#33 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (5th July 2018)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is, not sure what this is, but please only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes. And if you're watching this on YouTube, again, the same applies.

Don't watch this video, um, you know, when you're driving a car or space shuttle or, I don't know, maybe deep sea diving, you know, whatever it might be. Just, because you just, I don't know if you're in like me, but I like to, when I listen to things, I like to close my eyes. I don't mean, you know, everything.

I mean, when I was a counselor, I didn't close my eyes when the clients were talking to me because that might come across as rude, even though it would have been easier for me to concentrate had I been able to do that. But then, you know, there's the visual aspects that I would have missed out on. Anyway, that's not really the point.

I, if I listen to a lecture, um, which I do, you know, I like to listen to, uh, psychological or talks and, you know, things like that on. So, you know, TED talks sometimes, but I quite like long ones. I like to lecture.

So I listen to them and I will have my eyes closed, but I won't be going to sleep usually, but sometimes I do fall asleep. So I kind of want to do something a bit different today because I don't want to just keep doing the same stuff, even though every session is different and everything I do still has, uh, entwined within it the intention to help you to relax and to feel calmer and just to let go, you know, just to relax for the period of time that you're focusing more and more on my voice, as opposed to those things around you, or maybe even your thoughts.

So I'm not necessarily asking you to allow my voice to become your voice inside your head, therefore allowing you to feel more relaxed and calm.

It's more just taking a break, you know, just being kind to yourself. So I don't know what it's like where you are, but it's fairly warm here today. Anyway, I mean, you might be listening to this in the winter, you know, in a few months time or maybe a few years time, and there might be polar bears running around outside throwing snowballs at each other.

But for me at the moment, it's July the 5th, I think 2018. It's about 10 past 8 in the evening and it's still bright outside. It's warm.

I'm sitting here in my big black chair. It's not squeaking, it's not squeaking at the moment, but that's because I'm not moving. But I've got my red shorts on, my red shorts with blue stripes, and actually, I think, yeah, they're actually swimming shorts.

So I could use them to go swimming in. And I've got white socks on. And I've got a black t-shirt.

And that's it. I've got underwear on as well. So I'm just... I wonder what colour my underwear are.

Let's have a look. Oh, grey. That's lovely, isn't it? Very romantic, grey underwear.

So I'm just sitting here. It's a fairly nice temperature, actually. I'm not too hot.

I'm not cold. I'm just an okay temperature. The windows are open, but not wide, wide open, just on the latch, you know, so that you can open them from outside, but it's letting some air in.

But if they were open wide, and there was, you know, someone decided to start singing the best of Queen, you know, just it'd be, you know, we are the champions. Like, no, it'd be a little bit distracting. As it is, I can hear people washing up.

You know, I quite like the sounds of just sounds. So I guess this is going to be, it's already started to be boring. So I wonder if this is going to be a let me bore you to sleep session.

Can you hear that? Sounds like a fire alarm. It's actually a chip van. A chip, like a little chip shop van.

And they sell chips and, and you may call them fries, but you know, fried potato strips, wherever, you know, chips, we call them chips in England. And they sell fish, they sell sausages, and curry sauce as well, which I never kind of understand. I mean, curry sauce, it's nice to dip the chips into it, but it's a bit of a weird, for me, it's a bit of a weird mix.

It's two things that are nice, but, but then I suppose it's, I'm a southerner. So I've been raised in the south of England, most of my life. And we don't have gravy on our chips here.

Chips are supposed to be, you know, not supposed to be, but I've been kind of brought up for chips to have vinegar and salt, maybe, and tomato ketchup, not to make them soggy with gravy or curry liquid or anything like that. So yeah, I don't, but although, well, mind you, mind you, a little known fact, pointless fact, in fact, is that I used to be a northerner for a while, because I used to live in Newcastle when I was a child. I don't know how long before, but I was a young, young child.

And I lived there in Newcastle, which is up north, it's very, very north, or is it northeast, northwest, something like that. And, but apart from that, I spent most of my time in the south east, really, of England, sort of London area, you know, London and parts of that area. Also lived in Bognor Regis for a while, which is, I think it's the west, is it west country.

