Hypnotic Bedtime Story - The Secret Garden
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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. This episode of Sleep Magic is brought to you by Air Doctor Pro. On this show, we talk a lot about breathing, but did you know that we take about 20,000 breaths a day? That's a lot of breathing.

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Lock this special offer by going to A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-P-R-O dot com and use promo code SLEEPMAGIC. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible. So, tonight, The Secret Garden. I've gotten a handful of requests for this story, so I'm happy to be reading from The Secret Garden tonight.

It was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who had a difficult childhood in England, moved with her family to Tennessee where things didn't work out financially. So she started writing and got her first story published at the age of 18. By 20, she was earning enough for her family to move into a bigger house. Burnett was very industrious and successful with both her books and theatrical adaptations of them.

She was married and divorced twice, which was radical at the time, and The Secret Garden was published in 1911, when she was 62 years old. So tonight, we celebrate Frances Hodgson Burnett with this adapted excerpt of her lovely work, The Secret Garden. As always, we'll start with hypnosis, and don't worry about tracking the story per se.

Just follow my voice and let Burnett's words take you into your secret garden of sleep. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position and let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And just let yourself come back to your body and bring your awareness to your breathing for a moment. By bringing your awareness to the breath, you bring your awareness back to your body.

You pull it in from wherever it's been wandering all day. And it feels nice to come home to your body. It feels nice to come home to your breath. Good. So let's bring the awareness now up into your eyelids. And imagine that your eyelids are so sleepy and heavy and relaxed. Like you're just one of those babies that can't keep their eyes open.

And as you accept this heaviness into your eyelids, I'd like you to accept the suggestion that your eyelids are in fact so relaxed, they will not open. And of course, this is just an imaginary suggestion, something that isn't true, but we're going to pretend that it is. So 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. Good. Now you can stop testing. Good.

And this delicious heaviness you have in your eyelids and around your eyes is the same quality of relaxation you will soon have throughout your entire body. In fact, why don't you just invite it from your eyes through your whole body as we take a few deep breaths. As you exhale, I'd like you to imagine that relaxation around your eyes moving down like a waterfall.

the way down through your body. So as you take a nice breath and as you exhale imagine it moving all the way down into your toes. Great. Let's do it again. Nice deep breath and that relaxation is moving down like a waterfall through your body all the way down to your toes. One more time. Imagine that relaxation moving down, down, down. Good. As you take yourself deeper and deeper

If you've been listening to Sleep Magic for a while, you're getting really good at relaxation. Relaxation is a practice like anything else, like walking or learning a language or any other habit that you've created in your life consciously or unconsciously. And as you practice relaxation, you're getting better and better and better at taking yourself deeper and deeper.

And now that you're relaxing on a regular basis, you're seeing so many wonderful things begin to happen. Some of them are tiny and subtle and difficult to put into words. And others are remarkable, like, wow, I reacted really differently in this situation. I found myself relaxing at my desk and it feels good to relax. Everything works better.

when we're relaxed. So as you feel your head getting heavy on the pillow and your mind is slowing down, as your shoulders become nice and heavy, your arms sinking into the bed or whatever they're touching, your arms getting nice and heavy, and all of the sounds going on around you are taking you deeper and deeper. Because as you relax, you simply open to the sounds, no longer resisting them.

They pass through you as vibrations and you decide that they're taking you deeper and deeper. And so they do. The only sound you're paying any attention to is the sound of my voice. And as I read tonight, you'll simply attach to the sound of my voice. But soon the words will sort of lose their meaning and just become sounds. And that feels great. Like you're listening to waves at the beach.

Taking you deeper and deeper as your torso is becoming heavy on the bed. The muscles of your back softening and letting go. The muscles of your belly releasing and relaxing for perhaps the first time today as the relaxation moves down into your legs. And your legs are feeling nice and heavy on the bed. Bring your awareness into your feet and just allow your feet to let go.

