Thank you very very much. That's great. .

What a time to be doing a sleep course when half the nation, are struggling with their sleep because of the heat. And it goes right back, doesn't it, to that first session where we talked about sleep hygiene, and I was saying that as humans we sleep much better when our body is, is, is cool and particularly our feet and I was noticing this week that there's been an advertisement on the telly for probably just jumping on this, this, this mini heat wave, but advertising the use of a Sort of gel freezer pillow that you put under your pillowcase so that you can bring some cool to your sleep proceedings, and I had meant to go on and have a look and see if there was any evidence base for that, but I haven't actually had time yet. But I see quite a few patients, quite a few people with what for 1 to 1 therapy with their with their sleep, and I've got to say that this is where the acceptance and commitment therapy approach that we're using really comes into its own because I had a young woman.

So 30, that's, that's a young woman in my books. a, a young woman, this week saying to me, do you know, Mike, That it was so hot that I began to worry about whether I would sleep and then I just stopped and recognised that I was going into that creative hopelessness, and she described how she had gone upstairs at about 6 o'clock and opened all the windows upstairs, and I said that's fine, you know, that's a really sensible wise thing to do. And she said, no, Mike, it wasn't, she said it was the way.

I opened all the windows, she said, I sort of dashed from room to room in a bit of a blind panic, opening these windows and and I stopped and I moved myself into my observing self and I sort of Remembered the work that me and her had done, and she said, I just stopped and said it's OK, it's OK, it's hot. I won't sleep as well as I normally would when the temperature is as My body is used to it being, but I'll be OK, and tomorrow I'll function just fine. And She slowed herself down and she smiled and she described how she then moved around the house, opening windows, creating a bit of calm, but it was the style within which she did it, which was so important because she wasn't buying into I must sleep or the tragedy of it if I don't get as many hours as I need to.

And you remember last week I was really encouraging you to start to work with. Relaxation, and that's, you know, on, on the whole, that's a relaxation of your physicality of your muscular tension, but we really need to be starting to think about just relaxing our attitude towards sleep. And an awful lot of this acceptance and commitment therapy approach is based on that functional analysis we did last week, and we talked about that if we're in touch with what we value and who and what is most important to us.

When we find ourselves beginning to get upset about sleep, we can just stop and recognise that we're We're, we're getting bad tempered. We're getting sort of, short. We're not paying attention to the people we love.

We're not moving closer to who it is that we want to be in a great global sense as a human being. As well as a human being who wants to sleep. And then there's that sense of the top right-hand quadrant that we looked at last week, which was, what will you be seen doing?

In the next few weeks that takes you closer to being the sleeper. That you want to be, and one of the things that we need you to be seen doing is As the evening progresses. I Holding it all lightly.

You know, dimming the television with a smile, being aware that the lights can be dimmed with a smile, opening the windows in a relaxed and smiley way. Smiling is so important, and going to bed, noticing our thoughts about, oh, I hope I get a good night tonight, and rather than telling ourselves off at that point, smiling and saying creative hopelessness. You know, top left hand quadrant.

That's where it belongs, and it only works in the short term. So a bit later on we're going to be doing a bit of a Q and A chat where we'll be asking you to use your chatbox function just so that you can help me please get an idea of what changes people are making. But when I'm asking those questions, what's so important is that if you haven't made the changes yet, that's fine.

Ideally, you will have done, but we don't get hard, we don't get angsty on this steep course. So I did have some contact with a few people, about 5 or 6 people this week who had some pretty significant issues going on in their lives, actually, and some of them I chatted to, some of them we emailed, and I would just always, you're very welcome to email me and I'm very happy to, to, to, to, you know, to phone and chat to people if there are issues that we can help with. But don't forget that you also have the The MetLife helpline information that you can see on the slide.

So Here we go. So tonight's session is very much about Mindfulness And letting go of the very thoughts that Probably keep us awake. So we're gonna do so I think this is a, this, this can be a real game changer tonight's session.

So a bit later on, we're going to have a look at a really, really very evidence-based approach to dealing with worries. And then you couple that with the leaves on a stream meditation, so we're going to be doing some meditation later. And then I'm gonna I'm going to introduce you to the big gun of this sleep course really, which is called the cognitive shuffle and.

We're also going to talk about those of you who are shift workers because I try and be responsive on this course, and I've had quite a few messages from people who work shifts and asking me, could you kind of like tailor some of the content of this of this sleep webinar to those of us who work shifts, and I'm beginning to realise that a great many of you do work shifts, and I know this from firsthand. I have two tortoises, Zeus and Calypso sexed wrongly, their names are, the male is a female, that the, the male has a girl's name and the girl tortoise has a boy's name, but anyway. And one of them decided to, swim in the pond and was probably underwater for about 9 hours.

So I ended up spending, Much of one evening right into the early hours with some veterinary staff working, I guess on a shift pattern. All night, in the emergency vets, as they put my, my tortoise into an oxygen tank and they intubated him and who knows what else they did to him, but the good news is, is that he's running around the garden again today. But I really did get a sense.

