Rolling Dunes

Welcome to the Southern Coast of Western Australia and its stunning coastal dunes. The sky above slowly fades from blue into the very beginning of a pink sunset. There is a gentle, cool breeze, which pushes a few dancing clouds along the horizon. Despite the warmth from the last beams of sunlight, there is enough shade to keep you perfectly comfortable here. The sounds of the ocean gently echoes in the distance with each wave cresting and breaking. At your back, stretching into the distant horizon, is arid country. Pink-hued salmon gums and golden grasslands. In front of you, the low rolling dunes are covered with short scrub. The banksia trees reach up and out of the sand. Their pale green leaves and flowering cones, looking as if they've arrived from another planet. But here along the coastline, everything is perfectly at home, including you. The dunes and their landscape are so special, but before we explore further, let's take a brief moment for a relaxing wind down exercise. Tonight's wind down is an exercise we call noting. It helps to soothe the mind, and once you've learned it, you can even use it if you wake up during the night. We're going to be counting our breaths and then just gently noting thoughts and feelings as they arise. We're not trying to change them, 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, and ourselves and the feeling, so we don't get so involved in it. That, in turn, creates a more restful state of mind. In other words, the perfect conditions for gentle, restful sleep. So to begin, just take a moment or two to get comfortable. Make sure you're nice and cool. Just starting with some 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 feeling the weight of the body pressing you 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 a 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, simply note it thinking and return to the breath, or if a feeling arises, note it as feeling and return to the breath. 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 going to give you a few moments just to keep counting the breath and noting any thoughts and feelings that arise. That's great. In an energetic flutter of wings, a Willie wagtail passes and lands on a bare naked branch not too far away. It...