Hello everyone and welcome to this restful evening practice.
Hopefully you've reached that point in your day where there's now nothing left for you to do.
There's nowhere for you to go and it's time to tend to yourself and settle your nervous system ready for a restful night of sleep.
So get yourself as comfortable as you possibly can,
Whether you're already tucked into bed or perhaps you're reclined on the sofa.
Find yourself a position lying down where you're fully supported and just take a moment to really allow yourself to be held by whatever's beneath you and really feel into that sense of relief and letting go of coming to this point in your day and allowing that relief to translate into your breath.
So maybe just taking three deeper breaths with a big lovely sigh on the exhale,
Letting any sound that wants to come out to do so.
Just that feeling that you can,
Through the breath,
Let go of anything you've been holding on to,
Anything that you need to release from today.
And as you release and settle into this practice,
I'm just going to encourage you to pop your hands behind your head as if you were,
You know,
Kicking back on the beach or somewhere with your feet up,
Just your hands linked behind the back of your head.
And as you do that,
I just want you to keep your eyes open for a moment and as your hands are linked behind your head,
I just encourage you to let your eyes drift all the way over to the right hand side.
Look as far right as you can,
But keep your head nice and still and steady and hold your eyes there and as you hold them there,
You might notice after a little while,
You maybe feel the desire to yawn or have some other sense of relief or release and when that yawn or that shift comes,
Then you can allow your eyes to move back to the centre,
But it may take a little bit of time.
And once you're there,
Back at the centre,
Looking all the way to your left,
Again keeping your head still until that yawn,
That release happens naturally.
This is a practice that stimulates the vagus nerve,
Which is a portal into our parasympathetic nervous system and that yawn or release is just a sign that we're shifting into a place of rest.
As you allow your eyes to come to centre again,
See if there's any more yawns that you want to take and then allow your hands to be removed from the back of your head,
But just keeping them in the same area,
We're just going to flip them round so that you can press your palms into your eyes.
So we're looking for our hands to be covering our eyes and the bottom of our palms just fitting nicely into our eye sockets and just giving a little bit of compression there and noticing how that feels.
So blocking out the light,
A little bit of gentle pressure and just allowing and encouraging those eye muscles that maybe have worked so hard today to just relax.
Noticing how it feels,
Whether there's some comfort to this,
Some settling.
Keeping your hands there,
We're just going to stack a lovely breath technique on top of this.
So breathing in through your nose and on your exhale,
Breathing out slowly as you can through your mouth with pursed lips,
So as if you were maybe telling someone to be quiet or breathing out through a straw.
So that inhale through the nose and that long,
Slow breath out through the mouth.
And on that long exhale,
Just seeing if you can observe a softening in your body.
Notice how it feels to have that lovely,
Gentle support for your eyes whilst releasing tension with every exhale.
One of my favourite combinations to just feel that lovely gooeyness in your body where you're starting to notice it becoming heavy and soft.
And in your own time,
Allow yourself to have another couple of long breaths here before allowing your hands to just drop by your side and your attention on a particular pattern of breath to just float away.
Coming now into just a place of stillness.
Noticing any shift in your physiology and your state and really again allowing what's beneath you to fully support you and your body.
Bringing your attention down to your feet and just seeing if you can let them fall and relax to one side even more.
Allowing your legs to become heavy,
Feeling the material beneath you,
Your hips just settling.
Allowing your legs to just stop holding on,
There's nothing left for them to do today.
And noticing your hands unclench,
Just relax.
Not forcing anything,
Just allowing these different parts of your body to do what they do best.
Which is be still and relaxed at night,
All the way up your arms into your torso and feel into that sense as you breathe that the front of your body can just fall back into the back of your body as you exhale.
The slight lightness and lift as you inhale and then everything just falling back into the support on the exhale,
Welcoming the heaviness that's coming.
Seeing if you,
With those lovely exhales,
Can just soften your jaw,
Maybe giving it a tiny wiggle,
Letting it become slack.
And finally,
To where we started,
Allowing your eyes to soften,
To become heavy and with three intentional,
Slow,
Soft breaths,
Just feeling your whole being sinking and relaxing.
Nothing now for you to do and nothing else from me but to wish you a restful night's sleep.
