Hey there.

Welcome back to Day Six of

our Seven Day Sleep Challenge.

Congratulations for making it this far.

In today's session, we're going to explore

how to help calm and settle the mind.

We've been doing this through a variety

of different practices from deep

breathing, to gratitude, to positive

visualization, and to relaxing the body.

But one simple way we can ground

our mind is to give it something

to focus on and this we can think

of as The bicep curl for the brain.

Every time the mind wanders into something

else, we practice bringing it back.

In the same way that the weight of

a dumbbell pulls the arm down, we

practice pulling it back up and we

then strengthen that muscle in the

same way we're strengthening our

muscle of presence through this

particular meditation practice.

And the research does show that this

practice of meditation, of refocusing

our attention, does over time dampen

the activity in the amygdala, which

is responsible for our fight or flight

reactivity, AKA our stress response.

However, we can also look at it

more practically in the moment.

One definition we have for stress is when

our perceived demands are greater than our

perceived resources to meet those demands.

The key word there though is what?

Perceived.

Because often what we perceive

to be demanding is very different

than what is actually demanding.

So often our perceived demands are

everything that is to come, all

the things we have to do the rest

of the day and tomorrow, things

that haven't gotten done yet.

And we bring all of that into this moment.

And of course we feel overwhelmed.

Have you had that experience

before going to bed?

The mind is already thinking about

everything it needs to do tomorrow.

All the emails you need to take care

of ,all the people you need to take

care of, the calls you need to make,

the things that need to get done.

Of course, you're feeling stressed and

of course you're not able to sleep.

The power of simple mindfulness practice

of returning back to this moment over

and over is that we reduce our demands

to quite simply, what is here now.

What is here now.

And often what we see, is this

moment is a lot less stressful than

the mind is making it out to be.

This is what we'll explore

in today's meditation.

So let's settle in.