Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Hi there, 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 and subscribing. Your support makes this show possible. And if you're not in a position to subscribe, thanks for supporting the show in other ways, like telling your friends or posting about it on social media.
We've gotten some really nice reviews lately from people with their own little sort of online names, like one from Hehehehe and PageWiz and TinkBaby101, Tauka1, Kristen Freya, LALadyBling, Humbled Female Citizen, and JoeRoy84. Those are just some of the cool names you guys are thinking up.
If I haven't mentioned you, know that I see all the reviews. I totally appreciate them and take the feedback from them. So thank you. People have been mentioning stuff like sleep magic is helping them during the day, that it makes them feel comfortable and happy before going to sleep. And just hearing my voice is causing their bodies to relax. And I just want to say that's all happening because you are ready to relax and feel better.
be more comfortable. I'm just the catalyst, but the change is happening in you as you let go of resistance to feeling good. And we're all meant to feel good. So thank you so much again for practicing with me. Tonight, getting sleepy in an art gallery with Claude Monet. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.
I live in Los Angeles, and at least once every year, I try to make it to the Getty Center, a museum perched high in the Santa Monica Mountains. Established with the fortune left by John Paul Getty, it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And although it contains some very good art, some of which we will be discovering tonight, going to the Getty is a treat in and of itself.
You take a monorail up a mountain, and when you reach the center itself, you see that it's made of just three beautiful and simple materials, glass, metal, and travertine limestone from Italy. And not only is the Getty Center full of art, it has a view that spans from the ocean to downtown LA, a huge expanse.
And being up there, looking out over the city, is just good for my soul. And when I arrive, I go straight to one particular room, room 204 in the West Pavilion, filled with 19th century European paintings. And there I look at The Haystacks by Claude Monet. And we will go to sleep tonight studying that painting. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position.
And let's begin. So, as always, just allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And bring your awareness for a moment to your breath. You don't have to do anything fancy with your breath. Just notice it. Just bringing your awareness back to your body. Just bringing your awareness back home to your breath. It's like you're winding the energy back.
to your own personal energy system. Good. And now I'd like you to bring your awareness up into your eyelids. And imagine that the little muscles of your eyelids are feeling loose and limp and relaxed. And just allow your eyelids to get nice and heavy. Delicious heaviness in your eyelids. And as your eyelids get heavier and sleepier and more comfortable, I'd like you to imagine
that your eyelids are so relaxed they simply will not open. And now I'd like you to test your eyelids to make sure they won't open by wiggling your eyebrows. Now of course you could open your eyelids if you want to, but we're pretending that we can't. Just give them a nice tug. Good. Great. Now this relaxation that you have around your eyes is the same quality of relaxation you will soon have throughout your entire body. Some of you may already
Be deeply, deeply relaxed. So let's just imagine this relaxation around your eyes moving through your brain and now spilling down into your torso, down your arms, and down your legs. Let's just imagine again that wonderful, warm, relaxing feeling spilling down
down through your neck, your shoulders, down into your arms, down deep into your torso and belly, and now down into your legs. Just receive this relaxation. Just open to this relaxation. Good. Now I'm going to be reading this story of going to the Getty Center tonight. And the sound of my voice will take you deeper
and deeper into relaxation. So just allow your mind to notice the sound of my voice. And as your mind attaches to the sound of my voice, with every word I say, your body and mind are going deeper and deeper. And it feels so good. You are standing on a platform, waiting for a tram that will take you on a winding track
900 feet up a small mountain to the Getty Center. It's a sunny day. Even the platform for the tram is calming and soothing. The platform is made of travertine limestone, which is cream-colored and pitted with tiny holes. Sometimes you can even see tiny fossils in the stone. And each square of stone
is exactly 30 inches by 30 inches, 76 centimeters by 76 centimeters. The designer of the Getty Center, Richard Meyer, decided that this was the perfect area for a person to stand in, comfortable, to take up space, to breathe, to be. So as you stand on your personal square of ancient travertine,
mined from a quarry in Italy. You feel good, going deeper and deeper into relaxation, feeling relaxed and calm and comfortable. The electric tram arrives at the base of the mountain. It has only three small cars. You get on board and take a seat. As it begins its ascent up the side of the mountain, overlooking a highway,
You see a cross into the hills and the neighborhood of Bel Air with its manicured gardens and beautiful houses and a vineyard or two. Your eyes climb to the cloudless blue sky as you go up and up and up. And the higher you go up the mountain, the more relaxed you're becoming.
The higher the tram is taking you, the deeper you're going, your whole body becoming so relaxed. Heavy, heavy and relaxed. You finally arrive at the Getty Center. It's a collection of building on 110 acres on the top of a mountain. You are greeted by a large, wide staircase made of travertine.
