A sleep meditation. Voice for about 16 minutes, then it fades out. No bell, no count back. Music underneath, and it keeps going after the voice stops
A walled garden that only grows at night, and only while somebody is resting in it. Tonight that is you.
About 16 minutes, tense and release first. Only listen where it is safe to sleep.
Tense and release through the whole body to begin with, because falling asleep is a skill and that is the part that works. Then you sit on an old bench and the garden grows around you at the speed of your breathing. A leaf unfurls on the way out, a seed settles on the way in. It does not need you to watch it. Your resting is the gardening.
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Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
You are lying there hoping sleep turns up, and hoping has never once worked.
Falling asleep is a skill, and the part of it we skip is letting the body go first. The mind follows the body, not the other way round.
Only listen somewhere it is safe to fall asleep. Not in a car, not while anything needs your attention.
What happens in this meditation
We start with tense and release through the whole body, feet upwards, then everything at once. That is not a warm up. It is the part that does most of the work.
Then a walled garden that only grows at night, and only while somebody is resting in it. You sit on an old bench and it grows around you at the speed of your breathing. A leaf unfurls on the way out. A seed settles on the way in.
It does not need you to watch. Your resting is the gardening. There is no ending to get to.
How to get the most from it
The file runs half an hour, but I stop talking around sixteen minutes in and it fades away to nothing after that. You are meant to miss most of it. Not reaching the end is the meditation working.
Do not skip the tense and release to get to the story. That first part is the bit with the evidence behind it.
Set it to play without anything queued up after it, and put the phone face down and out of reach.
Questions people ask
What if I am still awake at the end?
Then you have had sixteen quiet minutes and the body is a good deal further along than it was. Start it again if you want to. Nothing has gone wrong.
Why does it say half an hour when the notes say sixteen minutes?
Both are right. Sixteen minutes of me talking, then it fades out slowly rather than stopping dead, so nothing wakes you at the end of the track.
Is there a bell or a countdown at the end?
No, and that is deliberate. It does not bring you back and nothing will jolt you awake.
I cannot picture the garden. Does that matter?
Not really. Let it be a feeling of somewhere walled and quiet instead. The breathing is doing more of the work than the picture is.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
sleep · garden · visualisation
Read the transcript
Foreign.
Webb.
And welcome to sleep in the Night Garden.
And just a quick, gentle reminder before we begin totally,
this meditation is designed to send you to sleep.
So only listen to this.
If you are somewhere safe, not while driving, not while doing anything
that needs your attention, because you will fall asleep.
So just allow yourself to become comfortable somewhere quiet
enough that you can drift off part way through.
And that's totally allowed.
And that's the whole idea, is that you don't make it to the end.
And let your head rest on something soft and let your eyes
gently close.
There's nowhere to be after this except in a deep, healing sleep.
Something that's worth saying while you're still settling in.
Falling asleep is a skill.
We often lie in bed and just hope it happens.
We think, we worry, we try to make something happen.
But falling asleep isn't something you do, it's something
you allow.
And when you feel safe, when you feel comfortable, the body falls
asleep on its own.
It knows how.
And once the body has fallen asleep, you simply allow the mind
to follow.
Your body.
And your mind already know how to sleep.
They've done it many times.
When you're absolutely exhausted and it's time to go sleep,
they'll just do it.
So the only thing you need to do tonight is allow your body to
relax.
Nothing to fix, nothing to force, nothing to achieve.
Just listen to my words, follow where I take you, and let
sleep come whenever it's ready.
It doesn't matter when you fall asleep, really.
It doesn't let go of any goal.
So we're going to do a small release throughout the body.
And I always do this because I find it really helpful.
And it allows the body to fall asleep.
So just tense up your feet and your toes and your ankles and then
let them go.
And now we're going to tense up the legs and hold them really
tight.
And now just let them go.
And then just do it with your torso and your bum.
And then let it go and soften.
And now we do the shoulders and the arms and your hands, fingers.
Tighten it all up, hold it.
And now just let it go and become really heavy.
And now we're going to do the whole body.
1, 2, 3.
And the whole body.
Your toes to your forehead, eyes, tense, everything, everything.
And now just let it all relax as if it's heavier than ever.
And soften in this moment, Allow your body to soften.
Breathing in sleep, breathing out the day.
There's a garden somewhere, a small one.
It's all walled in stone.
And this garden is A little bit different.
It only grows at night, and it only grows when someone rests there.
Tonight.
That person is you.
You find yourself at a wooden gate.
It's just slightly open.
The last of the light is low and gold and soft, and it's just
fading.
You step through the gate.
You don't have to push it.
It opens for you.
Everything here just happens.
Inside, the air is cooler.
There's a path of flat stones, still warm from the day.
You walk along them slowly.
No hurry.
The walls are gently all around you.
There's ivy on some of the stones.
There's moss.
In other words, At the middle of the garden there's a low bench.
It's cushioned, old, and it's worn and very smooth.
It's been waiting.
You sit down and you let your weight sink into it.
You let your shoulders come down, let your hands rest in your
lap.
And as you look around, the garden is quiet.
You can see the little plants, but nothing is blooming yet.
A few slender stems.
And then you notice something.
Something small.
Something very slow.
As you breathe out, a single leaf unfurl somewhere in the beds
around you.
Just one.
Gentle, like a hand opening.
And as you breathe in, somewhere, a seed shifts, settling
a little deeper into the earth.
And as you breathe out, a curl of green finds its way through the
moss.
You don't have to do anything with this.
You don't have to try.
You're already doing the work.
The work is resting.
Breathing in quiet, breathing out.
Sleep.
And as you settle, the garden begins to grow more around you.
Quietly.
You don't have to watch it.
You don't have to help.
You begin to notice a scent.
Lavender maybe, or jasmine.
Something soft and warm.
The kind of scent that makes your shoulders drop a little more.
And somewhere above you, the first star appears.
You don't see it.
You just feel the sky getting a little deeper.
And all around you, the garden is filling in.
It's all happening ever so slowly, almost like when you look,
you can barely see it.
You have to really slow down.
You have to just be aware of your breath.
And then you notice the climbing roses threading the stone.
The honeysuckle along the wall.
Long grass is soft against your legs.
A pear tree somewhere, all in slow growing flowers.
A small pond that you hadn't noticed.
And it now has the water and lilies.
None of it needs you to look.
None of it needs you to wake.
It grows because you're here.
It grows because you're falling asleep.
The stillness is the gardening tonight.
And you've been trying so hard for so long.
All the doing, all the fixing, all the carrying.
Tonight you get to put it all down.
You get to be the thing that rests the garden that does the rest.
Breathing in, breathing out.
The light has gone.
The walls around you are soft in the dark.
The garden is now becoming full.
Every space has something gentle growing in it.
It's your perfect kind of garden.
You can't see most of it.
That's fine.
It doesn't need your eyes.
Your body is heavy.
It's warm and it's held.
The bench is holding you.
The garden is holding you.
The night is holding you.
There's nothing left for you to do tonight.
The garden has what it needs.
It has your rest.
It has your breath.
It has your stillness.
Breathing in, breathing out, just allowing.
And the garden grows a little more and you soften a little more.
