Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
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. Thanks everybody for being here. It's great to be back in the booth. I've heard from a bunch of people lately, a trauma nurse who uses Sleep Magic to help her dial down after work.
Someone named Think Matchsticks. I don't know what that's about, but thanks for writing. I heard from an 11-year-old who's sleeping better and lots of others who never seem to hear the end of any episode. Also, someone for whom sleep magic has eased 53 years of insomnia. Wow.
Thank you for letting us know. By sharing your experiences, other people have more trust in hypnosis. So I really appreciate that. Thanks to everyone also who's just become a subscriber, helping us move toward our 5% subscription rate. Thank you. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.
Hey everyone, it's me, Jessica. I'm here to extend a warm welcome to any new listeners we might have here. This is where you can come after a long day, get a little selfish and relax. I'm also excited to let you know that we're offering a special one-month free trial of Sleep Magic Premium to celebrate our new listeners and thank those of you who've been with us for a while.
If you're new here, Sleep Magic Premium is our exclusive feed where you can experience ad-free listening, two bonus episodes per month, and the extended version of our monthly mailbag episode where I answer your questions. Or at least I try to. Plus, you'll have access to our huge vault of premium episodes that I've created over the last two and a half years.
They include solution-focused pieces like addressing loneliness, making peace with change. There's a full-length body scan in there, an eight-hour episode, and the complete collection of my Get Sleepy series. And it doesn't take much. For about the price of one mochaccino or a single gallon of gas, depending on where you live, or just a decent sandwich,
you can upgrade your sleep magic experience. Imagine falling asleep without interruptions and 50% more monthly content than what's available on the regular feed. I hope you'll take advantage of this free trial and hopefully you'll realize that investing in sleep magic premium is really investing in yourself, your sleep, your health, your peace of mind.
I mean, come on. Can a mochaccino do all that? Start your subscription today for a free four-week trial, and you can cancel anytime if you're not happy with it. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts, you can get this offer in just two taps, or if you're listening on other podcast players, go to the Supercast link in the show notes. This offer ends August 19th.
I'll see you over there at Sleep Magic Premium. Tonight, get sleepy in Southern India. So if you follow me at all on social media, you know I've just spent some time in India. And if it sounds like I've been traveling more than, well, anyone ever, you're right. It has been a very strange spring full of surprises and new experiences, including this trip. You see, it wasn't a planned trip.
I have a friend who lives abroad and she's been dealing with some serious health issues for the last couple of years. And in her country, the government subsidizes in-home health care for people in her situation. Well, the in-home health aid she got, who has lived with her for over a year now, is from India. A lovely, lovely woman named Jisha. Well, Jisha and my friend got along famously.
And my friend's health has stabilized thanks to Jisha's care. And they decided to go back to India for several weeks and stay with Jisha's family. And somewhere along the line, I got an invitation to join this party. And I had the incredible opportunity to go to India for two weeks, specifically to the southwestern state of Kerala, rich with elephants and coconuts and banana trees.
And I lived with Jisha and her family and my friend. I couldn't say no to this offer. I'm always more interested in experiencing a new place through the eyes and customs of those who already live there, as opposed to sort of attacking it from the top down as a tourist. I'm not great at that. And if for no other reason than it's simply easier...
I mean, I'd never been to any part of India before, so I had no idea how to handle the daily customs or how to order a meal that wasn't too spicy. I don't speak the local language, Malayalam. So I got this amazing opportunity to be surrounded by very loving people who held my hand as they introduced me to this paradise. And we'll be going there tonight. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position, and let's begin.
Allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And just bring your awareness to your breathing. Just allowing your awareness to settle for a moment. Just inviting your awareness to slow down for a bit. Hanging out on your breath, sort of surfing your breath. And as your awareness is settling on your breath, everything is slowing down good.
Now bring your awareness up into your eyelids and imagine that the muscles of your eyelids are feeling heavy, loose and limp and relaxed, nice and heavy. Good. Now I'd like you to accept the suggestion that your eyelids are so relaxed that they simply will not open.
And now I'd like you to test your eyes to make sure they won't open by wiggling your eyebrows. Now, I know you could open your eyes if you wanted to, but you're not going to open your eyes because we're just pretending that they won't open. So wiggle your eyebrows. Good. While your eyes remain closed. Perfect. You can stop wiggling now. Now this relaxation that you have around your eyes is the same.
quality of relaxation you will soon have throughout your entire body. As you imagine this relaxation moving back into your head, as you imagine a warm of relaxation taking over every single cell of your brain, causing your head to sink further into the pillow, your head feeling heavy, heavy. And as your head sinks back into the pillow,
Any mental tension that may have built up during the day is disappearing, evaporating. Good. The muscles of your face softening and relaxing as you take yourself deeper and deeper. And as your mind is relaxing, your whole body is relaxing. And as your body is relaxing, it's relaxing. Imagine you are in India.
