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Meditating regularly, at any time of day, can help us fall asleep sooner and sleep more soundly when it’s time for bed. During daytime meditation, we typically try to stay awake and alert while practicing. With sleep meditation, the invitation is to let calm and relaxation take over, to allow yourself to drift off to sleep.
This calm and spacious guided meditation with Sean Fargo can be used as a daytime practice or as a sleep meditation. To meditate yourself to sleep, practice this meditation while lying down in a comfortable position with eyes closed. Stay present with the narration, yet allow for drowsiness as it arises. Sean guides attention to the feet on the ground, to points of tension or tightening in the body, and to what the body needs to feel more at ease, and he ends with wiggling the fingers or toes. May this meditation be of benefit to you in your mindfulness practice.
Sponsored by the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification MindfulnessExercises.com/Certification
Some research suggests that mindfulness meditation can improve sleep, including when practiced earlier in the day. A consistent meditation practice may reduce the rumination and overthinking that can keep us up at night, and it may also calm the nervous system and lower stress.
Other sleep hygiene practices, such as avoiding screen time before bed and sleeping in a dark, quiet place, are also important. A study of older adults with sleep disturbances, linked below, looked at mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality.
The quality of allowance that we develop with mindfulness meditation can help steady and calm the mind. This may help quiet the thoughts that might otherwise keep us alert and agitated at night.
When we allow for whatever is arising in the mind, including thoughts and emotions, we cease putting effort into suppressing or pushing things away. This allows the energy of thoughts and emotions to come and go naturally, with emphasis on letting them go.
Emotions, when allowed to naturally arise and dissipate, tend to have a brief lifespan in our bodies and minds. Those that remain longer do so because we’re holding on to them, in some cases by putting too much effort into pushing them away.
Allowing this moment to be however it is, and to change however it wants to, takes practice. As we cultivate this skill, however, we may find more peace, ease and calm in our daily life. We can rest in our experience, including in the hours and minutes leading up to bedtime.
Learn more about sleep meditation and how to use it in your personal practice and teaching with these additional free mindfulness resources:
- Blog: The Power of Mindfulness for Sleep
- Blog: Meditate Into Sleep: How to Do That?
- Podcast: Liminal Dreaming as a Mindful Practice, with Andrew Holecek
- Podcast: Mindfulness While Sleeping, with Andrew Holecek
- Meditation Scripts: 10 Sleep Meditation Scripts
- Audio: Search Sleep Meditations
- Research: Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances
About Sean Fargo:
Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk who founded Mindfulness Exercises and leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification.
