Sleeper Mountain

Good evening, welcome to sleeper mountain. There's something really special about nights up here. You might have to sit out for awhile but you're virtually guaranteed to see some bird or little critter who makes their home in the darkness. Something that you'd only see out here at night. There's day life and there's nightlife. And this nocturnal world, this nightlife of birds and animals is as different from the daytime world, as our waking minds are from our sleeping minds. Maybe this is how sleeper mountain dreams. Each night we like to start with a short exercise which we call a wind down. Tonight's exercise is a visualization. So when you're ready, let's begin. So just lying down, taking a moment to rest, letting go of the day, enjoying that feeling of having stopped, of having nothing to do and nowhere to go. We're just going to focus the attention of the mind on the different parts of the body. Watching as the muscles in the body switch off for the night, leaving the body feeling rested and leaving the mind more at ease. So just starting down at the toes just a sense of the muscles switching off the feet, the arches, all those muscles switching off same in the lower half of the legs. So any tension being let go of as the muscles switch off, shut down in the upper half of the legs, any tension just melting away being let go of into the area of the hips, the pelvis. Again, any muscles shutting down for the night, completely at rest. Everything from the waist downward is heavy at ease. The muscles in the lower back and the stomach now switching off middle of the back around the diaphragm, the upper back and the chest. So any muscles not needed shutting down, switching off for the night. The shoulders just switching off the upper half of the arms and the lower half of the arms just switching off. The hands, fingers, just switching off any muscles around the throat and the neck switching off. The head, the face, the jaw, the eyes, any last areas of tension just melting away as the muscles shut down, switch off at rest for the night and allowing thoughts to come and go. Just allowing the mind and body, the space they need to rest. Night falls like a blanket over Sleeper Mountain. Shadows pour down at slopes, catching and pooling beyond the boulders and trees and gathering in ravines and gullies. As the sun sets beyond the far ridge, you can see how the mountain got its name. Seen in silhouette, the ridge across from us looks like the profile of a sleeping man. You can make out the sharp point of his nose, the round peak of his chin against the bright clouds picked out against the sky by the setting sun. It's as though some giant chose this place to rest his body and slept and...