I chatted to her about this whole issue of, This whole issue of shift working and how difficult it can be to sort of be on call all night and then the next day be expected to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed or even to sleep during the day. So we'll cover that as well. So our very next step is to just ask you how you're doing and what changes have you made.

So I wonder if we look at this first one. You remember me talking about the sleep window. And the sleep window is that time that I asked you to see if you could work out when your optimum sleep window is.

And if you remember, I was saying mine is sort of around about 11 o'clock, and the sleep window is linked to your diurnal patterns and very much linked to the . The Optical nerve response which allows us to release melatonin and what I was saying to you was that we normally will get as soon as our An optic nerve detects that dusk is descending, we will start to produce melatonin, so we will get our first sort of sleep window then. Unfortunately that's probably about 8:30 at the moment, so most of us don't want to sleep then.

Because if we go to sleep then our normal wake pattern will be. You know, 4:30 in the morning we will have had enough sleep by then. So most of us go on a bit later.

The sleep window comes round. On average, Every couple of hours, so 10:30 we might get another sleep window. So and that sleep window will last for half an hour to 45 minutes as our body goes into that natural state, state of drowsiness.

You remember me talking about this. So would you mind just going to your chat boxes and how many of you are now aiming to just very gently with a smile, no tension. Just try to sleep in tune with your sleep window, and I wonder if you wouldn't mind going to the chat function, which you should be able to see on your computer screen and just kind of, you know, whether or not you are aiming to sleep in tune with your sleep function and then Megan will be able to see some of those results and we'll ask her in a few seconds, if she's got any responses.

So you know, and it doesn't matter if you're saying no, Mike, I haven't done it yet. There's no judgement. So I can see 6 people have answered.

I'm not sure how many people are there, but the more we get, the better. So are you sort of getting closer to sleeping in tune with your sleep window? And if some of you still don't know, I haven't worked out when your sleep window is, let us know that as well.

OK, Megan, what seems to be coming through? Most people are saying yes. We've had a few extra comments, someone's turned the lights off later, about around 15 minutes later to 10:30.

Generally we try to go to bed at the time of our sleep window, which is fantastic. Yes, mostly lots of yeses. I'm trying, which is the main thing, we're not doing well yet, but keep trying.

Don't worry about that. Do you remember the, the, the, the sleep window we, is, is, is, it helps, but it's not crucial, you know, it helps. So what we're doing at the moment is just trying to get it, so most people are in tune with their window.

There was just one comment about shift work, someone said shift works, so there's no chance to try it, really. That was. I'm going to address that in a later part of tonight's session because, there is actually a way we can work with that because, oh, I'll wait for the slide if that person doesn't mind.

So next question, have most people made some positive changes to their sleep hygiene? So that might mean That might mean going to bed when you want to rather than when your partner wants to. It might mean, Go to bed at the right time.

It might mean just bringing to take the lights down a bit. So how are people doing with that if they wouldn't mind just coming in on that one? Have people made some positive changes to their sleep hygiene?

We just need a yes on that one, really, or if anyone's got any questions, please ask. Mainly yes is coming through. A couple of not yet mainly yes, I say they're flying through those people who are not yet, .

It'll work. The, the, the, the whole sleep programme will work a lot better if you can just make, you don't need to need to make all of the changes, just make one or two changes, you know, particularly if you know that, you know, you don't have a pre-sleep routine, for instance, that Some nights you have a bath and some nights you don't. We need to kind of establish a real pattern to our sleep so that we get into that, you know, I have a hot chocolate or, or even better, an ovaltine at sort of 9:30.

I begin to turn the stuff down. I don't watch anything too alerting. If I choose to watch something alerting, I just recognise it, you know, that's fine.

So that's fantastic. So most people are making some changes. Are most people, how many people have started to relax a little bit more, maybe even engage with the progressive muscular relaxation in order to wind down maybe an hour before bed.

And this, this does take some effort, doesn't it? It means listening to the, it means listening to the, the relaxation, and I know some people had a bit of problem downloading that relaxation. I would say that don't just rely on mine.

There are some wonderful relaxations that you can just get. All you need to Google is progressive muscular relaxation, 15 minutes. You don't want one of those 45 minute ones, just 15 minutes.

Any response there, Megan? Yes, definitely more relaxed. Muscle relaxation is great, it's great.

I love it too. Mainly they've done it, not every single night, but I have definitely there's an effort put in there. Oh, you are the top group, you're the top group.

You know, I, I run these sleep courses for many years and I, I run them sometimes in a face to face and we come back and, you know, I asked that question and you've got, 8 guilty faces looking at you and there's no need for the guilt. But you, you're doing fabulously. Well done, everyone.

The next one, remember we, we, we looked at life balance and we did the And you scored it from 0 to 7, I think it was, or 0 to 10, and what was most important in your life. And then we looked at whether or not that corresponded with the time, effort, and headspace you were putting into your life. And if you're like most people, what you may have found was that you would be happier.

Probably if you manage to regain some life balance and because this is an acceptance and commitment therapy approach, life balance is really important because And, and what is more important than life balance is being in touch with what is most important to us. Do people feel that they are a little bit more in touch with what really matters to them in their lives? That, that's, that's an interesting question.

