useful.

I would imagine that I had a great big drawstring bag or a briefcase and that whatever facts I had had crammed into my head during that day I would imagine that I was stuffing them into this bag or putting them into this briefcase and closing the bag or the briefcase and this was briefcase at the end of the bed so it was slightly further away from me.

It was at my feet ready to be picked up again in the morning.

It wasn't being discarded into a vacuum it was merely being laid aside for the night.

And if another thought came of something else,

Some other fact came into my head then I would push this open the bag,

Open the briefcase,

Put it back in and shut it again.

I would do this two or three maybe even six times until all of those facts were no longer roaming around inside my head,

Thoughts keeping me awake.

I would just lay them aside.

This was another conscious effort.

I'm laying them aside,

Not forever.

They're going to be picked up again in the morning and this is another training of the subconscious that you can lay aside those facts.

You can have that bag shut so there's there's not whirl wind of thoughts and facts that keep playing around inside the head.

You have programming of the type of sleep experience.

You can pre-program in what time you want to waken up so that then you can just rest to that.

You can also prepare before the sleep state by making sure that any facts,

Thoughts,

Worries,

Whatever we're being disposed of temporarily.

You can pick those up again and when you wake in the morning I saw that you can actually go on holiday from it as if you were taking yourself to a tropical beach and leaving those things behind.

They're the everyday waking experience but in the sleep experience you can have that tropical beach that is the holiday experience free of all the everyday cares and worries.

So laying aside those difficulties those are the preparations for the sleep state.

Then we come to preparing yourself with the cozy position in the bed.

Then preparing yourself to think into the sleepiest part of the body.

Perhaps it's the lower back.

I would suggest it's somewhere away from the front of the body as we are so orientated out into the world with our eyes,

Ears,

Everything is focused to what is in front of us.

So taking ourselves into the back where we can feel safe,

Protected,

Closing off from the outside world.

Imagine that you were that squirrel curled up in a cozy nest or just in the comfort of a childhood bed somewhere that you felt cozy,

Comfy,

Happy.

And in that sleep state with the eyes closed starting to count back from 10 to 1.

Be aware of the level of your consciousness as a 10 and you're observing this from that part of the body not from the head but from the comfy cozy part of the body that's ready to sleep.

Tune into how sleepy it feels.

This part of the body feels heavy,

It feels ready for sleep,

It feels relaxed,

Melt into the bed and tune into that heaviness and then give that a consciousness of 10.

And then slide into a consciousness of 9 by imagining you're coming into an even sleepier part of that part of the body.

And then sliding from there into an 8 which is an even heavier,

More languid,

More relaxed,

Sleepier place.

And then moving down into a 7 as you're starting to slide towards sleep.

Then moving down into a 6.

Even more relaxed,

Even more calm,

Happy,

Sleepy,

Sleepy,

Heavy.

Moving down into a 5 as you're starting to make that drift into the sleep.

Moving down into a 4.

Deep,

Relaxed,

At peace.

Blank with slowing down into a state of a 3.

Softness,

A floatiness coming in.

2.

Drifting as though on a light breeze or floating on water.

On a warmth one.

Moving off into that deep sleep.

That peaceful,

Tranquil,

Languid state of sleep.

And as you reach zero,

Allowing yourself to slide down into state of sleep.

And then we're going to start counting down from 10 to 1 again.

From that zero,

Sliding down into 10.

9.

8.

Becoming even more tired,

Floating on a peacefulness.

7.

6.

5.

Floating on a feather bed,

Floating on a cloud.

4.

3.

Drifting into calmness as if floating on water.

2.

1.

And asleep.

For those of you still listening.

.

.

5.

4.

3.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Floating in the beautiful ether lights.

7.

At peace.

6.

And 5.

And 4.

And peaceful 3.

And sleepy sleepy 2.

And 1.

And asleep.

Sleep dreamers.