Falling Asleep Under the Cherry Blossom — A Deep Sleep Meditation for Anxiety, Stress and Depression

The fifth episode in the Falling Asleep By series. 🌸 🌸 🌸

It is golden hour in an ancient cherry blossom orchard. Above you, a whole canopy of soft pink blossom, heavy and generous, petals falling constantly and gently like the warmest, softest snow you have ever known.

You are lying on a cashmere blanket beneath the oldest tree. The air is warm and sweet. Somewhere in the distance, the deep resonance of an ancient gong moves through the air, through the ground, through you.

And the petals fall. And fall. And fall. 🌸 🌸 🌸

Until one single perfect petal drifts down through the golden light and comes to rest, impossibly softly, on the space between your eyebrows.

And sleep arrives...

Please let me know if you enjoyed this session: sylvia@sylviaingle.com

And if today's meditation has stirred something in you, a curiosity, a longing, a quiet sense that you are ready for more, I would love to support you further.

Visit www.sylviaingle.co.uk to find out how we can work together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Close your eyes. That's right. Take one slow breath in and let it go. Take another deep slow breath in and let it go. We can begin. You are in an orchard, an ancient cherry blossom orchard, where the trees have been standing for longer than anyone can remember. The trunks wide and strong and beautiful, the branches reaching towards each other across the sky until they meet in a canopy of the most extraordinary soft baby pink above you. It's golden hour. The sun is low, warm, its light moving through the blossom above you, turning every petal to something luminous, something between pink and gold, something that seems to be glowing from within. You are comfortably lying on a Kashmir soft blanket beneath you. You are under the oldest tree. The blanket is the softest thing imaginable. It's warm from the sun. Its texture is so fine and gentle against your skin that it feels like fabric, and something the air itself might be made out of on this perfect day. The grass beneath you is soft and cool. The tree above you is ancient and steady and completely still, and the petals are falling gently without hurry, like the softest, warmest snow you have ever known, drifting down through the golden light in the hundreds, in a thousands, a whole canopy releasing itself petal by petal into the warm evening air just for you, landing on your blanket, on your hands, in your hair, all around you on the soft grass, a carpet of the palest pink, still arriving, still falling, still finding you here beneath the oldest pink cherry blossom tree, and then sound not close, not sudden, simply arriving from somewhere deep in the orchard, ancient, unhurried, the resonance of gong. You feel it before you hear it, a vibration moving through the ground beneath you, through the roots of the old tree above, through the warm air, through the Kashmir blanket into your body, deep and round and complete, a sound that seems to be coming from everywhere at once and settling into everything it touches. It fades slowly, so slowly, the resonance continuing long after the sound itself has gone, rippling outward towards the orchard like something dropped into still water, and then silence again, but a different silence now, more settled, as though the gong has gathered everything scattered and brought it gently, quietly together. Your body feels different after it, heavier, more settled, as if something that was held has simply been eased, breathe into that ease, and another breathe out. The petals continue to fall around you, soft pink in the evening light, endlessly gently falling, falling, falling. Look up through your closed eyes at the canopy above you. Even though your lids are closed, you can sense it. That extraordinary soft being above, backlit by the golden hour sun glowing with light that seems almost impossible, the branches of the old tree reaching towards each other, heavy with blossom, moving very slightly in the faintest of warm breezes, and the petals releasing one here, three there, a whole small shower from a bunch that has given everything has got, it's now beautifully letting go. The air is warm and carries the faintest fragrance. Cherry blossom has the most delicate scent imaginable, barely there, like something half remembered from a long time ago, like the memory of sweetness rather than sweetness itself. It comes and goes with a breeze, present and then gone and then present again, never demanding, always gentle. Birds around you, soft, beginning to quieten as the evening deepens, the world of the orchard settling into its evening quiet. The gong sounds again. Distant, ancient, its resonance moving through you like a slow warm wave, covering everything, settling everything, returning everything to its rightful place. You breathe slow, your body warm and easy on your Kashmir blanket. The petals are falling, falling, falling all around you and onto you. So light you barely feel them landing, each one a tiny, perfect, weightless gift. Notice the petals as they find you, one on your hand, feel it there, lighter than anything, a single petal resting on the back of your hand, warm from its journey through the golden air. So soft, impossibly light, the most delicate thing. One on your blanket beside you, its colour deepening slightly as it settles from pale pink to faintest blush. One in your hair, they come with without urgency, without pattern, simply falling the way things fall when there is no hurry and no destination, simply the warm air and the gentle pull of the earth below. Your hands are resting open at your sides, palms upward, warm and still. A petal finds your palm, and another. Their combined weight barely a whisper against your skin. The gong sounds one more time, deeper this time, or perhaps you're simply more open to it now, its resonance smoothing through your chest, your belly, your hands, so every part of you that has been holding anything at all, and as it fades, as that deep ancient sound ripples slowly and away, you feel yourself settling even deeper into this Kashmir beneath you, even deeper into the warm ground below, even deeper into this golden blossom filled evening that holds you so gently and asks so little of you in return, simply to be here, simply to receive, simply to rest. The orchard is very quiet now, the bird song's gone, the breeze settled, even the petals seem to be falling more slowly as though the whole orchard is holding its breath, the golden light is deepening, softening towards something warmer, something that's umber now. The last gift of the day before the sky begins its slow shift towards evening blue, you are completely still, your breath barely moving, your body warm and heavy, and perfectly held by the Kashmir beneath you, and the soft ground below, and something above you, high in the canopy of the oldest tree, a single petal releases, you don't see it, your eyes are closed, but somewhere in the way that we sometimes sense things without seeing them, you are aware of it, that beautiful soft pink, perfect petal drifting down through the golden light, through the warm, sweet blossom scented air, toning very softly as it falls, taking its time as though it knows exactly where it's going, as though it has been waiting for this moment for you to be still, still enough, calm enough, opens enough, it drifts lower and lower through the last of the golden light and lands on that sacred space between your eyebrows so softly, so perfectly the weight of nothing at all, and yet you feel it completely that single perfect warm pink petal resting there between your eyebrows, and in that moment something in you that has been waiting to simply let go your breath slow, your body warm, the orchid quiet and golden and full of falling petals, and sleep already here, already holding you as gently as the petal, as soft as the blossom, as completely as this beautiful ancient orchard has been awaiting here for you all along, falling asleep.