And I lived in Ireland for a little while. Long, long, quite a long time ago. But mainly I've just sort of lived in this area.

So yeah, I think this is number 33 of the let me bore you to sleep video. sessions. And all it is, is just me talking about nothing for, you know, maybe in an hour, or something like that.

The next thing with it, I will still maybe also look at sleeping, focusing on the fact that's what we could do. Let's have a little have a little challenge. A challenge to stay awake.

So ideally, it's a good time, a good time to do this. It doesn't have to be day or night, it doesn't matter really. And it may matter for your lifestyle.

You know, it's no point going to sleep during the day if you you're at work. And you know, you're in the middle of a brain transplant or something, I don't know, operating on someone's brain, giving them a new one. So you know, this isn't a good time to go to go buh-byes.

But you, if you're at home, or wherever you sleep, you can maybe set yourself a little challenge. And the best time to do this is when you're tired. That's the best time to listen to this is when you're tired.

Because I'm going to ask you to stay awake. In fact, I'm gonna, this is going to be the most directive, let me bore you to sleep that I've done for a while. So I'm going to ask you, you can, you can ignore me, of course you can.

You know, I've got no, no control of what you do. And I thought it'd be fun just to have a little game, you know, just play around. So this will be a case of you trying to stay awake.

And by stay awake, I mean, not even drift off a little bit. If you drift off a little bit, it means that it doesn't mean anything, really. Because it's a win-win situation.

There are no losers in this game. There's only winners. Isn't that the best game to play? It's a bit like England, we're playing football.

And last week, I think it was Saturday. And they knew they were going through to the next, the next round of the World Cup, whether they won or lost the game. And they ended up losing one nil.

They still knew they were going through. And the other team also knew they were going through. So it's a kind of a pointless game in some ways.

But at the same time, they both didn't seem to put a lot of effort in, if I'm honest. But they made that up. A couple of days ago, England did, because they did phenomenally well in the penalty shootout.

Right now, you may be thinking, wow, we didn't know JJ was a football expert. And you're right, I'm not. I really am not.

The only sport I really have much knowledge about, as a spectator, is boxing. And even that's quite hard to keep track of, because there's so many different belts now, so many different world titles. It's just tough to keep track of who's got what belt.

It used to be easier, you know, years ago. But now, it's a little bit hard. But on the other side, I suppose, with the internet, with YouTube, I get to watch some boxing that I would never have got to watch before.

You know, some fights in other countries and stuff. So this is a game that we're going to play. The game of try and stay awake.

Or you could be try not to fall asleep. You know, you could word it whatever way you choose, really. It's your game.

You call it muddle McFluffle, if you want. That's what you want to call it. I don't know why you would do that, or would be the reason.

And I'd struggle to even spell that. Muddle McFluffle. It sounds like some kind of weird game that McDonald's would hand out to the children.

Muddle McFluffle. Maybe I've got some kind of business idea there. Not only do I not realize it was there, I also don't care.

You know, I'm really interested in business, in a way, and it's strange. But I'm fascinated by people's success. In all streams, whether it's successful sports people, successful business people, it's just success generally, in whatever category there could be.

Even successful musicians. And I'm not a musician, and I've got very little interest in that. But I am interested in the stories of the individuals and the idea that someone's practicing for six hours a day on the piano.

And that dedication. And I've always kind of wanted to be like that. Not a musician, but to have that dedication to, you know, aimed at whatever it is I was doing.

Always with the idea that if you are that dedicated, then good things can only happen. Or only good things can happen. And the things like money will come without even having to think about it.

Becoming really, really, really good at something. It seems, you know, I've always kind of thought that that would result in the person becoming financially stable and independent, without really having to give the financial aspects any thought. So I kind of like the idea of that.

To be able to spend, you know, devote your life to something that's important to you. So this game, okay, I do go off on tangents. This game is about staying awake.

Trying to stay awake. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to guide you. I'm going to ask you to do some things.

And it won't be anything major. It won't be anything that requires any physical effort. Because I'm a big believer in doing as little as possible.

