Sleep story: the house after everyone is asleep, when you have tried everything else — for a racing mind

There is nothing left on the list for today. The radiator clicks once as it cools down. The fridge hums on and off in the kitchen, and that is the loudest thing in the building.

The lamp beside you is the only light left on in the whole house. The floorboards have stopped creaking because nobody is walking on them. A glass of water sits on the table, half finished.

Let your forehead go cool and smooth. Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed.

Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them. Let your lower back sink down into the mattress.

The curtains are not quite closed, and there is a thin line of streetlight along the wall. Everything in the room is exactly where it was left.

Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine. Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part.

Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Let the pillow take the whole weight of your head.

There is a chair by the window that nobody sits in during the day. Outside, a car goes past and its headlights sweep across the ceiling, then are gone.

Let the back of your neck lengthen out. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.

Everyone went to bed an hour ago, and the house has stopped making the sounds it makes during the day. The clock in the hallway ticks slightly behind the one in the kitchen.

Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.

If you've lost track of where we were, you haven't lost anything important. Notice the tone of your own inner voice. Is it kind?

Notice your hips, wide and settled. Feel the weight of the blanket on your legs.

Stay with the weight of your body. You do not have to count them.

Slower now. Softer. Let them.

They will find their own way out. Sleep. Almost nothing to do now.

This assumes you have already tried the obvious things.

No more sentences. Just the weight of you in the bed.