Are people more in touch with what really matters as a result of perhaps of, beginning to think about, you know, what's most important and how much time left in the headspace do I put into it? So, so far, I'd say there's half and half. .

People some lots of people are, but then a lot of things are struggling with that life balance as well. OK, lose the life balance for a moment and just, you know, because it's going to be really important for next week's session that you stop and think, you know, I'll do, I'm gonna stop and do something different for a second. I want you to imagine that it's your next significant birthday.

If we can all just do this for a second, I want you to imagine it's your next significant birthday. Meghan, that's 21 again, isn't it? It's your next significant birthday and someone throws a surprise party for you.

And at that surprise party, a good friend stands up and they sort of clink the glasses like you do. I'll just do a quick clink, so they just sort of Clink the glasses and they say, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to tell you what really matters in Megan's life, what really matters in Meghan's life, and, and think about yourselves now. Someone dings that glass and says, I'd like to tell you what's most important, what really matters in your life.

And then there's a pause. What would you want that person to say was most important and what mattered most? In your life Just have a think about that for a moment.

What would you want them to say matters most in your life and what is most important? In your life Now for me, I would want them to stand up and say what's most important in Mike's life is Billy the dog, . Actually I probably put my wife first, is Alison, my wife, my kids, my dog, my health, my happiness, and work would come a little way after that.

That's what I would want someone to say mattered most in my life. And the exercise we did then, I hope has just helped to clarify, because next week we do really need you to be able to be in touch with what's most important because, quite often, if we We're able to use what's most important to help us with this whole sleep thing. Let's go to the next question.

Oh, Megan, when you did that, what, what did you say? Well, you know, what would you want someone to say about you? The first thing that came to my head was family, I think, and then definitely.

Yes, yeah, and health, health is important, yeah, but yeah, and where was work on that one? I hadn't come to that yet. We, we, we won't tell anybody at the webinar there, but that's fine because that's healthy, you know.

But actually, how much does your, does work take up a lot of time, effort and headspace for you? Oh yeah, absolutely, and I, I, I do like it that way. Yeah, but you see what I'm getting at is to be really in touch with our values to be able to do acceptance and commitment therapies.

It's just so interesting. So let's go to the next one. Are you, do you remember we did the unwelcome guest at the party last week and I was saying that one of the great ways of, of getting better at dealing with sleep issues is getting brilliant at just noticing.

The stuff that previously would have upset us and focusing on just What we really value and what matters in our lives. So how many of you are getting better at mindfully noticing rather than focusing on the difficult stuff in your lives? Let's have to see what sort of scores we're getting for that one.

How many of you are getting better at just noticing the stuff that could be a huge wind up for you, because that's, that's a really important part of this approach is just noticing. So if you wouldn't mind going to your chat box again, one more after this. Oh they're flying through trying to keep up, .

Lots of variation. Trying, yes, getting much better, huge difference, struggling, of being, you know. Be like that all my life, so it's tough to change.

The way to do that, you know, is if you're struggling is just a smile, keep it light. When you notice that you've found yourself overfocusing on something that depletes you, you smile and you say just an unwanted guest. That's all it is just an unwanted guess.

And then you make a kind of deliberate and on purpose attempt to notice it rather than focus it. Fantastic. And finally, this is the one that everyone falls down on.

I'm really expecting a low score on this one. How many of you are successfully starting your day at the same time every morning? You know, I'm not saying waking up.

I'm saying, intending to start their day at the same time every morning. How are we doing with that one? How many people are are, are keeping the same get up and start time, every day of the week, including weekends.

Most, mostly people are, . Oh, I'm guessing a few mixed ones now speak too soon. I think, mainly they're saying the weekends is a bit more of a struggle.

Someone said they're totally failing. I like. Totally failing.

I'll tell you why this is important, is that sometimes people I get right in touch with their sleep window in the week and then at the weekend we go out and we get absolutely bladdered, you know, or and, and have a kind of fun, and then the next morning we don't get up till 12 o'clock and your sleep pattern is skewed as a result of that one night. So all I'm going to say to you is for the 6 weeks, even if you go out and you come in at sort of 2 o'clock in the morning after a skinful, I'm sure vets don't, but I'm maybe I'm. Maligning you all, but you go out, you have a skin for you come in at 2 o'clock in the morning and then you don't get up till 11:30 on the Saturday or the Sunday.

All I'm going to ask you to do is try not to have a really extended lie in on the weekend, you know, try and get up vaguely at the same time just for this, this, this period of this sleep course just so that you can really establish your sleep window. That's all. So that was interesting, wasn't it?

So you're doing much better again if most of you are trying to do that, that's fantastic. I'm a real commitment here, Megan. Yeah, sorry to interrupt.

I just thought there was a nice comment came through in the end that somebody set the alarm for 6 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, and it did mean that they managed to fit in a lot more.

In their weekends, which is, is lovely. There's lots of comments, lots of nice comments there. That's a really important one.