Yeah, as often as possible. Just do the bare minimum. Physically, I do.

I just, I'm not quite as lazy as I come across. I've been doing my weights. I've got some weights at home.

I've been doing them every day. So I'm getting a little bit toner. A little bit, probably a little bit stronger as well.

But cardiovascular wise, I'm not sure. I take Andre out for walks, you know. But I suppose, I don't know, maybe I should take up jogging again like I used to.

It just doesn't really feel right though. Doesn't, doesn't, I don't feel a level of excitement when I think about going for a run. There's, yeah, there's no, there's no interest in that for me.

So this little game, so I'm going to ask you to open your eyes. And just keep your eyes open as long as you can comfortably do so. Only as long as it's comfortable for you to do so.

And then let them close. Whenever they feel a bit maybe tense or it's a bit too much, just close them. Because it's not about strain in your eyes or anything like that.

This is a safe place. This is, you know, it's nothing to prove to anybody. All that matters is that you're happy within yourself.

So this is a safe thing to do. So if you've already done it, I'd like you to do it again. Open your eyes, maybe as wide as they go.

And then without straining. And then when your eyes feel tired and you just want to close them, or whenever you just want to close them, just close them. Let them close naturally.

I say close them naturally, but what other way is there to close your eyes? Not like we have to put our fingers and thumb together to close them. Generally, your eyes close naturally, don't they? I've never, ever, ever spoken to anyone saying to me, oh, I can't close my eyes. You know, generally most people can close their eyes.

And just notice how your eyes feel. And I'm not going to try to get you to feel like your eyelids are stuck together, or that your eyelids are heavy, feeling heavier and heavier. I'm not going to do any of that stuff.

I'm just going to, I'm not, I'm just going to focus on your eyes. Just notice how your eyes feel. Maybe your eyes do feel heavy, but again, I'm not trying to give you the suggestion that your eyelids will feel more and more stuck together and heavier the more you focus on them.

What a lovely sound. I'm not going to suggest that that sound of the chip shop that just gone past as it went past seems to sort of, as if it's glued your eyes together. No, nothing like that.

But you just focus on your eyes and your eyelids, maybe on your eyebrows and just being aware really of how your forehead feels. Notice in, you know, that bit on the corner of your eyes, on the outside of each eye. And maybe you can crunch your eyes up a little bit and you can feel you know, as your cheeks rise and you feel that bit just in the corner.

And I'm not going to ask you to relax your jaw. I'm just going to, I'm going to ask you to notice how your jaw is already naturally relaxing, just on its own. And it's the whole of the jaw, right from your ears, the bottoms of your ears, all the way down your cheeks into your jaw.

In my case, it's underneath my beard. You may not have a beard. It's just that sense of comfort that you might feel.

Again, I'm not going to try to convince you to have any of those natural feelings of comfort all over your face and your forehead, across your eyes, your mouth, your nose, your jaw, down to your neck. This is more just noticing how you actually do feel relaxed in those places naturally. How it's just happening naturally without me needing to do anything.

Just, I suppose, just guiding or even guiding, just maybe pointing to various parts of your body for you to then realize that, oh, it's feeling more relaxed. And that's natural though. That's natural to feel more relaxed in the parts that you focus on.

And it's a weird thing really, because there's a thing called progressive relaxation. And the idea, I suppose, is you continue to move down the body and progress, but actually the progressive relaxation happens on its own because when you relax your forehead or when your forehead relaxes naturally, and that triggers your eyebrows to also relax naturally, which in turn triggers your eyelids to relax naturally. And because your eyelids are relaxing naturally, your eyes, the whole of your eyes, the eyeballs, all the blood vessels in your eyes, all those muscles surrounding your eyes also relax naturally.

And then the sides of your head, you know, the temple region, there's a sense of relaxation where your forehead and your eyes meet and relaxes your temple. And that can connect to your jaw, moving all the way down your jaw, either side. Then your jaw can continue to relax naturally.

