Sleep — let the day go
To put the day down, deliberately, rather than carrying it into the dark.
Lying down, on your back, already in bed. The lights low or off. The phone in another room, or face down and silent. Something over you — the weight helps, even in summer.
Read this once before you use it, so that you know the shape of it. Then let someone else’s voice carry it, or record it in your own.
Let your eyes close.
You do not have to fall asleep. That is the first thing. Sleep is not something you can do on purpose, and every night you have tried, it has moved further away. So we are not going to try. We are going to put the day down, and let sleep arrive on its own, the way it always has when you stopped watching for it.
Take one breath in through your nose. Let it be ordinary.
And let it go out through your mouth, slowly, with a sound — that soft sound at the back of the throat that you would make if you had just sat down after standing all day.
Again. In through the nose. Out through the mouth, longer than the in-breath.
One more.
Now let the breath return to its own rhythm. You do not need to manage it. It has been doing this since before you had opinions about it.
Bring your attention to the place where your body meets the bed.
Not to your body. To the meeting place. The backs of your heels. The backs of your calves. The long line of your thighs. Your hips, which are heavier than the rest of you and are allowed to be.
Feel how much of you is being held right now. The bed is doing all of the work. There is nothing you are holding up.
Let your shoulders come away from your ears. They have been up there for hours. Let them go down towards the mattress, and then a little further than that.
Your jaw. Let the teeth come apart. Let the tongue rest low in the mouth, away from the roof of it. Almost everyone holds their day in the jaw and never notices until someone says this.
The space between your eyebrows. Let it be wide.
Now the day.
Somewhere in you, the day is still running. There is a conversation you are still having, and a thing you meant to say better, and a list for tomorrow that you are afraid you will forget if you stop holding it.
We are going to set it down, one piece at a time. Not solve it. Set it down.
Bring to mind the first thing that is still running. Do not go looking — take the one that is already there, waiting at the front.
Look at it for a moment, without arguing with it.
And now say to it, silently: not tonight.
Not never. Not it doesn’t matter. Just — not tonight. It will still be there in the morning, and you will be better at it then.
Let it go, and feel the small amount of space that opens where it was.
Now the next one.
Look at it. Not tonight.
And the next.
Keep going, at your own pace, for as long as they keep coming. There may be three. There may be twenty. It does not matter how many. Each one, looked at once, and set down.
Not tonight.
If your mind wanders, and it will, you have not failed. Wandering is what the mind does; noticing that it wandered is the entire practice, and you just did it.
Come back to the weight of your body on the bed.
Now let the breath get slower on its own.
With each out-breath, let a little more of your weight go into the mattress. As though you are becoming slightly heavier each time you breathe out.
Heavier through the shoulders.
Heavier through the hips.
Heavier through the backs of the legs.
Your body knows how to do this. It has simply been waiting for you to stop interrupting.
There is nothing to do now. Nothing to decide. No part of the night that requires you.
The day is behind you and you have set it down.
Whatever happens next — whether you sleep in ten minutes or lie here a while longer — you are already resting, and resting is enough.
Stay here.
You do not need to hear the end of this.