Hey, welcome to this sleep meditation. In this session, we're going to explore falling asleep with a sleep buddy. Now I'll explain what this means in a bit, but first you're going to need to find your sleep buddy. And this is just anything that you'd like to hold on to, something that makes you feel comfortable and safe, like a stuffed animal, a pillow, or even a blanket. So, if you want to pause this to find a sleeping buddy, you can.

And just come back when you're ready. So now that we have our sleeping buddy, we're just going to start to get cozy. So you can start to curl up under the covers, feeling the coolness, maybe of your pillow and the warmth of being tucked in. And then notice what it's like to be holding your sleeping buddy. Maybe pulling it into your chest, snuggling with it.

Sleeping buddy is here to help you feel safe. Sleeping buddy is here to help you feel calm. And sleeping buddy is here to help you fall asleep. So in your own mind, you can just say, thanks for being here, sleeping buddy. I'm looking forward to falling asleep with you.

And so the first thing sleeping buddy is going to help you do is just take some deep breaths. So let's start by taking a deep breath in through the nose. Breathing in. And slowly out through the mouth. Good.

And let's do that again. And this time, feel that sleeping buddy is helping you breathe in. Taking a really deep breath and then helping you relax as you exhale. Okay. Breathing in through the nose.

And slowly out. Letting yourself relax and melt into the surface beneath you. Let's take one more deep breath like that with sleeping buddy. Breathing in. And letting it all out.

Good job. You can now just let your breath come back to its normal rhythm. You don't need to try to make it longer or deeper. You're just breathing normally with sleeping buddy. Both of you getting a little more comfortable with each other.

And we'll even pretend that sleeping buddy needs to fall asleep as well. So as you're breathing with sleeping, buddy, imagine that your calmness, your ease is helping sleeping buddy, relax as well. Because maybe sleeping buddy had a really long day and had to go to work and people needed things from sleeping buddy. So we're just going to help sleeping buddy relax as well. In the same way sleeping buddy is helping you relax.

So you're both just helping each other. Breathing. And relaxing. And the next thing sleeping buddy will do is to help you soften and relax any tightness that you might be noticing in your body. So one of the magical superpowers of sleeping buddy is that if you give it some of your stress, some of your tension, it can take that away and turn it into calm and relaxation.

So notice if there's any tightness in your face. You know how sometimes we scrunch our face throughout the day here. Here, we're going to let the face be really relaxed. Relaxing your mouth and your jaw. Relaxing the eyes, the forehead, the cheeks.

And anytime you feel yourself relaxing, imagine that tightness and that tension just going to sleeping buddy, and then sleeping buddy transforming it into more relaxation, more calmness and more sleepiness. And you can notice anywhere else in your body that you might be feeling a little stressed. Is there any part of you that feels really energized? Is there any part of you that really wants to move? And so all of that energy, just feel like you're breathing it into sleeping buddy and sleeping buddy smiles when you send that energy to it. And then it transforms it like magic and turns all that energy into sleepiness, relaxation, calmness. So just take a few breaths like that.

Exhaling all of the energy to sleeping buddy. And each time you do, feeling yourself relax even more. Feeling more calm. Starting to get even more sleepy. Feeling yourself sinking into the surface beneath you.

Your pillow, the soft mattress. Feeling the warmth of your covers. And feeling the coziness of having sleeping buddy here. Now, at times, you may notice that your mind starts to think about things. Maybe it thinks about something that happened earlier today.

Something that was hard, something that made you mad, or something that made you scared. Maybe the mind is thinking about those things tomorrow. And so sleeping buddy can also help with this. Anytime your mind thinks about something, you just have to hold sleeping, buddy a little closer and sleeping buddy will help calm your mind. You can even imagine sleeping buddy saying, it's okay.

They're just thoughts. They're not here to hurt you. Right now, you're in bed. There's nothing you need to worry about and you're safe. What do you think sleeping buddy might say to you if it were trying to help you be calm? And if it were telling you that everything were okay.

Just imagine that in your own mind. Imagine sleeping buddy talking to you in a really nice, loving, and calm way. Sleeping buddy is like a good friend. It just wants to help. It just wants to let you know that you're okay.

It's here to help you fall asleep. So just continue taking some breaths with sleeping buddy. And it's helping you relax. You're helping sleeping buddy relax. And the great thing about sleeping buddy is that they'll be here all night.

If you have any bad dreams, sleeping, buddy will help you through that. If you gets scared, sleeping buddy will help you through that. If you wake up in the night and need to fall back asleep, sleeping buddy is here, will help you through that. So I'll let you and sleeping buddy fall asleep now. I wish you both sweet dreams.

Thanks for meditating with me. And I'll talk to you soon. Good night and take care.