Get Sleepy Amongst The Cherry Blossoms
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Thank you everyone for being here, for listening, for relaxing, and just discovering the hidden treasures in relaxation. I think it's such an interesting pursuit.

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This offer ends August 19th. I'll see you over there at Sleep Magic Premium. Get sleepy among the cherry blossoms. I may be slightly late for this episode, but every spring, all around the world, although most famously in Japan, arrive the cherry blossoms. From trees that apparently do not actually produce cherries, these blossoms are white or light pink or hot pink.

And after blooming for just a couple of weeks at most, they gently waft off the trees like confetti. Every year, millions of people enjoy the cherry blossoms and tourists come from far and wide to see them. So tonight, we will fall asleep among the cherry blossoms. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position and let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently.

You might want to take a deep breath. I find that I'm taking a deep breath after I say that line and it feels good. So bring your awareness now to your breathing and allow your breath just to be normal and natural at this point. But your awareness is coming home to your breath because your awareness has been out and about all day doing stuff and maybe you haven't even been aware of your awareness. But now we're bringing it home to the breath, home to the body.

And it feels good. Just slow it down. Beautiful. Now I'd like you to bring your awareness up into your eyelids. And imagine now that the little muscles in your eyelids are feeling loose and limp and relaxed. And as you allow your eyelids to feel nice and heavy and sleepy, I'd like you to accept the suggestion that your eyelids are so relaxed that they simply will not open. Now this is pretending. I want you to pretend that your eyelids cannot open.

But by pretending, we go into the imagination. And that's where we want to be tonight. So please accept the suggestion that your eyelids are so heavy they will not open. And now I'd like you to test your eyelids to make sure they won't open by wiggling your eyebrows. Just give your eyebrows a little tug while your eyes remain closed. Good. Now this relaxation that you have around your eyes...

this same relaxation will soon take over your entire body. So let's imagine this relaxation around your eyes moving back into your head. Just imagine it's like a waterfall of relaxation falling down into your head. This warm, beautiful waterfall taking over every single cell of your brain, causing your head to sink in.

into the pillow. Allow your head to feel heavy, heavy in the pillow. And as your head gets heavier and heavier, the muscles of your face are softening. And whatever messages or identity you carried in your face today, whatever feeling you transmitted with your face, they're just evaporating. And inside your mind, any mental tension that you carried today has disappeared.

as you take yourself deeper and deeper into relaxation. Now let's allow this warm feeling of relaxation to move down into your neck, allowing the large muscles of your neck to let go and relax because they're done for the day. And as the relaxation moves down now into your shoulders, allow your shoulders to feel sort of soft and melty and relaxed.

Allow the muscles of your shoulders to release into the bed. Because they too are done for the day. And any responsibilities you carried on those shoulders today have fallen to the floor. And you can pick any or all of them up tomorrow morning, but for right now, your only responsibility is to yourself. Because this is a time to let go. Naturally. For every creature on the planet built into ourselves.

is a letting go. Good. So as the relaxation moves down now, makes its way down your arm, allow your arms to feel nice and heavy. Heavy and warm and sort of melty. As the relaxation makes its way down into your hands, the palms of your hands feel warm and open. Perhaps the palms of your hands even tingle a little.

As the relaxation moves down now into your fingers, every finger feeling full, heavy, and totally relaxed. Totally relaxed. Now while you're listening to this recording, you may be aware of the sounds going on around you. But from this moment on, no sound that you hear will bother or disturb you in any way.

In fact, from this moment on, any sound that you hear, like noises from within your bedroom or the street or the building that you're in, those sounds will actually cause you to go deeper into relaxation. I know that's counterintuitive, but as you relax, you can make that choice. And as you make that choice, those sounds, which are just vibrations, are moving through you, taking you deeper and deeper.

Even the sound of my voice is taking you deeper and deeper. And you're on your own journey tonight, and there will be a point where you sort of let go, and all the sounds, whether it's my voice or something else, will seem distant, quiet, and detached. Good. Now let's imagine that warm relaxation that you've generated moving down into your chest. Just allow the relaxation to...

spiral inside your chest like this warm mist inside your ribcage. And imagine that that warm mist of relaxation is surrounding and supporting your heart. Just for a moment, that mist surrounding and supporting your heart and any emotional tension that may have built up today or in the last little while has disappeared.

