If stress, anxiety or ruminative thoughts are keeping you awake at night, sleep meditation may help. Sleep meditation is a relaxing guided practice you do while lying in bed at night. Unlike daytime meditation, which invites us to remain alert and awake, sleep meditation encourages us to welcome drowsiness and drift off to sleep.
A 2019 meta-analysis of 18 randomized trials found that mindfulness meditation improved sleep quality compared with control groups, though more research is still needed. [1] Music may also help people relax and sleep better.[2] The following video combines meditation for sleep with music. May the two together help you let go of worry for a more peaceful night’s rest.
Try Jason Stephenson Guided Sleep Meditation
Jason Stephenson has been sharing guided sleep meditation videos on his YouTube channel for well over a decade. His own experiences with the relaxing practice inspired him to share mindfulness for sleep with others. His free sleep meditations have been watched hundreds of millions of times.
Jason Stephenson’s guided meditation is partnered with relaxing music to help you wind down for sleep. As you listen, you are invited to drop into the present moment, letting go of any expectations or need for a particular outcome.
Meditation and music for sleeping may help ease stress and tension and support rest – whether or not you fall asleep in this particular session. Even if sleep does not come, lying quietly and listening to the meditation and music is a form of rest. If insomnia or pain persists, talk with a doctor.
Techniques Used in Guided Sleep Meditations
The best guided sleep meditation helps us drop out of the mind and into the body, grounds us in the present moment, and invites us to relax into simply being, accepting this moment just as it is.
- Quiet the mind: Allow rumination to cease by guiding attention from thoughts to the felt experience of the body.
- Return to presence: Let continued observation of breath and sensation in the body keep you present with what’s real in this moment.
- Relax into being: Watch as moment-to-moment presence unfolds into patience, allowing you to let go of doing, and enjoy simply being.
Benefits This Sleep Meditation Can Offer You
In our daily life, our busyness keeps us in constant motion. We operate in a near-continual state of distraction. When we at last sit down to meditate, we can become overwhelmed by the movement of our mind. The same thing happens at bedtime, in the quiet moment as we’re lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep.
It’s not that the mind becomes more active in these moments. What happens is that in the relative stillness, we finally get to see what the mind has been doing all along. In these moments, we have an opportunity to acknowledge the mind’s busyness and addiction to movement. By observing this energy with kind and caring curiosity, we begin to alter the mind’s habits.
Sleep meditation in particular can play many roles. When we practice meditation to go to sleep, we get to know the mind, we train in presence and patience, and we strengthen the habits that help us relax.
Exploring the Impact of Jason Stephenson’s Guided Meditations
In moments of great stress or high fatigue, it can be wonderfully soothing to simply rest back and listen. Guided sleep meditation allows us to drop even the subtle doing that is present in our personal practice. Listening to the voice of another sometimes makes it easier to let go.
Combining sleep meditation with music invites in an added layer of guided relaxation that offers both presence with the vibrations of sound, and an escape.
Many of us have had a lifelong soothing relationship with music. We have grown up using music as a means of accessing emotions, whether to help us feel what we are feeling or to guide us toward feeling something different. Those who connect to music in daily life are more likely to feel soothed by sleep music as well.
Integrating Jason Stephenson’s Meditations into Your Daily Practice
Jason Stephenson has said that meditation brought him solace during some of the hardest times in his life. The types of meditation he offers – guided sleep meditations, meditations for relaxation and sleep meditation music – are ones many people turn to during times of great stress.
- Minimize overwhelm: If your meditation goals include stress relief, better sleep, learning to relax, guided meditations may help.
- Start a daily practice: If you’re new to meditation, guided meditation can be a good place to start. Learn the easy way, by letting someone else lead the practice.
- Make meditation a habit: Guided meditations before bedtime can help make daily meditation a habit. Most of us can find the time to push play before bed.
Meditation does not change us overnight, but with patience and consistency, it can change how we experience our lives. Explore this and other Jason Stephenson guided meditations for a varied nighttime practice.
It’s common for worry to keep us up at night. Meditation can teach us to let go, but it’s not always easy to practice on our own when overwhelmed with stress. Guided sleep meditation is a relaxing, supportive practice that may help us get the rest we need. Listen and let body, mind and soul return to a balanced state of ease.