I can't tell you that it, it's, if you ever go on to the London Sleep School, Guy Meadows, you'll see that he, he talks about actually the get up time in the morning is probably more important than the time you go to sleep because the get up time is so important for re-establishing that sleep window. And, he, Billy, come and sit down. So the dogs just walked back in.

He was obviously bored by the last bit. Right, so let's move on. Thank you very much for those questions, everybody, and thank you for interacting so, so wonderfully.

It really helps us to make this a better course. So let's have a think about those of you who do work shifts or do work nights and, and, and, The same principles actually apply that A lot of people I've worked with and a lot of the literature talks about, if you, have to work, a night shift or if you're on call, and it's a very busy on-call session, and then the next day, You're expected to maybe work again, or you're expected, or, or you expect of yourself that you will quickly catch back up your sleep that you lost the night before. That's probably the mistake that most of you are making.

Because the same principles absolutely apply. So if you've been working all night, if you've been on call and you've had a very disturbed night and you go home intending to get some, some sleep. Change that.

Intend to go home and get some rest, some relaxation, and ideally, a bit of sleep. Now just changing your mindset into that is going to make quite a difference. But when you do get home, whatever you do, don't get into that sense of a hurry up that I must get to bed as soon as possible, you know.

No, stop. Wind down a bit. Read something, watch a bit of news.

Lose that sense of hurry up. And Ideally there, what we want to do just as we do at night when we start turning the lights down is if we are going to be sitting somewhere, you know, watching the telly, watching the telly is all right if you're a shift worker just catching up on the news or having a breakfast. Just pull the curtains a bit.

Just bring a little bit of darkness into the affair. Just make the conditions. Ideal for Rest and a more somnolent sort of state.

Ideally do the progressive muscular relaxation and What we get to a bit later is maybe even have a go at putting the worries to bed if they're buzzing around your head. But you see that last bullet point. Find your circadian slump.

So if you come home and you Your blood sugar will probably be quite low because you maybe haven't eaten all night. And so at that point there you might eat eat a breakfast and you might eat it in a very leisurely way and then stop and sit down and wait. Now as our blood sugar starts to change because we've just eaten, the likelihood is, is you will go into a circadian slump.

Now if you're aware and you're mindful. Of drowsiness just beginning to happen. That's when you go to bed.

Yeah. Don't rush to bed and lie in bed waiting for that circadian slump to help you drop off. Kind of find that circadian slump window in the same way as we find the, sleep window at night.

I hope that helps some of you. It really is very important about your attitude here, you know, because a good sleeper never tries to sleep. They just accept that I'm gonna sleep or I'm not gonna sleep.

So I hope that's helpful. What we're gonna do now, I think, will also really help. So this is called structured worry time.

Now most people that I see for sleep difficulties. Without a doubt, their sleep difficulties are, are caused because they come, they, they come home, they, We almost kind of like accumulate worries from the moment we get up. Stuff happens in our lives that aren't quite right.

Someone annoys us, somebody's late, the computer doesn't work. And if we don't stop during the day at all, if we never use mindfulness during the day, or we never actually stop and process any of this stuff, and then when we get home we just watch telly all night or we do something else that keeps our brain very, very active. When, when it becomes time to go to sleep, our brain is crying out for an opportunity to do a bit of processing.

And The problem is, is that for some of us we lie down intending to sleep and our brain is almost saying to us, Look, I'm not going to sleep yet. I've got all of this stuff to process, so we can take a little bit of control over that and we can actually choose. Now for those of you out there who this is ringing a bell for and your people that go, you're not a good warrior.

You know, you might characterise yourself as being a warrior but not a good warrior. This is about becoming a top warrior, the best warrior, you know, that's not warrior as in Bruce Lee, we're worrying warrior. So this is called structured worry time, and it's so worth doing, probably on maybe 3 or 4 days in the next 7 days, and this is how it works.

Each day Choose a time. So the only time I, I can do structured worry time would probably be after my supper at night, you know, because I'm usually pretty busy until then. So I would choose then and be very strict that you're only going to worry for 15 minutes, but you are going to choose to worry for 15 minutes.

Think about that for a second. You are going to choose to worry. Now how is that different?

Now I believe that's different because most of us, our amygdalic reaction, our brains choose to make us worry. They sort of bully us into worrying because our brain doesn't like unprocessed stuff. So In essence, we're not driving our bus, you know, the bus of life.

We're not driving where we want to go. The passengers in the back are driving because they're all of our thoughts, they're all of our emotions. They're all of that unprocessed stuff.

So you take your choice and choose to worry really well for 15 minutes. Ideally, either pull up a notes page on your iPad or on your computer or buy yourself a small exercise book. I quite like the writing, you know, the.

Pencil and paper writing. And then what you do now is you write a list of all of your worries, and it says there be fulsome. Now there's a gender issue that arises sometimes here.

Sorry guys, men that are out there, but we're usually really rubbish at this, and it doesn't help to be rubbish at this, so don't be rubbish at this. Be fulsome. So I'll have a look at one of my female clients' structured worry time sheets, and she would have said, I found myself worrying about fire safety in, in, in high-rise flats.