As you take yourself deeper and deeper, and that relaxation moves down deep into your belly, your pelvis feeling heavy on the bed. So your whole torso now feeling so and relaxed, the muscles of your back letting go, muscles of your belly letting go. As that relaxation moves all the way down into your legs now,

Your legs are feeling so heavy. Heavy and relaxed. Heavy because your legs are done for the day. As that relaxation moves down into your feet, the soles of your feet feeling warm and open. Perhaps they even tingle. As the relaxation moves down now into your toes, every toe feeling full and totally relaxed. And as your body is relaxing, your mind is relaxing.

And as your mind is relaxing, your body is relaxing. And as your body is relaxing, your mind is relaxing. Imagine you are in a park in Tokyo. It's springtime and you're walking along a wide, graveled pathway. You notice the vivid green grass on either side of the path. And lining the pathway is a long, regal row of cherry trees.

Cherry trees, known as sakura in Japanese, now is the time to see them. As you walk, they appear so soft and elegant that you feel more like you're floating than walking. This mad array of blossoms is here just for now, for soon they will release from the branches and float into the breeze. You are enjoying a very special event

in a special window of time. So you continue walking, going deeper and deeper into the park, and deeper and deeper into relaxation. There are several types of cherry trees, but you are seeing the Yoshino cherry trees, with white blossoms containing just the lightest tinge of pink. As you come closer to one, you notice its trunk with its reddish-gray bark.

and horizontal markings, like a birch tree. You peer up and are staring right into a blossom. It's so soft and delicate. It's made up of five petals, and at the base of each petal is a hint of light green, and where all five petals come together looks like a green star. And from the center of that star comes a dramatic spray.

of pink stamens topped with yellow pollen. The Yoshino cherry blossom. It is simple, elegant, and beautiful. The Yoshino cherry tree is the most popular because it is the only cherry tree whose leaves sprout after its blossoms. So now as you look up at it, every elegant branch of this tree is completely covered in blossoms.

It's almost fuzzy, like dozens of outstretched arms covered in cotton balls. The cherry blossoms have been admired in Japanese culture for hundreds of years. They were first celebrated in court poetry and literature in the Nara period of the 8th century. As you continue to walk, taking yourself deeper and deeper,

The spring breeze feels good against your face. You can hear the lovely sounds of sparrows alighting in the trees, chirping their sweet, lilting chirp. As you come around a bend, you see a river on your left and people in rowboats floating on the water. This is the time for cherry blossom parties called hanami.

And all sorts of people are here, swooning over the delicate blossoms and soothing colors. As you continue to stroll, you come across a different type of cherry tree. Several of them, in fact. Covered in hot pink blossoms, these big, beautiful cherry trees are called "yei sakura." And as you get closer, you see that their blossoms are layered

and dense, sort of a cross between a carnation and a rose. In fact, the Ye Sakura cherry blossoms contain anywhere between 10 and 50 petals each, making them lush and soft and artfully untidy. As you get closer, you stick your nose in a blossom and smell its delicate, vanilla-like scent. But what strikes you most

is the pink. As you stand under the tree and look up into the branches, all you see is pink. Pink is a fascinating color. It doesn't exist by itself on the light spectrum. So you must make pink with specialized cells in your eyes. As those cells combine red, the color with the slowest frequency found at the bottom of any rainbow, with violet,

The color with the fastest frequency found at the top of every rainbow. And by bringing them together, your eyes are making pink. Because it captures both ends of the light spectrum, pink feels balanced. Like love, pink feels soft and expansive and generous. Thank goodness our eyes can make pink. You notice one petal fall off