in the state of Carolina. It's April, the warmest time of the year, and the air is thick and humid. You're standing in a tropical forest, and as you walk between the trees, you feel the crackle of twigs and dried leaves under your feet. The monsoons will begin in the next few weeks, soaking the land night and day.
making everything even more lush and green. But for now, the moisture seems hell in the atmosphere. As the relaxation moves down into your neck and your shoulder, your shoulder is becoming soft and relaxed. As the relaxation moves down, your arms and your arms feel heavy. And you allow that mist of relaxation to move all the way down into your hands.
your palms and your fingers becoming heavy, heavy. The forest is alive with sound. You hear the tweets of sunbirds, the crow-like caw of the white-bellied tree bees, and the squeak of the malabar parakeet. You look up at a banana tree with its long, waxy leaves that are sometimes used as plates
in local restaurants piled with rice and curry and dal. Under the leaves you see a bunch of bananas still short and green and needing time to develop as you go deeper and deeper and any sounds going on around you and your environment are taking you deeper. Allow them to take you deeper and the sound of my voice
is also taking you deeper as you begin to drift and float and dream. And as we move through southern India together, you may drift off on your own personal journey somewhere else in your mind. And that's good. Enjoy. You step over a shallow, dry moat in the forest. Troughs have been cut into the earth
to collect the heavy rains that are coming soon. The monsoons in Kerala deliver over 10 feet of rain in just a few months, more than anywhere else in India. And these cuts in the earth become man-made rivers guiding the rain into larger waterways. As you continue through the forest, you come across a tall tree
with a trunk covered in mottled bark. You look closely at the trunk, and at about waist level, you find half a coconut shell wired to the tree and attached to a tiny wooden trough. So the coconut shell is like a cup waiting to receive fluid. And just above this contraption, you notice thin cuts in the bark,
long slices curving diagonally down the left side of the trunk. It looks as though the tree has been scarred multiple times in razor-thin downward stroke along the side of the trunk. A beautiful young woman in a simple tunic appears before you. She smiles and takes out an implement called a gouge
designed to penetrate the tree bark. She makes a tiny incision just below the previous slice, cutting away just a millimeter or two of the bark. And as she slowly slides the gouge down, you see a droplet of bright white fluid emerging from the tree along the line of the slice.
This is latex, the natural precursor to rubber. And as you watch this liquid build and slowly run along the new incision, it makes its way down to the tiny trough and into the coconut shell, set perfectly to receive it. In the next two days, this new cut in the bark will offer anywhere from one to three ounces
of latex. She will tap almost 200 trees tonight, collect the white liquid from the coconut shells, and mix it with water and citric acid to make rubber. Kerala produces more rubber than any other state in India. She nods and smiles and moves on to her next tree.
As you take yourself deeper and deeper. And that warm mist of relaxation moves down inside. Surrounding and supporting your heart. Surrounding and supporting your lungs. As it moves deeper now into your belly. And your pelvis is feeling heavy on the bed. So heavy. All the muscles of your back are feeling soft.
and relax. In this tropical forest, there's a season to collect rubber, a season to collect cashews, and certain times to pluck the bananas. But it's always a good time to harvest coconuts. You look up into the canopy of the forest and see coconut palm growing here and there between the rubber trees.
all heavy with coconuts, which sprout anew every month. In Kerala you will find coconut after coconut after coconut. In the local language of Malayalam, Kera means coconut, um means land. So Kerala is the land of the coconut. You take a nice deep breath
Inhaling the warm air and relaxing from deep inside. And as that relaxation moves down into your legs, your legs are feeling nice and heavy. Good. You step out of the forest and onto a local dirt road. As you look up beyond the trees lining the road, you see large green mountains in the distance.
Everything is green. Everything is growing. As you walk along the street you notice the houses, some very modest with a cow or a goat grazing in the yard, while others are more modern, large plaster structures with big gardens and low walls built around them. Many are painted white
although you notice a bright pink house and a purple one. When the younger people from this rural area go abroad to work, they send home money to build elegant homes in the countryside, creating a mix of new and old, local and global. India is a glorious mix of contrasts, tradition meeting modernity,
Hinduism meeting Islam. A three thousand year old caste system meeting 21st century democracy. Strong energies coming together like spices in a curry. All mixing in the heat of the day as you take yourself deeper and deeper. As you continue to walk, you see an older man
walking on the other side of the road. He is trim and fit, with sun-soaked skin and a silvering mustache. He is wearing a lungi, a beautifully patterned piece of golden-colored cotton, folded around his waist so that it falls like a long skirt. Simple, cool, and comfortable.