And a bloke will have had a fellow will have had the same worry, and all he will have written is flats. And the difference of that is, is in writing down found myself worrying about high rise flats and how dangerous they are. You've actually processed if you just write flats, you know what you mean, but you haven't allowed your brain to linguistically process that worry.

So be fulsome. So you write down all of your worries. Now, a great man, Seligman, the god of anxiety, really, Seligman says that we only ever have about 12 worries.

We think we have more, but in actual fact is most of us have about 12 worries. So I would normally come up with a good 9 or 10 worries when I do this. So you write your worries down and then you look at them.

And now be mindful and actually score through. Put a line through any worries that aren't yours, that don't belong to you, that you can do absolutely nothing about because they're not in your sphere of influence. So I quite often worry about one of my girls who's, one of my daughters who's on a course in London.

But you know what? I can do nothing about it. She doesn't want me to help her, and there's nothing I can do, but she's always a worry.

But if I just draw a line through that one and then just put a sort of a smile next to it which just says I love her, then that that quite helps. And then just look at the remaining worries. And in your mind, just see, these are just worries, and it's quite helpful to use that phrase just worries.

And then choose one of that one of those worries and just do one thing to impact on it. Now, let's say we've been worrying about the, dreadful tragedy that happened in London this week, and we feel reluctant to, to draw a line through that one because we believe there may be something I can do. Well, at that moment there, choose that worry if it's still there and do one thing to impact on it.

Ring a helpline, donate something, but do something to impact on that worry. Now really important here, 0.5 please do not try to problem solve when you're doing this exercise.

This isn't about problem solving, it's about worrying sensibly. So just do one thing. To impact on that worry.

So I have an 86-year-old mom down in Bristol, and I sometimes worry about her. She gets a bit sort of upset about, you know, just stuff really, and sometimes I'll just make a note in my structured worry time, Ring Mom, have a chat, make her laugh, you know, and that's the one thing I'm going to do to impact on that worry. And then take a look at the remaining worries and think to yourself, do you know what, I'll, I'll have a look at them tomorrow.

And then what we do is we take That she that that booklet to bed. And before we go to sleep, if we find ourselves beginning to mind and worry again, we have a look at our list, we look at the one that we've chosen to impact on, and we consciously make a decision to deal with that tomorrow. And then ideally, we supplement the structured worry time with leaves on a stream just before you go to bed.

So we're going to do a meditation now, and it's the leaves on a stream meditation, which, the wonderful webinar vet staff will send out with the recording. So I'm going to ask you all just to make yourself comfortable. But not too comfortable.

And let's have a go at the leads on the stream meditation. Now this is the top meditative process for helping with sleep. But you don't do it in order to sleep.

So if you go to bed and say, I'm going to do without flipping leaves in a stream and I'm going to sleep tonight, if it kills me, you won't sleep. But if you do your structured worry time and then you say, oh, I'm going to really enjoy just letting my thoughts come. And go.

Then you'll sleep. So let's have a go at leaves on a stream. So I'll set it up first.

So the idea of leaves on a string is that you imagine in your mind's eye for a moment a stream that runs across your field of consciousness, maybe right to left or left to right. I'm going to go right to left to right, so this stream that meanders and gurgles. And just close your eyes for a second, everybody please, and just find your stream.

Notice the pebbles underneath the water. Not the weeds just swaying in the currents of the water. And then I want you to imagine that at the top corner of your consciousness is a tree.

And every now and then leaves fall. And they land on the stream, and the stream carries them past your field of consciousness. And they disappear.

And we let them And then we wait for another leaf to fall. And after a while we then choose. To supplement the thoughts.

And attach them to the leads. So with no more ado, let's have a go at leads on a stream. It's a 7 minute meditation, and you do this leads on a stream.

Ideally after you've done your structured worry time, but certainly just before you go to sleep at night. And Just so many people tell me, Mike, I've never heard the end of the meditation because I've fallen asleep. So let's have a go.

OK, so if we're sitting comfortably and in a relaxed position. I just want you to take your attention and just find The sounds outside of the room. That you're meditating in.

I can hear the telly somewhere in the background. I can hear cars. Bring your attention into.

The room in which you're meditating in. I can hear the hum of the computer. You can hear my voice.

And then bring your attention right into the core of you. What can you hear? What noises are you producing as a human being?

And let go. And bring up the visualisation, please, of a string. That meanders across your field of vision.

And just watch that stream for a while. Notice the colours of the rocks and the stones. And the colours of the weeds that Flow with the current.

Notice the peacefulness of this slowly meandering river. And then have a look at the corner of The top corner of your vision. And notice that there's an oak tree.

And it's Standing tall and proud. Top right hand corner of your consciousness. And a leaf drops from the tree.

And it drops in that seesaw style that leaves falling. And it lands in the top right hand corner of your stream. And just watch it.

As the stream carries that leaf. Meanders at the cross. Takes it across your field of vision.

Until that leaf just is born. By the stream Until it disappears. And wait.

Sure enough, the tree drops another leaf. Which meanders its way down. And just lands at the top of your string.

Once again just watch it. No attempt to interfere with it or to catch it or to deviate its course. Just watch it.

Is it Neanders. And disappears. One more day.