But then it's not just your jaw, so your jaw there and inside your jaw is your mouth. Inside your mouth is your teeth, your gums, your tongue, your throat, your lips, all part of your mouth. And all those parts become relaxed naturally, because this is what happens on its own.

This is the natural thing to occur, because when your forehead relaxes, as you already know, that causes your eyebrows to relax, to relax your eyes, to relax your jaw, to relax your tongue, to relax your gums, to relax your teeth, to relax your lips, to relax your throat and your neck. And not just the front of your neck where your throat is, but the whole of your neck starts to relax naturally, moving to the sides of your neck and the back of your neck. It's as if someone's put one of those supporting collars on your neck, and it's just taking all the pressure that might have been there before, and it's completely supporting your neck and allowing all the muscles of your neck to relax completely.

And at the same time, strengthening your neck so that your neck can be even more supportive to you and to your head, allowing you to experience more comfort as you naturally feel more, even more relaxed. And although you got that feeling that maybe started with your forehead, that feeling of comfort and natural relaxation, moving down your eyebrows, feeling naturally relaxed, moving down to your eyes and all those tiny little muscles in and around your eyes, completely feeling naturally relaxed, moving down your jaw, your face, your lips, your tongue, your teeth, your gums, your throat, and your neck, all of your neck, the front, the sides, and the back of your neck feels naturally relaxed.

And that feeling, and this is a, I don't think anyone really knows why, but that feeling of relaxation that's naturally occurred, it's just naturally there, starts to spread all the way down your body.

It's as if there's a hole in the top of your head, and this relaxation that's in your face and your neck starts to overflow out of that safe hole in the top of your head. First of all, again, spreading over your face, causing your face to feel even more relaxed, spreading down your shoulders and moving down your chest, your back, and covering your whole torso, your upper back, the middle of your back, and your lower back, naturally experiencing those sensations of calmness and relaxation, spreading down your chest, your stomach, and the sides of your stomach, your shoulders, tops of your arms, your elbows, and back.

Liquid relaxation really does spread all the way down your arms, into your forearms, your wrists, feeling naturally relaxed, and your hands, your fingers, also feeling naturally relaxed.

And that liquid relaxation can also drip down, as well as covering your body and continuing to move down your hips, moving towards your legs. It can also drip out of your fingertips, onto the floor, starting to naturally relax your surroundings. Maybe you can feel the chair as it starts to get relaxed.

That's if you're sitting in a chair, if you're lying on a bed, or on a flat surface, a sofa, wherever you are, that liquid relaxation starts to spread into every physical thing surrounding you, including the chair, or the bed, or the sofa you're sitting or lying on. Maybe the carpet, the floor, the walls of the room, the ceiling, and all the objects in that room, being covered with this liquid relaxation. As you notice the feeling in your body, continue to relax, focusing again on your chest, or your breasts, feeling relaxed and calm, and your midsection of your stomach, feeling naturally relaxed.

And moving down to the abdominal region, all those muscles in your abdomen, and enjoy that liquid relaxation soaking deep, deep within, relaxing all your internal organs, moving into your chest, relaxing your heart, with this healing liquid relaxation. Relaxing your kidneys, your liver, your lungs, and all the different parts of your internal body, all those parts that work together to relax your body deeply. And notice as that liquid relaxation moves down to your hips, covering your buttocks, your groin, moving down your thighs, and you can experience the looseness of your hips.

And you can really notice the lower back, that part that connects your back to your hips, feeling really, really loose, really, really relaxed. And then noticing the feeling of natural relaxation, spreading down your thighs to your knees. All the time that you're focusing on your body, you also notice, or maybe you don't notice, that not only is the room that you're in being covered with this liquid relaxation, it now covers the entire building, entire house, or the hospital, or wherever it is you are, completely covering that building with liquid relaxation, full of healing, full of kindness.

As that liquid relaxation moves across your knees, you can go deep, sink deep into your knees, become like an extra lubricant in your knee joints, healing those knee joints. And as those knees continue to feel more and more of that liquid relaxation, you can just observe as that liquid relaxation spreads down your calves and your shins, into your ankles, and then moving into your feet and your toes. You can feel like you're actually floating on top of this liquid relaxation.