The Lungi appeared in southern India during the Chola dynasty between the 6th and 10th centuries and are still worn by many men today. You hear the shib-shib sound of his sandals as he walks by. He smiles and says hello. You smile back. You hear the putt-putt of a rickshaw coming up behind you.
It stops by your side and the driver asks if you need a ride. A staple mode of transportation in India, the rickshaw first arrived in Kolkata in 1880, where men pulled passengers through the streets using their leg and lung power. Over time, rickshaws were pulled by bicycles, and today they're motorized
You step into the cab of the rickshaw, a windowless shell that can hold three adults, and you settle in as the driver sits in front of you, navigating the winding roads of Kerala. As you bounce along gently, you are moving through the afternoon air, enjoying the warm breeze on your body as you go deeper and deeper
You enter the small town of Iriti and ride along its main street, enjoying its mishmash of commerce. There are big flashy stores full of saris and gold jewelry. You see many different types of restaurants and a motorcycle dealership. But between these newer enterprises are the older, smaller businesses.
tucked into the pockets of the street, an optician's office, a man selling plucked chickens, and a small storefront filled with nothing but bananas. The street is alive with vehicles, pedestrians, and the daily sounds of life, the honks of horns, the shouts of vendors, and the random barks of a dog.
You notice a spice store and ask your driver to stop. You step out of the rickshaw and into the store, cool by air conditioning. You see that on the floor lining the walls are huge sacks of spices. As you inspect them one by one, you see fingers of turmeric, rolls of cinnamon bark, whole cloves,
all infusing the air with their complex and healing scents. You pass by sacks full of cardamom pods, whole nutmegs, and vanilla beans. Spices have been traded off the coast of Kerala since 3000 BC, bringing mind-blowing riches from ancient Egypt, Greece,
and the Roman Empire, you stop at a sack of black beans. This simple spice, now found in kitchens around the world, was the first one to enchant foreigners. Considered such a luxury in the pre-modern world, it was referred to as black gold. And the desire for this exotic spice was a driver of world
In 1492, Columbus sets sail from Spain in search of pepper. As you look around the store and take yourself deeper and deeper, you notice the other local items for sale. Oils, a group of young women in brightly colored saris, gossip around the cash register. You reach into the sack.
Pick up a handful of peppercorns and let them run through your fingers. Also known as the king of spices, it was so valued that when the Pharaoh Ramses II was mummified, a peppercorn was inserted into each of his nostrils. As you roll a single peppercorn between your fingers, feeling its hardness,
and imagining its strong taste. You are pulled down into the historic spiral that is India, and it takes you deeper and deeper. You exit the spice shop and step out into the warm embrace of the humid air. Your rickshaw driver is waiting for you. As you climb into your seat, you relax, and as the rickshaw putts into motion,
You travel along the rest of Editi's main street and back into the rustic rural landscape as you bounce along happily. You begin to smell the salty air of the coast and as the breeze begins to cool the trees open up and you've arrived at the beach. You get out of the rickshaw and look out onto the Arabian Sea. It is vast.
and the setting sun causes it to shimmer with a million flecks of gold. Families of all sizes stroll along the beach, enjoying the first cool breeze of the day. A camel stands on the sand, slowly jawing its lunch, waiting to be rented for a ride. You take off your shoes and begin walking toward the water.
your toes digging into the warm dry sand. And as you get closer to the softly breaking waves, you expect a refreshing coolness when you put your feet in the water, but instead, as you feel a wave curl around your ankles, the water is like a tepid. You remember that this is the Arabian Sea, an enormous section of the Indian Ocean,
the warmest ocean on Earth. As you take yourself deeper, you walk down the warm, damp sand and come to a calm inlet. You see a houseboat moored to a small dock. It's a long vessel with breezy open decks and a roof made from thatched palm fronds. It's designed after a traditional rice barge
used for millennia to carry rice, spices, and workers from the remotest parts of Kerala all the way to the ocean. But unlike the original rice barges, this boat is designed for leisure. You walk along the small dock onto the houseboat. As the sun dips below the horizon,
The first stars begin to sparkle in the sky. The houseboat pulls away from the dock and begins its lazy moonlight journey up a river into Carolyn. You stand on the deck and feel the gentle rocking of the boat as it moves east. As you glide along the river, you see coconut on both banks of the river.
Lush, healthy coconut palms reaching up in graceful curves. Their fronds glistening in the moonlight. So many palm trees. They seem to go on forever. You make your way to the bedroom on the houseboat. It has a beautiful queen-size bed and a window out to the water. The moon is rising and is reflected on the river.
You lie down, feeling warm and relaxed, and as you close your eyes, you move deeper into Kerala, relaxing into India as you drift and float and dream.