So years ago, I read this self-help book. It was about weight loss and making changes, and I really don't remember anything about what it said, except for one sentence. It was a sentence that made me put down the book and really think, and I still remember that line years later, that our relationship with our bodies is the longest relationship we will ever have in our lives. And it's true, your relationship with your own body will last longer than the one you have with your parents, or your friends, or your partner, and it impacts the way you move through life, your confidence, your emotional state, and yet we speak to our own bodies in a way we would never speak to anyone we loved. We look at it in the mirror, and sometimes we feel contempt. We compare it to other bodies. We decide it doesn't deserve kindness until it performs better, until it looks different, until it finally becomes the thing we've been trying to make it, and when it doesn't, we punish it, or we give up on it, and all of this, all of this is completely counterproductive. Shame never drives lasting change. When you flood your body with contempt and frustration, you flood it with cortisol, a stress hormone that, among other things, promotes fat storage and drives cravings for exactly the foods you're trying to avoid. So if the way you've been thinking about your body has been part of the problem, then changing that is part of the solution, and that's what tonight is for. This is not an episode about willpower. It's not a list of better choices you already know you should be making. Tonight, we're going to try something that might just make all of that easier. We're going to try to shift your relationship with your own body, and then we're going to find sleep, but first, make sure that you're somewhere safe and comfortable for sleep. This episode uses hypnotherapy techniques designed to help you drift off, so please be in bed or another safe resting place before we continue, and if you've been listening and it's been helping, please hit the follow button if you haven't already. Following is how this little show grows and how other sleepless people find their way here. And if you are already a follower, thank you. You are what keeps this little show going. Now, let's get you settled. Make sure you're comfortable. Take a moment to adjust whatever needs adjusting. Maybe your pillow needs moving, or your blankets need pulling up, or there's something pressing into your shoulder that needs shifting. This is your time. Take as long as you need, and let your body settle into the bed. Really settle. Not just lie down, but let your full weight sink into the mattress. Notice where your body makes contact with the surface beneath you. Your head against the pillow, your shoulders, your back, your hips. Notice how you're breathing, how your breath is moving in and out. Notice how it feels as the air moves into your lungs. And then together, let's make a small adjustment. Nothing complicated. Let's make your exhale a little longer than your inhale. That's all. We're going to breathe in for four counts, and out for six. Let's do that together. Breathe in, two, three, four, and then out, two, three, four, five. Six. Again. In, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four, five, six. And one more time. Breathe in, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four, five, six. A longer exhale, it's doing something real. It's sending a direct signal to your nervous system that you are safe. Your heart rate is already beginning to slow. Your blood pressure is gently dropping. So keep breathing this way. You don't need to count anymore. But just keep that nice, slow rhythm. And as you lie here, I'd like you to notice your forehead. Is there a crease there? Let it smooth out. And let your eyebrows soften. The tiny muscles around your eyes, let them rest. And feel your eyelids growing heavier. The way they get when sleep is so close. Let that relaxation move down into your neck. All those muscles that hold your head up all day, that tighten when you're stressed or anxious or staring at a screen, they can rest now. Your shoulders, feel them drop away from your ears, further than you think they can go. Just let gravity take them. Feel the difference between where they were and where they are now. And your arms, focus on your arms. Feel them getting heavier. Your upper arms, your elbows, your forearms, so heavy. All of it sinking into the mattress. Your hands are uncurled. Fingers loose and slightly apart. Palms soft. Feel your hips becoming so heavy. How your lower back is supported by the mattress beneath you. And then imagine your legs becoming so much heavier. The long muscles of your thighs softening and sinking. Your knees feel loose. Your calves feel heavy. All the way down to your ankles, your feet, your toes. Let them fall gently outward and be still. Your whole body is resting now. From the top of your head to the soles of your feet, everything completely soft, completely here. Your breathing is slow and even. Your heartbeat is calm and steady. Now let your mind start to drift. You don't need to direct it or control it. Just let it drift. The way it does in those last few minutes before sleep, when thoughts start to loosen and images begin to form on their own. Now let my voice guide you somewhere quiet. Somewhere real and peaceful. A place where everything moves at its own pace. All you have to do is listen. Just listen and follow the sound of my voice. She retired five years ago, or maybe it was four. The kids were grown and gone. The house in the city suddenly too big and too quiet. And she found herself one evening looking at a picture online of a small farmhouse for sale, just a few acres attached. And something in her simply said, yes, that. Everyone thought it was a crazy idea. She'd never kept so much as a houseplant alive before. But she always believed that the capacity to care for something wasn't a talent you were born with or without. It was something you could grow into. Now she pushes open the back door and the dogs get there before her, two of them, shouldering past her legs and spilling out into the yard ahead of her, urgent and joyful. As if the yard might have changed since the morning. She's already changed into her pajamas. But she's pulled an old coat over them for a bit of warmth. She steps out one last time before bed, just to check on everything. The sky is that color it is in March, just after the sun has dropped below the tree line, a thin band of orange along the horizon, fading up into a pale gray-blue that deepens as you look higher. The dogs are already doing their rounds, noses to the ground. She watches them. It's quiet, that quiet that settles over small farms at the end of the day. She notices the gate to the kitchen garden is sitting open again. She crosses the yard and closes it, the latch cold under her fingers, a little stiff. She's been meaning to fix that. She stands at the garden fence, looking in. The beds are still mostly bare, just the dark earth and that last stubborn patch of snow in the far corner that the sun never quite reaches. Same corner, every year, last to let go. But something is different from even a week ago. Something in the soil, the way it looks, less closed. She doesn't curse the snow for still being there. She doesn't stand at this fence and feel impatient with the bare beds or ashamed of them or disappointed that they aren't producing. She knows that things happen in their own order, at