And they drops. Lands on your stream. Notice the colour of your leaf.

Is it autumnal? Watch that leaf as it is transported by your stream. Until it disappears.

And now what I'd like you to do is to just wait. And the very next thought That comes into your head. I'd like you to take that thought.

Pop it into an envelope and place it on a leaf at the top of your string. So now everybody please. Just wait for the next thought.

To enter your mind. And if you have the thought, there aren't any thoughts, that's the thought. You take that thought, Whatever thought came.

Or cluster of thoughts even. And pop them in an envelope. And place that envelope.

On a leaf at the top of the string. Notice that you're apart from those thoughts, that thought. Just watch that thought.

As the stream carries it. Past your field of consciousness. Until it disappears.

And wait for the next thought to come. It can be a happy thought, a sad thought, a worry. Whatever the thought, it's just a thought, just a worry.

And we take it Whatever comes next. I just had the thought that. I hope no one can hear the telly because they've opened the door next door.

Rather than attached to that thought, I'm just gonna place that thought in an envelope. And watch it disappear. Without attaching to it.

In any way. One more thought. Wait for it to come.

Smile, that's my thought. Place it on a leaf. And just watch that leaf.

Carry that thought. All the way down. Until it disappeared.

Wonderful. Leaves on a stream meditation. And when you're ready, just open your eyes and come back to the room.

So Ideally, For those of you who are worriers, I'm going to ask you to really have a go at structured worry time, 3 or 4 nights in this next week. And then before you go to bed, listen to the recording that the webinar that will send you of me just talking you through the leaves on a stream meditation. And let's just see whether you sleep.

And because you've let go of those worries, let's just see whether you sleep better and that your sleep is more restful and you wake feeling more refreshed. And now, Ladies and gentlemen of our webinar. There's the leads on the stream, I probably should have showed that, shouldn't I?

But I'll let that thought go. Isn't that wonderful? Now we're going to go at cognitive shuffling.

Now, this is particularly effective if you wake up at night or you get one of those nights where you've done your relaxation, You've done your leaves on a stream. You've been surface sleeping, and then, as happened to me, and I promise this is true last night, Mrs. Scanlon leaned over and said, Mike, you're snoring and gave me an elbow in the ribs.

And, and I woke up and I felt that annoyance because I'd been deeply, deeply asleep. But what I did, and I promise this is true, I did this last night, was I cognitively shuffled. So let me take you through cognitively shuffled.

So it involves mentally picturing. I mean, I know this is dreadful, isn't it, because, as I think about it, I probably shouldn't have put the slide up, but I did this deliberately because I want you to be able to follow it. You know, when, when you get the slides, so just in case, because this isn't in the manual.

So it involves mentally picturing a random sequence of objects for a few seconds each, so a cow, a microphone, a loaf of bread, and so on. So it's really important that you don't have any, you know, you don't just have any particular sequence to it. It's really important that you, it's completely meaningless because this is like the antidote to ruminating.

Now, I'll be, I'll be really honest, I have the, there's an app called the Sleep button. But I don't use it anymore, but it did help a little while ago, and the idea of the sleep button is you lie in bed and you just press your phone and your phone just sends you random, random objects, so you know, a cow, a microphone, a loaf of bread, and this lovely voice just says a cow and you imagine a cow, a microphone, and you picture a microphone. And a loaf of bread and you picture a loaf of bread, but you really don't need the sleep button app, although it is very good.

It works just as well to pick a word, so what I'm going to ask you to do if you do wake is let's choose the word bedtime. And you just find that word bedtime and you hold it lightly. And then you picture as many items as you can, beginning with B, so ball.

Billy B Bicycle Banana. But not the You get the idea, and when you run out of bees. You move on to an E and you Picture and quietly in your mind's eyes speak to yourself what it is that you're seeing.

And then the A And then the day and I, I, I've yet using the cognitive shuffle, got all the way to the end of the word bedtime. And this is the way it works. It's somnland.

So what it does is your sleep onset mechanism in your brain kind of detects that there's a very strange thought pattern and your brain sort of says to yourself, what's going on? You know this is all unrelated and because it's unrelated, my host body must be dreaming. So My body, my, my human has entered his, surface sleeping stage.

Therefore, he's sleeping. Therefore, I will move him into the next stage of the sleep process. And What we find in an awful lot of people I work with that this technique can induce sleep within very, very quickly.

It might take minutes, it might take dozens of minutes, and that's because, Our sleep, our sort of brain, we call it the sleep onset mechanism, is an integrator. It will integrate if we're not careful, if any worries push into this exercise, it will integrate them and sort of undo it a little bit. So you know, I spoke earlier about how important it is that you've done everything else to make this work.

So the sleep hygiene is going to allow the cognitive shuffle to work. So give cognitive shuffling a real go this week. Some of my clients just say this is the best thing I've ever given them, you know, and, and the cognitive shuffle absolutely works at a real neurological level because it just tricks our brain into thinking that you've entered that, .

That early sleep phase, you know, when we're in what I call surface sleeping when our brain is just producing all of this random pictures and random thoughts in a sort of jumbled up pickledy pickledy, relaxed manner. So, cognitive shuffling. There's the biggan from Wigan from this week.

