Something woke me last night about three in the morning. Maybe it was the wind rattling the blinds. Maybe it was Max, the cat, launching himself off the bed to go do whatever it is that cats do at three in the morning.I'll probably never know. You know how it goes. Sometimes you just roll over and sink straight back down into sleep.But other times, you're awake. Awake enough to reach for your phone and check the time, which is never a good idea. Awake enough to turn over and turn back and start quietly to think.My mind loves to think. It especially likes to reach for whatever little worry I had set down before bed and it likes to pick it back up again. And almost at once, I could feel my heart beating a little faster.My body becoming a little more tense over just a thought. Maybe you know that pattern. There's a small waking and then that busy mind clicks into gear.And within seconds, your entire nervous system is on alert. So let's talk for a minute about what's really going on here. Your nervous system has two settings.One is the alert setting, the one that revs you up, gets you ready to deal with danger. And the other is the rest setting, the one that slows everything down. And sleep can only happen in that second setting.Sleep needs the rest mode. The trouble is that for a lot of us, the alert setting can get stuck in the on position. It was built for physical danger, was never really built for modern life or for 3am worries.But it can't tell the difference. So a certain thought or a worry comes along and it sounds the alarm. And there you are, wide awake, heart going, ready to fight something that's not even in the room with you.But you are not stuck with that alarm. There are real simple things you can do that reach right into that nervous system and turn it gently from alert back to rest. Tonight, I'm going to talk you through a few of them.And I'm going to do it by taking you somewhere. Somewhere you can feel your whole nervous system settle and sink all the way down into sleep. But before we start, our usual disclaimer.You can probably say it with me. This episode uses relaxation techniques and some light hypnotherapy. So please ensure that you are somewhere safe enough to listen.Ideally your own comfortable bed and not anywhere. You need to stay alert. And if this show is part of how you get to sleep, consider joining the Snoozeville Sleep Club.Most of us are paying for subscriptions that we barely think about. The big names like Netflix or Amazon. But it is a nice thing, if you can, to support that one person.That person making something on their own. Someone like me and this podcast. In return, you get the entire library, which after tonight is 204 episodes. All of it organized and waiting for you. Whatever kind of night you're having, there is a link and details in the show notes. So now it's time to get you settled.Not settled into sleep. Not yet. Just comfortable.If your light isn't off already, turn it off now. And if you're listening on your phone, take a moment to set it down somewhere safe. Somewhere stable, where it won't slide into that gap between the mattress and the headboard.Nobody wants to go fishing for their phone in the dark. And find your position, however you like, to lie. And once you're there, notice a few things.Notice how soft the mattress is underneath you. And how your pillow holds your head. Notice how quiet it is.And I hope it is quiet. Wherever you are, I hope it's dark and warm and yours. And if there's a cat or a dog somewhere in the room with you, curled up nearby, I hope they're already fast asleep.Breathing slow. Maybe twitching through some dog dream or cat dream. Chasing something that only they can see.There's something about watching an animal sleep that deeply. So completely certain that all is well. You can't help breathing easier too. You've had a long day and you have earned this. This small pocket of time that belongs to no one but you. Where there's nothing to do and nowhere to be.So let your eyes close. And from here, all you need to do is listen. Let my voice be the thing you follow down and down.Wherever it leads. You don't have to try to picture everything perfectly. You don't have to try at all.Just listen and let yourself be taken somewhere calm. I want you to imagine a submarine. Not a cold steel machine full of modern systems, but something more beautiful than that.This is the Nautilus. An imaginary, completely fictional submarine that is like stepping into the parlor of some brilliant, eccentric Victorian inventor who happened to build it beneath the sea. The walls are paneled in dark polished wood.Warm and gleaming in the light of brass lamps. There's a thick carpet. Deep red and gold.Soft beneath your feet. And everywhere you look, there's something wonderful to see. A tall brass diving apparatus in one corner.A wall of small round gauges with ivory faces and delicate needles. Pipes and valves and dials of gleaming brass. Everything handmade.Everything old