Desert Campfire

Hello there. Thanks for joining us around our campfire tonight. On summer nights like this, I like to sit and watch the stars come out. From here, we have an amazing view of this ancient landscape. There's really nothing like it for helping you develop a healthy sense of perspective. It's just the best place to let go of stress and worry and find rest. Each night we like to start with a short wind-down. Tonight's wind-down is a technique called noting. It's particularly helpful if you're troubled by a busy mind when you're trying to get to sleep. You can even use it if you wake up in the night. We're going to be counting our breaths and then just gently noting thoughts and feelings if they arise. We're not trying to replace them with anything else. We're simply labeling thinking as thinking, feeling as feeling. It may sound incredibly simple but it can help to create distance between ourselves and the thought, ourselves and the feeling so we don't get so involved in it. And that creates a more restful state of mind. In other words, the perfect state of mind for gentle, restful sleep. So to begin with, just take a moment or two to get comfortable. Make sure you're nice and cool. Just starting with some nice, big, deep breaths. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. And with the next out breath, allow the breath to return to its natural rhythm in and out through the nose and just feeling the weight of the body pressing down into your bed. And in your own time, starting to count the breaths as they pass. One with the rise, two with the fall. Just up to the count of 10. When you get to 10, you can stop and start again at one. And remember, anytime you get distracted, the moment you realize you're distracted by thought, simple note it. Thinking, and return to the breath. Or if a feeling arises, huh, feeling. And return to the breath. That noting is very gentle, not harsh at all. Think of it like a feather. Just gently touching the surface of a crystal glass. I'm gonna give you a few moments just to keep counting the breath and noting any thoughts and feelings that arise. That's great. We often don't think of it this way, but moonlight is really a result of sunshine. The sun shines and the moon reflects its rays. The moon is so bright that when the orbit's angle is just right we can even see it during the daytime. Now, it's night and the desert sky has darkened to the color of blue velvet. The moon is the brightest light around us. It's so bright, the moon dims the stars around it in a silvery halo. The glow of the moon falls upon the ground like a mist. Every speck of sand around us, every pebble and stone they all glint as...