Hi there. If you're listening to this meditation, you're most likely awake in the middle of the night and I know that this can be frustrating. So we're going to use this meditation as an opportunity to help settle the mind and relax the body. And it's important to first acknowledge that, you know, trying to force ourselves to fall asleep really just ends up creating more tension. And so notice your relationship to being awake right now.

Is there any sense of frustration, tension, stress, or maybe rumination about tomorrow? Or just rumination about sleep in general? Let's start by noticing these thoughts and just giving them space to move through this sky of your mind, recognizing that they're just thoughts. They're not necessarily true and not necessarily helpful. And see if you can invite your awareness away from those thoughts and back into the breath in your body. Just the simplicity of one breath, one moment. So not focusing on the breath for the sake of falling asleep, but just meeting the breath with a curious awareness.

Any sort of forcing or trying to manipulate yourself into sleep, will just create more tension. So instead we meet this moment as we would meet any other moment of wakefulness, just giving it presence and allowing that presence to be a little bit more relaxed. And if we happen to fall asleep, then we'll allow that to happen too. So let's just take a few breaths together here as a way to lower the heart rate and relax more deeply. So we'll just start by breathing in slowly through the nose.

And then exhaling slowly out through the mouth. And breathing in again through the nose. And breathing out again through the mouth. And letting the whole body relax on the exhale. Just releasing all the air in your lungs.

And just inviting you now to take a few more breaths like that at your own pace. Each time you notice the mind wandering off into thoughts, just try to observe it with a spacious awareness. Just meeting it with a complete ease, just a soft acknowledgement, Oh, the mind is thinking, as if you were watching the mind dreaming and then just return that attention gently back to this breath. And you're welcome to continue the deep breathing if you find it helpful or you can now just let the breath just settle back into its own natural rhythm. So we'll do a body relaxation practice now.

Just scanning our awareness from the head all the way down to the toes. And just remember, even though we might have the desire to fall back to sleep, any sort of strong intention to fall asleep can often create more tension in the body. And so we approach this moment with the recognition that we're awake right now and trusting that maybe there's some wisdom to the mind and the body wanting to be awake in this moment. And since we can't force ourselves to sleep, we can meet this moment with presence. Just inviting the mind and body to relax a little, inviting them to settle a little.

And maybe we fall asleep, and if not, we're practicing relaxation, presence and meditation. And that in itself is restorative. So see if you can bring that sort of relationship into this moment and into this practice. So as we begin, just bringing all of your awareness and inviting it to the face, the head and the neck. And just inviting all of the muscles of the face to relax.

Allowing the forehead to relax. And the eyebrows. And then just bringing awareness to the nose. And the cheeks. And the mouth.

Jaw. Tongue. And then really having a sense of letting your whole head get heavy as it rests on the pillow. And sliding your awareness down into the neck and shoulders and just notice how the shoulders are right now. Is there some tension? And inviting the shoulders to relax.

If it's helpful, you can feel as if you're breathing into and out from these different parts of the body. You might even like to visualize the breath moving in and then touching any tension that might be there, enveloping it with presence, care and kindness. And imagining that on the exhale, just imagining that tension softening and melting a bit. And then sliding awareness down into the arms. The whole length of the arms, including the hands and fingers.

And notice if there's any clenching in the hands and fingers, and invite the hands to be soft. Sometimes when we're awake, it's because there's a little bit of excess energy in the body and we can't always force that to relax. Sometimes it just needs to run its own course, but we can meet it with a relaxed awareness. We can give it a grounded, peaceful container to move through so that it can run its course. And so that can feel really restorative.

It can really give us a sense of ease, even when the body has a lot of energy in it. So let's just bring awareness into the chest region now. Maybe you can feel that gentle rhythm of your heart beating here. And then sliding awareness down into the belly. And feeling the breath here and letting each exhale soften your body deeper into the mattress beneath you.

And letting each breath that you feel through the belly and through the body be an invitation for a gentle gratitude that you're alive right now and that you're awake to experience that aliveness. And sliding the awareness now to your back. And feeling the breath as it expands some of those muscles on the back on the inhale. And feeling the back relax a little on the exhale. So if you notice maybe any sense of tightness or holding here, you can bring your awareness there and invite those parts of the body that are tense to gently soften, even if it's just a little bit.

And then moving the focus of awareness down to the pelvic region, and just relaxing this part of the body And sometimes when we're stressed, we can get a lot of tension in this area. And so we're just giving it the invitation to be at ease. And then beginning to tune into the thighs. And just feeling into the thighs, the hamstrings and the quadriceps. Maybe even just feeling the coziness of your legs under the blanket or in your pajamas.

So just noticing what it's like to feel cozy in your body and to feel the stillness of the night. And then just continuing to slide your awareness down, down through the knees and into the calf muscles and the shins. And each time your awareness touches the body, it's like a soft hand on the back saying, It's okay. You can relax. You're safe.

And then coming all the way down into the feet. And now as you take your next breath, see if you can feel the breath moving through the entire physical body. Just being aware of the whole body now, enveloping it with presence, with compassion and with love. Just seeing what that would feel like. Holding the whole body in a loving awareness.

And then on the next exhale, feeling the whole body surrender just a little bit more. The body is always present. So just tuning into the body and letting the body and mind settle and soften abd relax. So as we come to the end of this meditation now, just remember that you can replay this or listen to it again at any point. And if you'd like to stay in the silence, you can continue to practice being with your breathing, scanning through your body and inviting it to relax.

And at the very least just taking this time to appreciate this moment of stillness, of aliveness, remembering that we can't fight being awake, it'll just really create more tension. So we might as well appreciate it. If that leads to deeper asleep and ease, that's great. And if not, we've restored ourself through presence. So I wish you deep rest.

Thank you for your practice and take care.