A fluffy pink blossom. Just one. And it wafts away on the fresh spring. The legend of the birth of the cherry tree is one of eternal love. And it goes like this: Once upon a time, the gods decided to remove a tree that had never bloomed. But first, they gave it twenty years during which it could turn into a human being

and experience human feelings. Now, at that time, there was a war taking place, and Tree didn't see anything good. Until it met a beautiful girl. They fell in love with each other, and over time, the tree admitted that it was a tree. Madly in love, the girl also wanted to become a tree, and they became one Sakura.

blooming with beautiful flowers. As you pull away, you see the bright pink cherry blossoms against the sky. And the contrast of the pink against the blue is stunning, energizing. And there are so many contrasts. The darkness of the bark against the light of the blossoms. The hardness of the branches against the softness of the petals.

the strength of the roots against the transience of the blossoms. So many natural contrasts making balance as you go deeper and deeper. In 1885, an American diplomat named Eliza Skidmore returned home after visiting Japan. There she had seen and fallen in love with the cherry blossoms.

Wanting to share them with other Americans, she reached out to the appropriate government agency and suggested that they plant cherry trees in Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River. But no one listened. For the next 24 years, Ms. Skidmore reached out again and again and again until finally she decided to raise the money herself.

to bring the cherry trees to Washington. In her attempt to bring awareness to the cause, she wrote to the first lady of the time, Helen Heron Taft. Coincidentally, the first lady herself had lived for a time in Japan and had also been hypnotized by the beauty of the cherry blossoms. On April 7th, 1909, Mrs. Taft responded

To Eliza Skidmore, thank you very much for your suggestion about the cherry trees. I have taken the matter up and have promised the trees, but I thought perhaps it would be best to make an avenue of them, extending down to the turn in the road, as the other part is too rough to do any planting. Let me know what you think about this. Sincerely yours, Helen H.

It didn't take long for the official wheels to begin turning, and by later that year, the mayor of Tokyo had agreed to send 2,000 cherry trees to Washington. As you go deeper and deeper, you sit down at the base of a cherry tree near the river. You feel the soft grass under your body as you relax against the trunk of the tree. You watch the

very gentle sway of the trees on the other side of the river. As people in their rowboats float along the water, bobbing gently in the sun, you see the reflection of all the cherry blossoms growing along the banks of the river, and the water shimmers as it reflects the white and the pink and the sky. It feels peaceful and soothing.

On the other bank, you see groups of city dwellers picnicking on the grass as they enjoy their cherry blossom parties. You hear ooze and ah and laughter as you take yourself deeper and deeper. You watch several petals float from the cherry trees. It feels so nice to watch them float and drift, some landing on the water, others gently wafting.

When the cherry trees finally arrived on the west coast of America, it was discovered that they were diseased and had to be destroyed. But the mayor of Tokyo was not deterred, and not only did he send a second batch, but this time he sent over 3,000 trees on Valentine's Day of 1912. By March, the first lady and the wife of the Japanese ambassador

planted the first two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin, right near where Eliza Skidmore had envisioned them. Since then, Washington, D.C. has burst into luscious cherry blossoms every spring, just like Tokyo. And although the relationship between the two countries has gone from friends to foes,

to friends again. Those two original trees are still standing. As you close your eyes and allow yourself to go deeper and deeper, you feel so moved by the cherry trees, so lucky to catch their blooming. The cherry trees bloom all at once, and yet it is fleeting. They show us unity and uniqueness, strength and softness.

longevity, and impermanence. Everything changes. Everything changes. Everything comes to pass. It's getting darker now, and most of the other blossom watchers have gone home. You get up from below your tree and start walking along the gravel pathway. Lights have been placed at the base of the trees, and they are illuminated from below. The pinks

and white, shining in a whole new, dramatic way. And as the evening breeze picks up, thousands of petals are released from the branches and float down onto the grass. It feels like a soft blizzard of pink snow taking you deeper and even deeper. And now there's a beautiful blanket of pink petals on the grass.

You lie down on the petals and look up at the night sky through the branches. So many petals floating on the breeze, floating down onto you, floating onto the river, into windows, onto foreheads. Everyone enjoying the blooming. Everyone blooming. And as you go deeper and deeper, your inner being

is expanding, blooming into the park, into the night, as you drift and float and dream.