… bed-time dialogue with my body …

Time to close the book and prepare for sleep, not always assured. Still, let’s advance to our night time ritual.

Thank you my little palace.

I love you. I know you are me too, and both of us rely on the mysterious soul, but I call you my body. Forgive our mind for ignoring your gentle cautions and prompts, again. Forgive the unreliable promises, like the hot shower you craved, less time in front of the laptop screen, not eating that pretzel baked with wheat, which gives you gas, or indulging in that late extra glass of Rose. Our rebellious mind has a masochistic streak of resisting your well-meant counsel.

So before sleep, here are some treats. I massage our feet, and toes. Each toe has a name I address it with … big one, forward one, middle one, enchanted one, and little one. Next – a neck-rolling, then pinching and rubbing its surrounding muscles, and, not to forget, finger-cracking. These exercises are not just mechanical, without the imagination to sincerely call in the divine spirit, these rituals would be meaningless.

Pulling the duvet round our shoulders, we adopt a first position, curling on our right side, like a foetus in the womb, finding a cosy arrangement for the head with a small cushion, and recalling the last pages of the closed book, and summarizing impressions of the day.

Now it’s us wishing to just drift off into weightless realms – this remains a wish. We want to stretch, so we shift to lying on the back, flick toes, gently massage the stomach, pull up legs and spread them in a kind of opening-flower-like choreography. This feels good for a while. Then we shift to lying on the left. With less muscle tension our stomach rumbles, its juices are sighing with relief to get on with their purpose, digesting food.

Still, the mind is restless, processing past, present and future, wanting answers, hunting memory land for nostalgic moments, fresh connections, insights, inspiration, all quite useless, since it pulls us in a thousand directions and stops us from sleeping. So let’s do another shift to lying on the right, to escape the meandering thoughts. Our somewhat remorseful mind suggests sinking into images, in the belief that hypnotic images will put reason to rest. So we must try soothing the overly receptive brain. The restlessness may of course be due to oncoming temperature changes, or the energizing influence of the full moon.

Now we remember, a mantra, a prayer, sending blessings to dear ones, gratitude for The One that allows our mind and body to exist together in relative harmony, here, now. These neglected rituals are often surprisingly effective. Finally, vivid images emerge, of friends, places, visions. The self-regulating system of our body-mind will soon update itself in ethereal dream space.

It matters how we achieve sleep, it has a bearing on the way we wake up, clear and resolved for another day ahead, or confused and fretting over the unfinished gestalt of an idea that floats around evasively, like a butterfly. It can’t be helped; there are greater forces at work.

What grounded us next morning was watching a young fox frolicking and eventually flopping down to sunbathe in our garden.

How do you, my readers, go to sleep?