Actually, do you know that's not fair, . I guilt then, where did that come from? Put it on a leaf, watch it disappear, so .

Leads on a stream hugely effective. Just because we're doing this, don't lose the, the relaxation. So your home tasks are to continue with your sleep hygiene, especially for those of you who haven't made significant changes yet.

You know, really important to do it, particularly before next week when we start putting the value stuff all into action, really. We do the VINA process next week, which I'll explain next week. But this week, you do the relaxation to start that wind down period, maybe an hour or so before bed.

You listen to leaves on a stream just when you when you're choosing, so you might go to bed having got lovely and relaxed, have your bath, read, and when you feel that drowsiness just coming on. Just switch on the leaves on a stream. Listen to it, and let go of all of those worries, those thoughts, and sleep.

Or not, doesn't matter. If you're waking up or you're having a bit of a fight with your sleep, Don't fight with your sleep, you'll always lose. Choose to do the cognitive shuffle.

And for those of you who are worriers, and it's almost certain if you are a worrier, then, those unresolved worries will be what's keeping you awake. Introduce structured worry time. And I think If we can do this, people are going to start to see a real improvement now, .

You really will. So thank you so much for participating so beautifully and helping me out with the, with the, the, the chat stuff. And I'll pass you back to Megan and just see if anybody's got any questions, any thoughts, any concerns, want me to reiterate anything.

So I'll pass you back to, Megan if she's awake. Just about my. Thank you.

That was so nice. I did begin to drift off and then, Yeah, the leaves on the stream does just, just send you, doesn't it? Yeah, it really does.

So I did have to cut it short so I felt myself slowly nodding, slowly nodding away so that was lovely. I do love them, the leaves on the stream. It's definitely one of my favourites.

And it does, it does really help to fall asleep too. So thank you. That was wonderful, Mike.

Really, really great. As Mike has already suggested, if you do have any questions at all, please feel free to pop those into the Q&A or the chat box, before we end this evening. Just a kind reminder that there is a survey as always.

So if you have any feedback, please feel free to provide that, or if you'd like to personally email the office, Then you can do that at any time as well. And if you have any questions come through, During the week, leading up until next week, you can just email those into the office or you can email Mike who has kindly provided his email address as well. And if you need that, please let us know.

We've had a question here, Mike, and it was, could you please clarify what to do with the worries for another day? . So the structured worry time, I think, .

So, if you, if you, have done your structured worry time and you find yourself beginning to mither or worry again, you know, particularly before bed, you actually need to stop and you need to remind yourself that you're in charge now, because you are choosing when to worry. And all you do is you smile to yourself and you have a look at your list and you say, do you know what I'm gonna do structured worry time tomorrow. And I'll probably have a look at that worry and do something to impact on it, but I'm going to do it tomorrow.

And that's, that's what you do. So it's, it's, this is so much about, . You no longer being a passenger on the bus, you know, sorry, you're no longer reacting to the passengers on your bus, i.e.

Your thoughts, your memories, your fears, your emotions, but just reminding that, you know, Mike Scanlon drives the Mike Scanlon bus. Megan Halewood drives the Megan Hallwood bus, but both of us have thoughts, feelings, worries, concerns that are constantly trying to make us. You know, do stuff that we don't want to do, you know, they constantly want to make us miser when we really want to be sleeping.

So it's that whole sense of the structure of worry time works when we realise that I am choosing to worry, you know, and I'm going to have really good, brilliant worry for 15 minutes. And if you can imagine your brain, if it's been so used to pushing you around, your brain take goes, Whoa, what's going on here? And initially it doesn't like it much, and that's why that's why we stick to that real structured process that I shared with you tonight.

Lovely, thank you. Thank you, Mike. We've had, just to comment actually, similar to the cognitive shuffling, I find counting backwards from a very large number and really focuses my mind and distracts it from worrying and helps.

Yeah, I mean if counting backwards works for you, fantastic. Research around, works slightly differently to the cognitive shuffle because the counting backwards, because it is sequenced, it does require some. It, you know, when we're in that early sleep phase, we, we can't count, you know, it's very random and it's very abstract.

So the sleep, the counting backwards helps us to sleep in a, in a slightly different way, a bit more meditative perhaps, whereas the sleep shuffle actually kind of, coaxes the brain into believing that we've entered that. Sleepy phase. So if counting backwards works, you keep doing it, but give the cognitive shuffle a go as well.

Brilliant, thank you. Had a few more questions pop through. One of them is, sorry, one of them isn't a question, it's just a comment, but I think it's nice to read that and share that with everybody.

Somebody went, . Sorry, they recently got on an overnight ferry to Majorca. It was cold, lying on the floor, and there was a loud disco nearby.

I had no expectation of getting to sleep, but, didn't get stressed about it. And guess what? I managed to get some sleeps.

That's lovely. Thank you very much. And that's it, isn't it?

That's the paradoxical sleep effect. In reverse, you know, you, you didn't allow yourself to buy in to all of that unhelpful, must, shoulds, ought stuff. Well done.