and solid and beautiful. And in the very center of it all, facing a huge window of thick beveled glass, there is a chair. The captain's chair. Deep and wide and upholstered in soft worn leather. It is the most comfortable looking chair you've ever seen. The kind you sink into and never want to leave.There's a soft blanket folded over one arm and it's waiting for you. Lower yourself down into it and feel it take your weight. Your body sinking into it exactly the way your real body is held right now by your bed. The Nautilus is a fictional ship written by Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but we've appropriated it and we've made some adjustments. We've tied this Nautilus to your nervous system. When you're calm, it is calm.And when you're wound up, so is it. And that is why right now things are not calm. Because right now you're on the surface up in the weather and the Nautilus is rolling in the swell, lifting and dropping. The lamps are swaying on their hooks, restless, on alert. That's the feeling you brought with you to bed tonight because your nervous system is on alert. Out through the great window, the water is churned and black, filled with foam and choppiness and there is no horizon anywhere.Those delicate needles on the brass gauges are trembling high, running the way your own mind has been running high all night. Too fast, too much. But if there is a thought keeping you on alert tonight, some worry that your mind keeps circling, it's nothing that the night can solve.Whatever it is, it belongs to the daytime. Not to this time in the night. But the ship doesn't know that.Every system aboard is straining as though danger were breaking over the deck this second. And your body is doing exactly the same. So the ship can't dive, and you can't sleep.And there's only one way to fix it. As you quiet, the boat will quiet. So that's where we begin.If it's comfortable, I'd like you to take one hand and place it on your chest, and another one on your belly, wherever it feels natural. And let them lie there, warm and heavy, that gentle weight. Your own hands resting on you is one of the oldest comforts there is.The body reads it as safety, as being held. So let them stay there. Rising and falling.We'll start with your breathing. Take a slow breath in. Just an easy, full, deep breath.Hold it, and then let it go. Emptying all the way to the end. And feel under your hands, the way your belly rises as you breathe in, and falls slowly as you let it out.That long, slow out-breath is the most direct way there is to reach your own nervous system. You can't order your heart to slow down. But the exhale, the exhale you can control, and the body listens to it.So let's breathe in again, and then out. And as you let that breath go, imagine the boat responding as you keep breathing. That restless rolling.It eases, collapse, steady, on their hooks. Again, in, and then out. And with that out-breath, the ship settles a little more, and begins at last to start slipping beneath the surface.And the moment it goes under, everything changes. The roaring stops. That storm that you've been hearing.The wind and the crashing. It cuts away. All at once.The way sound does when your ears go underwater. A distant rush that grows fainter with every second, and in its place, comes quiet. Keep breathing.In, and out. Look at the window. A stream of silver bubbles is rising past the glass as the nautilus slips down beneath them, and up above through the water.You can still see the surface for a moment. A bright, restless silver ceiling. But you're leaving it.You're dropping quietly away from it. And the light in the cabin is changing too. Up top, the storm threw light around the room. But now, that's gone. As you sink, the daylight from the surface thins and fades. What is left is just the warm, cold glow of the brass lamps.The room goes dimmer, cozier. The deeper you go, the softer the light. The smaller and safer the world becomes. Just this warm place, and you in your chair, and the deep blue water sliding past the glass. Keep breathing. Every breath out, a little deeper.And every fathom down. The water at the window shifts. From the churning black of the surface, to a clean green, to a deeper blue.The color of the sky goes at the very end of dusk. Quieter, dimmer, down and down. Into the calm.Now that it's gliding, let the breath carry on by itself. And turn your attention to your body. Because here's the second thing you can do. Any night, find where you're holding tension and let it go. You're holding it somewhere. Even now, for a lot of people, it's in their shoulders, pulled up toward their ears. And if yours are tense, let your shoulders drop away and down. For some, it's in the jaw or the small muscles around the eyes and mouth.Let them slacken. Let your face go loose. Maybe it's in your hands or your legs or maybe your stomach, tight and clenched. The way a worried stomach gets. You can't unclench it like a fist, but you can breathe down