7-minute letting go meditation for falling asleep, between calls

About this practice

Nothing to learn and nothing to fix: 7 minutes of letting go for falling asleep, between calls. A guided session of about 7 minutes, suited to all levels. Nothing is recorded and no account is needed.

What this works on: falling asleep

Falling asleep is a passive process. The harder you aim at it, the further it moves, because the effort itself is arousal.

It tends to show up as:

• Watching the clock
• Getting frustrated at being awake
• Sleep only arriving after giving up

Attention on something boring and continuous is the oldest trick there is. That is all a sleep story is doing.

Doing this between meetings

• Start it in the gap, not after the next one begins
• Write down the open thread from the last meeting first, then let it go
• Two minutes done beats five minutes planned

The back-to-back day is exactly why the gap has to be protected rather than used for one more task.

How letting go works

Letting go is about loosening grip rather than dropping things. It works on the effort attached to a problem — the holding, rehearsing and bracing — which is separable from the problem itself.

• Pick one thing you are gripping and loosen a single finger
• Release the effort with the exhale, not the issue
• Set down temporarily; you can pick it up again after

What happens, minute by minute

1. 0:00Notice the temperature of the air on the backs of your hands.
2. 0:13Ask yourself what you could stop holding for the next sixty seconds. That one is a good start.
3. 0:29We're going to move through the body in order, roughly from top to bottom.
4. 0:43We'll work through this slowly. If you lose the thread, the thread will wait.
5. 0:57Breathe as if you had all evening. There's no rush in this part.
6. 1:10Let each breath out be a small letting go of the muscles around your ribs.
7. 1:24Notice your wrists. They bend a lot in a day.
8. 1:36Feel the parts of you that have gone quiet.
9. 1:47Feel the front of your chest. Notice it rise and fall once.
10. 2:00When the surrender at the end of the day arrives, name it once, quietly, and go back to the breath. Naming is not fixing, and that is fine.
11. 2:20Say to yourself: this is uncomfortable, and I can stay with it for one more breath. Then take that breath.
12. 2:37Feel your upper back against whatever is behind it.
13. 2:48A few seconds more.
14. 2:57Let the exhale empty you a little more than usual, but not to the point of strain.
15. 3:12Notice any tension that arrived while you weren't looking.
16. 3:23A few seconds of nothing now. That's on purpose.
17. 3:34With each exhale, let a little of the effort go. Not the problem — just the effort.
18. 3:49Notice how you're sitting. Adjust if you need to. Then settle again.
19. 4:02Feel the slight stretch at the very bottom of the exhale.
20. 4:14Let's pause. Just the breathing for a while.
21. 4:25Feel the weight of the thoughts that keep the light on somewhere specific, then let the floor take a share of it.
22. 4:43Nothing about the surrender at the end of the day has to be explained or justified in this room.
23. 4:59Feel the air as it passes the back of your throat. It's cooler going in.
24. 5:13Your mind will leave about a hundred times. Come back about a hundred times.
25. 5:27Notice how quickly your mind labels things: good, bad, boring, nice.
26. 5:39I'll stop for a moment. Take the pause at your own speed.
27. 5:52Setting something down is not the same as giving up. You can pick it up again after.
28. 6:07Let your shoulders come back up to their usual place, if they want to.
29. 6:21Let your breathing be completely ordinary again.
30. 6:31Nothing changes for a moment.

Questions people ask

Meditation is a practice, not a treatment. If you are dealing with ongoing distress, please also reach out to a professional.