their own pace, and that the farmer's job is not to demand or to punish or to withhold care until results appear. The farmer's job is simply to give what's needed, to trust whatever's already happening beneath the surface, even when there's nothing to see yet. She wonders sometimes why it took her so long to extend that same patience to herself. She turns toward the beehives. They sit along the south-facing fence, four of them, painted that soft, pale blue she chose because she read somewhere that bees can see it easily and also because she liked the color. They're still now, no activity at the entrance boards, no coming and going, but she knows what's happening inside, the whole colony drawing together, clustering for warmth, the temperature in there regulated, everything exactly as it should be. Last summer she harvested honey for the first time, not much, four jars, amber and thick, tasting of everything that had bloomed on her few acres and in the hedgerows beyond. She gave two jars away and kept two for herself. One is still in the cupboard. She finds herself thinking about the flowers that made it, all that light and warmth and color, distilled into something you could hold in your hands. She looks at the hives in the near dark and feels something she doesn't always have a word for, gratitude, maybe. She thinks about what this garden will look like in summer. She's planned it carefully over the winter, leaning over seed catalogs at the kitchen table, sunflowers along the back fence, tall as a person by August, zinnias in every color she could find, coral in yellow and deep burgundy and that particular hot pink that looks like it belongs somewhere tropical, sweet peas climbing the trellis by the barn door, filling the whole yard with their smell on warm nights. She can see all of it, even now, even in the cold and the near dark. She's learned to do that, to look at something bare and cold and not yet ready and see underneath it all that it is capable of. She turns toward the henhouse. The chickens have already put themselves to bed, the way they always do. She opens the small door and looks in, all seven of them along the roosting bar. The big Rhode Island red at the end always takes the highest spot. The two gray ones that arrive together and are inseparable, pressed against each other now. The small one near the middle, the nervous one, the one that took the longest to trust her but who now eats from her hand. She watched that happen gradually over months. She didn't rush it. She didn't punish the little bird for her fear and decide she was not worth the effort. She just showed up every day with patience and eventually that little bird decided she could be trusted. She thinks about that sometimes. How trust is built. How the only way to earn it is simply to keep showing up with kindness and without judgment and to wait. She latches the door and stands for a moment in the dark, listening. Just the soft sound of seven small creatures breathing in the straw. The dogs have found her again. One of them leans against her leg with his whole body. She reaches down and puts her hand on his warm head without thinking about it. Looks out over her few acres in the last of the light. And everything she has made and everything she tends, everything that tends to her in return. She would never look at this farm the way she used to look at herself. She would never stand at this fence and catalog its failures or feel contempt for it because it didn't look the way she imagined it should or decide it doesn't deserve what it needs until it performs better. This farm, imperfect, unfinished, cold and bare in places and quietly magnificent in others, deserves every good thing she can give it. And she knows, deep in her bones, that when she gives it what it needs, it gives back in ways that still surprise her. The paddock gate is just ahead and she unlatches it and steps through into the small field where Bramble spends her days. Bramble is a small dark bay with a white star on her forehead and feathering on her feet that get absolutely caked in mud every spring. She is not an elegant horse. She is exactly the kind of horse that suits this kind of farm. The farmer reaches up and puts her hand flat against Bramble's nose. Bramble breathes out and rests her head against the woman's shoulder. She stands there in the dark for a little while, her hand on Bramble's neck, feeling the warmth of her, the solid realness of her, the steady rise and fall of her breathing. Then she gives the horse a final pat and latches the stable door. She crosses the yard slowly, taking her time, looking up at the stars. Then she steps up onto the back porch and opens the door and slips off her boots. She looks around her kitchen for a moment, the familiar comfortable disorder of it, the seed catalogs still spread across the table, the evidence of a life being lived fully. And she feels nothing but warmth toward all of it. And as you rest here in this dark night, consider the farmer and the love she feels for all of it. The bare beds, the leaning gay, the horse, who is sturdy rather than beautiful. None of its imperfections make her love the place any less. None of it makes her withhold what it needs. She doesn't stand at the fence and decide the farm doesn't deserve her care until it looks the way she imagined it would. She just shows up every day with patience and kindness. And your body is like that farm. Why do we sometimes speak about our bodies the way we do? We catalog what's wrong with them. We compare them to other bodies. We withhold kindness until they perform better. And we disconnect from what they're telling us. That they're hungry. That they're tired. That they need something. And then we wonder why change is so hard. Change doesn't come from shame. Shame keeps you stuck in exactly the place you're trying to leave. Because shame floods your body with the same stress chemicals that make it hold on. Negative feelings for your body does not motivate change. It prevents it. You have the capacity to make beautiful changes. You've always had it. But real lasting change needs to come from a place of love and patience and gratitude. So let your beautiful body be heavy now. Let it sink into the surface beneath you. The way the frost is sinking back into the earth tonight. Slowly and without effort. You are not a before picture waiting to become an after. You are a farm in early spring. Full of things that are already happening beneath the surface that you cannot yet see. The work is already underway. It has always been underway. All it needs is what every living thing needs. To be tended. To be trusted. To be given what it needs without shame and without conditions. You can do that. Let your eyes be still beneath your closed lids. Let your jaw be soft. Let your shoulders drop the last of what they've been holding. The farm is quiet outside. The bees are clustered and warm. The hens are roosting. Bramble is sleeping in her stable. Her great warm way settled into the straw. Breathing slowly in the dark. The garden is resting under the cold stars. Already preparing beneath the surface for everything the new season will bring. Let your body do what it knows how to do. It will surprise you with what it's capable of when you finally stop fighting it and start tending it instead. You're safe here. You're already, without knowing it, beginning to change. You're safe here. I'm Suzanne, and this is your ticket to Snoozeville. Sleep now. Sleep deeply. Sleep well.