into it. Whatever yours is, just find it and let it go.And as you do, feel the ship let go with you. Deep in her hull, a long groan of iron falls quiet. The engines stop driving so hard. The nautilus sinks, softer and deeper. There's nothing to do at all. But sit here, deep in your chair, and let yourself be in this place.Feel how snug it is. The cabin has grown dim and golden around you. Just the soft light of the brass lamps now. Throwing a warm glow across the polished wood. It's quiet, but deep, close, underwater quiet. The whole weight of the sea pressing softly all around the hull and holding it steady. Somewhere behind you, a brass gauge ticks, slow and even, like a clock in another room. The air is warm, and it smells of oiled wood and old leather. And the sea.Under your hands, the arms of the chair are smooth and worn. The fern in its pot sways, just barely, with the ship's slow, gliding descent. Everything gleams.Everything is in its place. And the great window in front of you glows, a deep blue, the color of the sea. There is nowhere in the world more comfortable than this chair, in this cabin.And nothing you need to do but sink a little further into it, and keep going down. And the nautilus sinks lower, down toward the floor of the deep, and in no hurry at all to get there. Take your time.There's all the time in the world down here. Time moves differently in the deep, slowly, gently, out through the window. The world drifts by like something half-dreamed.Long lacy fronds of some deep water plant sway past. Pale and delicate, waving slowly in a current you can't feel. Reaching and folding.Tiny fish, each no bigger than a coin, dart in and out among them. Quick little flashes of silver, here, and then gone. A larger fish drifts past the glass, unbothered, turning one round eye toward the warm light of the cabin, and then moving on into the blue.A slow curtain of even smaller things, like dust in a sunbeam, drifting up and catching the lamp light. Beautiful down here, beautiful the way dreams are beautiful. Soft at the edges, strange and lovely, asking nothing of you but that. You watch it drift past. And there's that soft blanket, folded over the arm of your chair, right where it's been waiting all this time. Reach for it now.Draw it up over yourself, over your legs, up over your chest. Feel how soft it is, how warm, settling over you with a weight, tucking you into the chair. And feel how heavy your eyes have become, how far away everything sounds, how sleep has crept up on you without you noticing, and is here now, waiting, patient.You're so safe, that's the thing you feel down here. More than anything else, safe, held, all around you, the strong iron hull of the Nautilus, and all around it, quiet water, holding the ship. The way the ship holds you, the way the chair holds you, the way your bed is holding you right now.Nothing can reach you here, nothing. You are wrapped, and warm, and safe, at the bottom of the world, in your worries. You're so far away now, think of how far, all the way up there on the surface, where the storm still turns, where the still is, miles above you.And you are all the way down here, at the very bottom of the deep, where none of it reaches. The distance between you and everything that was troubling you tonight is greater now than you can even imagine. Fathom after fathom of dark, still water, lies between you and the surface.It's all up there, far, far up there, and it can stay there. It cannot follow you down, not tonight. Down here, there is only the warm, dim cabin, the soft, cold light, the slow drift of lovely things past the glass, the deep quiet, so complete you can almost hear it, in your own body. Heavy and warm, sunk deep into the chair, deep into the bed, and the nautilus settles at last onto the soft floor of the deep. So gently, you barely feel it. It comes to a rest, and the last of the movement stills, and it lies there, quiet, where the water is warm and black and still, and there's nowhere deeper to go.You've arrived, all the way down, as deep and quiet, and as far from the surface as it's possible to be. There's nothing to do here, nothing to reach for, nothing to watch for, nothing to hold. The deep holds it all for you now. Everything you did tonight, the slow breathing, letting go, the quiet, that's yours to keep. You can come back to it any night you need to. No ship required, but not now. Now there's nothing to do at all, nowhere further to go, and no reason to surface for a long, long while. The deep holds you. The dark is soft and warm.The hull is sound around you, and the sea is still around the hull, and the whole quiet weight of the ocean is holding you gently at the bottom of the world, where nothing can reach you. Nothing is wrong, and there's nothing left but warmth and stillness and rest. Far above, the surface turns, and the storm turns with it, but that is a whole world away.Down here, there is only sleep, so rest now. Let the deep hold you and sleep.