Brilliant. How do you manage when there are so many worries to deal with 15 minutes daily isn't enough. And do 25.

To 25. OK. Yeah, but don't, don't try and do it.

Remember you, remember you're, you're writing them down very quickly and fulsomely, and I'll bet you'll find, I don't know, you know, maybe I'm wrong on this one, but most people don't have, it feels like we have loads of worries, but usually, you know, it's the same worry, but with different sort of permutations to it. And once you start to write them down, most of us only have 12 worries. Yeah.

Could you split them out between and say I'm going to deal with this money today and then that many tomorrow or you just do one each day. You're better to, to choose one worry and to do one thing to impact on that worry. Do you know what?

I think this is a really great question because the, the way that the structural worry time works is not so much around the fact that you're you know, you're worrying about that one thing. The way it works is it's changing the mechanism of your worry because it's saying to your brain, Look, I'm no longer happy for you to tell me when to worry and how to worry. I'm telling you when I'm going to worry and how I'm going to worry.

So don't worry. Look at me. It doesn't matter whether you've got loads of worries.

You don't need to worry them all. You just need to write them down, choose one, do one thing about it, score through the ones that aren't yours, or that you are absolutely out of your sphere of influence, you know. Yeah.

So you know, it, it's really worth a try. Don't get into that thing that I've got too many worries. I can't do this one.

Not true. Fabulous. Thank you, Mike.

And we've had a lovely comment. The course has been fabulous so far. Thank you for your advice.

So thank you for that and thank you very much. They've asked the same person asked, would it be possible to cover waking up before they're ready at any time? Yeah, of course we could.

Now, you know, the cognitive shuffle that we just did then, that's when I use the cognitive shuffle most of all, because, we have a cockerel. In, in the garden and, Evie wakes me up most mornings at about, at the moment it's about 4 o'clock and she crows for about, she, he, he crows for about 20 minutes about 4 o'clock and wakes me up. That's when I use the cognitive shuffle and I smile.

I, I mean, you know, the other day I took veterinarian as my word, and then, you know, started with a V, and, and you don't get past that, you know, you really don't. So, if you're, if you're waking, Watch, be, be mindful of whether you're annoyed by it and lose the annoyance. Smile and have a go at the cognitive shuffle.

Thanks. Sorry, that may have been my I think I've read the question. I'm just rereading it.

She said she can normally get to sleep normally get to stay asleep OK if the day hasn't been too stressful, but waking with my alarm is really difficult, even though I tend to wake up within 30 minutes of my alarm on weekends. So I think when the when the alarm goes off, you're struggling to wake then. I think, yes, could you just confirm that with me, please?

I think that's, what she means. We'll we'll come back to that one. I think probably what she means is that, you know, I, I, I think that as your quality of your sleep improves, you, you, you, you will notice you're feeling more refreshed in the morning.

So stay with all of our stuff because you know it's the quality of the sleep that's much more important than the hours you sleep. Yeah. Absolutely.

And that was what she meant. So thank you for my, thank you for that, Mike. Apologies.

I'm still, I think I'm still half asleep after the meditation. That's my excuse. And let's have a look.

We've got another question. Is the aim, with the sleep, keeps jumping. Is the aim of the sleep window to be ready to sleep and in bed at the start of the sleep window?

And it's, you've got about 40 minutes normally when you know that this is your drowsy period. So I know that I'll be good and ready to sort of drop off and go to sleep sort of around about 11 11ish. So I try and just make sure that I'm, I've had my bath, that I'm reading in bed by sort of, you know.

10 past 1111 o'clock. Yeah. But I don't try too hard.

No, I can't keep reiterating that, but I just intend to be in bed and in order to be able to make the most of that natural . Period of circadian drowsiness. Lovely, thank you, Mike.

And the final one, does the cognitive shuffle begin with imagining each random word, then proceed to lists by letter or are they two different things? No, so you would go, you the one I'd get you to try this week is the word bedtime. And so, you take the B and then you just, exhaust how many pictures and words you can think of that you can find that, begin with B in, in, and, and so you just, normally, I only ever get to about 8 or 9, and then I start thinking, I can't think of another thing that begins with B.

So then you just smile, go to E with the same thing. Smile, go to D. That that there are no rules, but other than that, then you're doing it in a very relaxed, smiley way and you're just bringing up these abstract, non-sequenced pictures of things that begin with that letter.

Perfect. Thank you, Mike. OK, that's with all the questions for this evening, as I say, if you do have any more, feel free to email any of us, you can email the webinar that or Mike himself.

Thank you for your lovely comments that have come through, and I think that's all it's. Anything else from you, Mike, just before we end, you know, these hot nights, this is so important that our attitude towards sleep remains that lovely, you know, all that equanimity and smileys about it. It's just sleep.

Nothing to get a heads up about. Lovely. OK, thank you very much, Mike, and we look forward to, yeah, it's a great webinar.

Thank you very much. We look forward to . Speaking on the next, next week, so we look forward to having you all there.

Thank you, Dawn, and for all your hard work behind us. Good night everyone. Mike.

Bye.