Snowville

Hello again, thank you for joining us for tonight's visit to Snowville. It's no exaggeration to say that it's one of the coziest places on earth. The sights, sounds and smells of this place could have been designed to make you feel as though you had arrived on the pages of a children's picture book. The spires and domes and twinkling lights, the ivy-covered archways and cobbled streets. But the most amazing thing is that it all happened that way, quite naturally. It's reassuring to know that places like this still even exist. Before we start our tour, I always think it's nice to start 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 learnt 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. 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 notice thinking and return to the breath or 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 class. I'm going to give you a few moments just to keep counting the breath and noting those thoughts and feelings. That's brilliant. Nestled in the mountains, overlooking a forested valley, and a gleaming ribbon of river, Snowville is a beautifully preserved medieval town renowned for its festive night market. On a snowy winter's evening, it's one of the best places to be. From a distance, the town is first a sprinkling of light and then a warm glow tucked into the mountain's shadowy slopes. The headlights of the car that brought you here illuminated a beautiful stone archway with what looked like a bell tower on top. Somewhere as special as Snowville...