Salon Nights

You might not find Serensnippety's, unless you knew where to look. It occupies the ground floor of a house on a leafy residential street. By day, you might not realize there was any kind of business here, but you'd certainly notice what looks like an adorably quaint dwelling with a peach colored climbing rose trained in a perfect arch over the doorway. At night, it's a different story. Serensnippety's, catering to all styles of hair at all times of night, is a home away from home where you can rest, hang out, and just generally while away the hours. Before we begin, let's start off with a little 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 in 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, 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 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 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, 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 going to give you a few moments just to keep counting the breath and noting any thoughts and feelings that arise. That's great. There's always something to look at in the salon. There's the artwork adorning its walls. For example, a series of period pieces depicting hair salons of the past and people from every era having their hair done. In one, a row of women in white toweling dressing gowns with their legs crossed in the same direction sit under hair steamers shaped like beehives. The painting is done in warm, earthy tones, and around each woman, the paint lightens into...