It can feel so, so good. To just be with it, no thinking required, no action required. Just enjoy the feeling, that natural feeling that is just there for you to appreciate and to experience.

Just enjoy the feeling, enjoy not having to enjoy anything, appreciate not having to appreciate anything, just feeling calm and at peace. And you can just allow that, if you want to allow that calmness to just continue to grow, continue to appreciate not having to do anything at all. You can enjoy feeling calm, at ease and peaceful, because feeling relaxed is what allows you to drift off into a deep sleep.

Sleep naturally, without me continuously saying to you, sleep, sleep, sleep. Because when your mind is peaceful and your body feels relaxed, sleeping is so natural. It's the most natural thing in the world.

It's one of those things that we were born to be able to do right from birth. We were able to breathe, we were able to sleep. It's the most natural thing that you could do.

Sleeping is as natural as eating or breathing. It's just what you do, what you can do easily, effortlessly. That's quite a good thing, I think.

It's quite handy to be reminded that actually these thoughts that maybe we used to have before deciding to listen to me now. I guess it's always useful to be reminded of some of the most obvious things, because sometimes the most obvious things are those things that are in front of us and maybe we're so used to them being there that we don't take as much notice of them as perhaps you now will. I suppose like walking through the park, the local park, and you've got a new visitor, someone that's not visited you before, or they've never been to that park, and they say, oh, it's a nice tree.

And you might say, oh, well, I've not noticed that tree before. And then they say, yeah, can you not notice it? It's about 200 foot, you know, it's the biggest tree I've ever seen. And I say, well, maybe I don't look up as much as I used to.

If I spent too much time looking up, I might trip over. And they said, oh, JJ, you don't know, I've come out with some silly things sometimes. Shall we have a milkshake? And I say, well, I did actually, I did have a milkshake the other day.

I hadn't had a milkshake for ages and ages and ages. And I was with my friend and we'd just been shopping and we were waiting for the bus. And it was about half an hour till the next bus was going to arrive.

So I got us both a milkshake. It was lovely. That's the whole story, really.

There's nothing else to add to it. I sat down. I suppose that's the story a little bit more interesting.

Don't know what Andre's doing. He's running around. Don't quite know what he's up to.

Sometimes he's, this time of the day, he's already been out, but sometimes he wants to do things. But I like to relax in the early evening. It's nice to just relax.

I don't really feel that I need to do anything at all. Just, I suppose my question is, how did you get on with the challenge? This Andre decides to climb through his plastic tube and sneeze. Sneeze again with a deeper voice.

For some reason. What are you doing Andre? What are you doing? What are you doing? So let me know how you got on. Maybe you fell asleep and that's kind of the point of this session anyway.

To let me bore you to sleep. I like to mix things up a bit. So this has been, I guess in some ways, more of a traditional sleep session, which is something I've done quite a few of and I will continue to do some.

I will continue to do more and more of these recordings because I think that's kind of why I'm here. That's why I've been sent to this planet. To make recordings for the internet.

And Andre's been sent here to make noises while I try to make recordings for the internet. What are you doing? Andre's coming up to give me a cuddle. He spends way too much time sniffing me.

I do wonder what he's up to. I mean really, if anything, I'll smell of him when he's been rubbing himself all over me. I love you Andre.

You're daddy's little boy, aren't you? Yes you are. Yes you are. Give daddy kisses.

Give daddy kisses. Kiss kiss. Oh thank you.

You're lovely, aren't you? Aren't you lovely? Aren't you lovely? I'm so tired. So tired. I suppose I should bring this to an end.

Although I can't be bothered. It means stretching over and pressing the stop button. But it's okay.

I can do it. I've done it before. I can do it again.

So I'm going to go. Thank you for listening. For watching.

If you've listened to me on iTunes, or SoundCloud, or Spreaker, or my website, jasonnewland.com, or my YouTube channel, thank you. Or maybe from Facebook or Twitter. Thank you wherever you are.

And I'll speak to you very soon. Lots of love. Bye.