It is so wide that there are several modern sculptures dotting it. You walk up the stairs, admiring the sculptures, and come to the first building. Like all the buildings here, it is made from just glass, metal, and limestone, all in creamy beige and white. The sun reflects so brilliantly off the building.
just looking at it. Lift your spirit. You pull open a big glass door and enter. The atrium is huge and lofty, a cylinder of steel and glass. Three stories high, with an array of skylight, your inner being expands. The ceiling is so high and the design so crisp.
and clear and light. You feel like you're being transported to a lighter level of existence, a lighter vibration. You walk through the main entrance building to a vast outdoor plaza made entirely of the Getty's signature travertine limestone, estimated to be somewhere between 8,000
and 80,000 years old. At the center of the plaza is a big modern fountain, an organic assembly of rock jutting out from a pool of water. It is one of the few round things at the Getty. Everything else is square, whether they're the stones underfoot or glass squares as windows,
or white aluminum squares along the buildings themselves. There are squares everywhere. Some of them are large, some of them are small, but most of them are the 30 by 30 inch size, perfectly sized for a human. A constant reminder of the scale of our lives, our place in the puzzle of existence. We are all together.
and we all belong. Around the plaza, connected by glass walkways, are the art pavilions. Each one is a large cream-colored block, and they're strung together like a necklace around the plaza. Each pavilion contains a different portion of the Getty Collection. You enter the West Pavilion and go upstairs to a large, lofty room.
It has wooden floors and a high ceiling with a skylight. The walls are painted a purplish brown, and the room has a warm feeling. You look around. Hung on the walls are works of many 19th century masters. You see the famous bright purple irises by Van Gogh, a portrait of a woman bathing by Degas, a still life.
of fruit by Cézanne and a painting by Renoir of a woman in a white dress, her hand held by a young gentleman. You feel drawn to a very simple painting. It is of two stacks of grain standing in a field, but they're big, as big as shacks with thatched roofs. The one in the foreground is large,
and just beyond it stands a smaller one. It is morning, and the sun is rising in the east, shining from the left side of the canvas, and the wheat stacks cast shadows to the right. It is winter, so there is snow on both stacks, dotted messily on the wheat, and as the sun rises, some of the snow is melting. In the background,
you see the snow-covered roofs of two buildings, a line of trees, and in the distance, a long range of hills. The painting is called "Wheat Stacks: Snow Effect Morning" by Claude Monet. In French, these stacks are known as "les meules." And to the art world, Monet's series of paintings that feature these piles of grain
is known as the haystacks. You get closer to the painting. Monet has captured the sky with his signature visible short brushstrokes, creating tiny flecks of color. The sky appears a winter white, but Monet has painted it with yellow and cream and dashes of pink
you get up even closer to the painting, and the ground is an almost chaotic array of pinks and blues and even green. But as you step away, your eyes adjust, and all those flecks become the sun rising on the snow as clear as day, using his agile combination of colors.
tiny energetic brushstrokes. Monet has created an optical illusion so vivid it seems alive. The wheat stacks themselves, close up, are nothing more than dark, crimson, blue, with flecks of white added for the snow. And yet, from a distance, they have heft and gravity. They are the work
of a proud farmer waiting over the winter to be threshed. They represent time and focus and the luck of good weather. They are real. But Monet has done more than paint these objects. With his skill, he has somehow captured the cold of the snow and the eager promise of dawn. And as you imagine,
Stepping into this scene, you can feel the icy wind whistling through the field as you go deeper and deeper. Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840. His mother was a singer and his father a businessman. He knew from a very young age that he wanted to be an artist, and his mother always supported him in his dreams.
although his father was not as enthusiastic. When Claude was five, his family moved to Normandy in the north of France, where he became enamored of the natural world. As he developed as a painter, his talent was obvious, but his techniques were conventional and reflected the contemporary styles until, in his mid-thirties,
he loosened up his brushstrokes, creating a more interpretive rendering of subject. He also left his studio and began painting fewer portraits and more outdoor scenes. Monet's style spurred the Impressionist art movement and went on to revolutionize painting. Here at the Getty, you are seeing the haystacks in winter.
in the morning. But in the late 1800s, grains like oat, barley, and wheat would be harvested and then sit in stacks on the field for months before being threshed. So Monet came back again and again. For seven months, he returned to this field, to these stacks, and painted them.
Some were in summer at sunset with a golden light warming the horizon. You can hear the cricket in the background. He painted the haystacks in the spring surrounded by a pink mist rising over the field as the dew burns off in the morning light. Perhaps the most famous image of the haystacks
was painted from a more oblique angle. Monet positioned himself at the head of a row of stacks, spreading out into the distance. It is spring, at sunset, and the intense glow of the last light is shining between the first two A-stacks. The golden yellow of the sun contrasts beautifully with the fresh
green of the grass and the pinks and purples of the haystacks. Are there bees buzzing? It is warm and full and vibrant. Monet's fellow impressionist Camille Pissarro said of the haystack collection, "These canvases breathe contentment." Over the course of seven months, Teen 90
into 1891. Monet did almost 30 paintings of various haystacks, and they were so successful they catapulted his career. The abundance and beauty of the haystack brought abundance and beauty to Monet. He was able to buy his home at Giverny, where he painted his garden for the next
20 years. More than a hundred years later, we can find paintings of the haystacks in museums in Paris, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Tokyo. Monet reminds us that we can mix color and make new things. He encourages us to experiment, to transcend logic. That pink
and purple and green can end up looking like white. He shows us that we can look at the same thing a thousand times. And if we're really looking, it is different every time. We can be in the same place again and again. And yet we experience it differently because we are always changing.
and the world is always changing and nature is fantastic. The haystacks remind us that there is a unique in summer and spring and fall. To the left of the painting is a secret door. You open it and find a comfortable bed waiting for you. It is quiet and serene in this room and as you lie down
You go deeper and deeper as you close your eyes and your body relaxes. You drift and float and dream of the haystack.
