Help getting to sleep

Hello there!

I've had a shit day, but we won't focus on that, we'll just move on and share the good things that have happened this week.

Oh who am I kidding! This blog is about me getting this off my chest and being real. This morning I slept in, I woke up nearly half an hour after I was supposed to have my child at school, then just after I'd finished making nearly all his lunch and snacks, I walked away to get the last thing and his whole OPEN lunch box ended up on the floor. Hence he was nearly an hour late. 

My day then got much better as I caught up with a gorgeous friend for coffee and told her all my woes and she told me all hers and it was great.

I had then organised to get my son's haircut at my friend's house and had 4 large hot drinks in a cup tray that started spilling before I even got to the car because they were too full, and then stupid me didn't put them on the front seat properly and the WHOLE LOT tipped over on the seat.  My car is going to smell like yoghurt tomorrow and then some sort of off cheese after that I'm pretty sure.  

First world problems hey! In the whole scheme of things my bad day would have been a pretty good day for someone else, but I'm not someone else and I'm allowed to have a whinge! 

Onto the good things - 2 more artworks completed and these will be going up for sale in an online market. I'm quite pleased with these and they are so therapeutic!

 
Right, now that that's done, let's talk about getting to sleep.

So I usually listen to some sort of meditation to get to sleep if I'm having trouble.  I have a few I use and I will go through them shortly. They are either guided meditation, meditation sounds or music, self hypnosis or sleep stories.

The problem is, when my mind is being as silly as it has been lately, it even overthinks the meditation! There's one I use that is an app - I think it might be Sleep Well or Anxiety Relief - anyway, it talks about picturing a feather.  Well the other night, I'm laying there listening picturing my feather when all of a sudden I start thinking :

* I'm laying on my side, so does that mean I picture the feather as if it was floating in front of me on my side, which would be sideways?
* No that doesn't make any sense, I should picture it how I always have as if I was sitting up looking at it
* But I'm not sitting up, I'm laying down

So this went on instead of just listening to the voice and letting it lull me off to sleep like it usually does.  Which brings me to my reviews of meditations. These are all found on Youtube.

I'll start with the one that this leads into...

Michael Sealey - I took a while to get used to his voice as it can be quite disjointed, but now I quite like listening to him to get to sleep.  My only trouble now is that when he is doing a self hypnosis or a guided meditation, he gives me too many options and my mind is too active.  He will say, "Imagine you are in a place you feel relaxed, this could be a beach, or it may be in the mountains, or maybe its in a forest".  Michael, mate, please just tell me where I am, don't give me options because I can't decide and I start picturing them all.

Jason Stephenson - He has some really good meditation sounds and music if you prefer not to hear a voice.  He also does guided meditation.  I like his voice, it's very calming.  I need to pick which ones I listen to with Jason though, he has a lot of meditations that have affirmations in them and it's the same 5-10 things just getting repeated over and over and if I'm not asleep I just end up getting annoyed.  IF you like that sort of thing then he will be great for you, but I get frustrated with sounds that are repetitive.

Michelle's Sanctuary -These are sleep stories and she has a lovely soothing voice.  Most of the stories are set in actual places in America and sometimes I find it hard to relate to them.

Meditation Vacation - Generally pretty good but sometimes not long enough for me to get to sleep.

Dan Jones - His are pretty cool and he even does sessions where he will do a live video and bring together everyone's random "things" and bring them together in a story.  Most of the time there are fairies or dragons involved and I quite like that.  

The Calm app has some really cool soothing sleep stories read by people you will know,  but I just noticed there are no free ones anymore 😥.

Anyway, if you have trouble getting to sleep, there are a few options for you.  I find they help with my son too, he listens to the kids ones on Youtube.  Let me know if there are any others you think I need to get onto- I prefer voices to sounds, it gives me something to concentrate on other than my thoughts.

HUGS xxx


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