Sleep Meditation

What the 20 minutes are like

The voice takes you down through the body, from your feet to the top of your head, letting each part get heavier, then counts slowly from ten to one. Then it stops talking, and the soft sound underneath carries on for a while before fading out completely, so nothing wakes you at the end.

Of its 20:00, about 4 minutes 37 seconds is the voice speaking and the rest is quiet. The longest quiet stretch is 8 minutes 9 seconds, starting at 11:51.

The session, minute by minute

Each line the voice says, when it starts, and how long the quiet after it lasts (in the Nicole voice).

How it is made for falling asleep

There is no bell at the end and nothing plays afterwards: no next track and no ad. The voice is a little quieter by its last words than at its first, and the sound under it fades slowly to silence over the final minutes. The fade is part of the audio file itself, so it works on a phone with the screen locked, where a web page can’t change the volume.

The screen starts dark, so the phone can lock itself. If you would rather watch something, pick a scene, but a dark room is usually better for sleep.

Does meditation help you sleep?

Somewhat, and the evidence is honest about it. A review of 18 trials with 1,654 people found that mindfulness meditation improved sleep quality compared with time-matched activities, by a moderate amount, but no more than proven sleep treatments. In one trial with 49 older adults who slept poorly, six weeks of mindfulness classes improved sleep quality more than six weeks of sleep hygiene classes.

So a sleep meditation can be a good part of winding down. If you have slept badly for weeks, talk to a doctor, because there are treatments that work well.

Getting the most from it

Set the volume before you lie down, a little lower than seems right; the voice is soft and close. A phone on the bedside table works, and so do headphones if you share a room. Put the phone face down.

Try it at the same time each night for a week before you judge it. Some nights you will hear the countdown, some nights you won’t.

If it doesn’t feel right

Meditation isn’t therapy, and it isn’t for every moment. If you feel panicky, numb or flooded, open your eyes, move, look around the room and name a few things you see, or stop. You can rest your attention on your hands, your feet or the sounds around you instead of the breath, and closing your eyes is always optional. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says not to use meditation to replace care from a health professional.

If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, talk to someone now: in the US call or text 988, in the UK and Ireland call Samaritans on 116 123, and elsewhere findahelpline.com lists free, confidential lines.

More guided meditations

• 5-Minute Meditation
• Meditation for Beginners
• Body Scan Meditation
• Loving-Kindness Meditation
• All six levels →

Sources

• Rusch et al., The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2019
• Black et al., Mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality among older adults with sleep disturbances, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015
• NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
• Kokoro-82M, an open speech model (Apache-2.0)