Week of July 30, 2017…
Spiritual and Mental Care – Meditations to Relax the Mind for Sleep
At the end of the day the mind sometimes continues to race back and forth and all around with thoughts from the day, project ideas, goals to be reached, duties to handle and on and on and on. The mind is most particularly busy when you’re ready to go to sleep, yet it can seem too hard or even impossible. Well, here are some things you can do in order to relax your mind to move into a good night’s sleep.
Recapitulate Your Day: Go over your day just before bed time. By doing this your mind will no longer be
racing about what happened that day or attempt to resolve those activities you would like to change. Here’s an additional caveat; you will also become more consciously aware of what you do and how you spend your days if you engage in this meditation daily. Here’s how to recapitulate your day…
- Settle into a quiet relaxing position: chair with feet on the floor, lying on the ground face up, or on top of the bed.
- Imagine a tree trunk is holding you up from your bottom. You are one with the tree trunk at the top and the roots of the tree trunk go all the way down into the center of the Earth where it roots are embedded in the Earth’s core.
- Take a few very deep, easy breathes from the tips of your toes, inhale up through the spin to the top of your head – then exhale.
- Now begin thinking about the day. Go through your mind remembering what happened that day, step-by-step, from the beginning when you woke up to the moment of this meditation. Try not to judge the activities of the day, simply review them as they happened.
- After going through this process, if you make it to the end before falling asleep or becoming too drowsy, imagine a gold sun surrounding your entire body and absorb as much of this sun as you possibly can.
Breathing, Relaxing Body Parts and Om…: This exercise allows your physical body to completely relax through a different type of meditation process. Here’s what you do…
- Settle into a quiet relaxing position: chair with feet on the floor, lying on the ground face up, or on top of the bed.
- Begin taking nice deep and easy breaths at least three of them. From the tips of your toes up through your legs, through your spine to the top of your head and exhale…
- After the three breaths continue to breathe easily, deeply and slowly. With each breath begin to relax the different parts of your body, beginning with your feet then your ankles, then your calves and so forth, up through to the top of your head.
- As you start to relax your body parts, each time you exhale, say “Ommmm….” When you have completed the Om sound the part of your body you relaxed should be completely and fully relaxed.
- Take your time as you do this with one area of the body after another.
- By the time you reach the top of your head you should be ready to go to sleep. But before you do, imagine a gold sun surrounding your entire body and absorb as much of this sun as you possibly can.