Guided Sleep Meditation
By Tergar Meditation Community • 2 min read
Here is a guided sleep meditation that anyone can use. It will allow you to sleep better and wake up feeling well-rested.
We tend to assume that there’s nothing to be gained from feeling exhausted, bored, out of it, or dull, right? But actually, you can make friends with sensations like those, and they can be quite beneficial for meditation.
In fact, for guided sleep meditation, you need to feel somewhat tired to begin with. Incorporating sleep meditation into your practice might even change your relationship with the sort of experience you would otherwise dismiss as an obstacle to be overcome, or a temptation to be resisted.
First, allow yourself to let go of any tension that might be in your body and mind. If you are relying on a little bit of tension to keep you awake, let that go too. When you totally relax, sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get sleepy. Close your eyes. Let everything drop, and just be.
Be aware of any experiences, whether of fatigue, boredom, restfulness, mental fuzziness, whatever arises. Continue to maintain your awareness of these sensations. Eventually your awareness will begin to fade in and out: you’ll become a bit more alert, then a little sleepy, then you’ll snap back into alertness, then the sleepiness will return. In the end, you’ll doze off, with an awareness that you are doing so.
Practicing guided sleep meditation will imbue your sleep with awareness. In that way, sleep itself becomes a meditation. If you sleep for an hour, you’ve meditated for an hour. Lovely to think about it that way, isn’t it? By the way, it’s not unusual to become distracted as you fall asleep: “Uh-oh, did I set the alarm? I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” and so forth. However, it’s important to note that if your mind is distracted at the moment of dozing off, rather than in a state of awareness, then what you’ll have instead is ordinary sleep, not sleep meditation. Though there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!
If you want to start your day with awareness, try this guided morning meditation.
“The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
– Mingyur Rinpoche –
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In this video, Mingyur Rinpoche instructs us on how to meditate while sleeping. He describes the process of having awareness as you are falling asleep and how this awareness continues in the sleeping state.
Listen to guided sleep meditation by Mingyur Rinpoche
Learn meditation under the skillful guidance of world-renowned teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at your own pace.
Tergar Meditation Community supports individuals, practice groups, and meditation communities around the world in learning to live with awareness, compassion, and wisdom. Grounded in the Tibetan Buddhist lineage of our guiding teacher, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, our online and in-person programs are accessible to people of all cultures and faiths, and support a lifelong path toward the application of these principles in everyday life.
The mind is just like a mountain, just like the sky. No matter what you’re experiencing at present, your mind remains the unchangeable ground, like a mountain. Like the sky, it’s free and pure, and it has the wondrous quality of allowing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to appear and dissolve like clouds.
Many people have the wrong idea about meditation. For instance, one popular but incorrect notion is that in meditation, you’re supposed to think of nothing, and completely empty your mind. So, in trying to do it “right,” some folks will sit bolt upright on the cushion, eyes squeezed shut, concentrating really hard on their breath.
“Your awareness is bigger than your negative thoughts. So when you can hold sensations in your awareness, that is kindness. If you feel like you can’t let go of your aversion to some of them, that’s okay too. Just be with your aversion. When you allow yourself to have an aversion, that is love. That is compassion. That is forgiveness. So anything is okay: panic is okay, depression is okay. Guilt, destructive thoughts, whatever — it’s okay. All of these feelings are just like clouds in the sky, coming and going.”
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