They're on vacation as the soles of your feet feel warm and open and any tension you may have built up during the day is moving at the soles of your feet. Mary went to her walk outside the long ivy covered wall over which she could see the treetops and the second time she walked up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her. She heard a chirp

and a twitter. And when she looked at the bare flower bed at her left side, there he was, hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth. The little robin so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little. She chirped and talked and coaxed, and he hopped and flirted his tail and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like satin,

and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and like a human person a Robin could be. Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer to him and bend down and talk and try to make something like Robin sounds. Oh,

To think he should actually let her come as near to him as that. He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person, only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe. The flower bed was not quite there.

It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest. But there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed. And as the robin hopped about under them, she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass. And when the robin flew up into a nearby tree, she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however. It was an old key, which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face as it hung from her finger. Perhaps it has been buried for ten years, she said in a whisper. Perhaps it is the key to the garden. She looked at the key for quite a long time. She turned it over and over and thought about it. As I've said before, she was not a child who had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things.

All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls and what had happened to those old rose trees. It was because it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years.

Besides that, if she liked it, she could go into it every day and shut the door behind her. And she could make up some play of her own and play it quite alone because nobody would ever know where she was but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the earth. The thought of that pleased her very much. Living, as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms,

and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There's no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. She put the key in her pocket

and walked up and down her walk. No one but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and look at the wall, or rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked, she could see nothing but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much disappointed.

Something of her contrariness came back to her as she paced the walk and looked over it at the treetops inside. "It seems so silly," she said to herself, "to be near it and not be able to get in." She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house and she made up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went out so that if she ever found the hidden door, she would be ready. Mrs. Medlock had allowed Mary to sleep all night at the cottage

but she was back exploring in the morning with cheeks redder than ever and in the best of spirits. Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard, resting every few minutes. At length she went to her own special walk and made up her mind to try if she could skip the whole length of it. It was a good long skip, and she began slowly,

But before she had gone halfway down the path, she was so hot and breathless that she was obliged to stop. She did not mind much because she had already counted up to 30. She stopped with a little laugh of pleasure. And there, lo and behold, was the robin swaying on a long branch of ivy. He had followed her and he greeted her with a chirp.

As Mary had skipped toward him, she felt something heavy in her pocket strike against her at each jump. And when she saw the robin, she laughed again. You showed me where the key was yesterday, she said. You ought to show me the door today, but I don't believe you know. The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy onto the top of the wall, and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off.

Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off, and they are nearly always doing it. Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about magic in her Aya's stories, and she always said that what happened almost at that moment was magic. One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a stronger one than the rest. It was strong enough to wave the branches of the trees

and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had stepped close to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy trails, and more suddenly still, she jumped toward it and caught it in her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it. A round knob.

which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the knob of a door. She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron. Mary's heart began to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement.

The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one side as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a hole in? It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put her hand in her pocket drew out the key

and found it fitted in the keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it, but it did turn. And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if anyone was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed. And she took another long breath because she could not help it.

and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly, slowly. Then she slipped through it and shut it behind her and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement and wonder and delight. She was standing inside the secret garden. It was the sweetest

most mysterious looking place anyone could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses. In India, all the ground was covered with a grass of a wintry brown

and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rose bushes if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over that.

and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive.

But their thin, gray or brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over everything. Walls and trees and even brown grass where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious.

Mary had thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left all by themselves so long. And indeed, it was different from any other place she had ever seen in her life. How still it is, she whispered. How still. Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin who had flown to his treetop

was still as all the rest. He did not even his way. He sat without stirring and looked at Mary. No wonder it is still, she whispered again. I am the first person who has spoken here in ten years. She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid of awakening someone. She was glad that there was grass under her feet,

and that her steps made no sound. She walked under one of the fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays and tendrils which formed them. She was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy anytime and she felt as if she had found a world all her own.

The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The secret garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in, no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world.

in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years. She was beginning to like to be out of doors. She no longer hated the wind, but enjoyed it.

She could run faster and longer, and she could skip up to a hundred. The bulbs in the secret garden must have been much astonished. Such nice, clear places were made round them that they had all the breathing space they wanted. And really, if Mary had known it, they began to cheer up.

under the dark earth and work tremendously. The sun could get at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it could reach them once. So they began to feel very much