The Daily Heart · Thursday Edition

A Heart Dispatch

May I:
How I Sleep at Night

Call this a prayer. Call it a meditation, an intention, even a manifestation. Use whatever language works for you.

We all know the bedtime basics. Screens off an hour before bed. Brush and floss. Hair up in a loose braid. A cup of chamomile, the lights dimmed low, a few pages of a good book, tomorrow's list written down so it stops circling in your head. Maybe a warm bath, maybe cozy socks, and of course one last walk through the house to check that the doors are locked and the stove is off. All lovely, all helpful. But there's a moment no one talks about, the one right as your head hits the pillow. That's where the real magic happens.

First, the Anointing

Right before I enter the sleep space, I anoint my temples, my wrists, my ankles, and one of my favorite spots, behind the knees. The knees have a deep connection to the heart.

I reach for one of my Aroma Gold Therapeutic Parfumes: Peaceful Mind, Loving Heart, or Super Natural. All three are wonderful for sleep because they calm the nervous system and open it to receptivity. Notice I said calm, not regulate. Your nervous system is directly connected to your spirit. We don't want to slam it down into a state of regulation, a kind of lockdown where everything is clamped, controlled, and held in check. A nervous system on lockdown can't receive. We want to ease it and soften it until it opens like a flower.

Then, the Cocoon

I get all cozied up, with my blankets folded under me and pillows all around, a nice little cocoon. Then I begin with two words: May I.

I create my own every night, and so can you. You might shape it around the day you just had, or around the day ahead. If there's a project you're working on, or something in your life you'd like more grace and ease with, set the tone in the state of sleep.

The Doorway of Sleep

Sleep is the most powerful state we enter every single day, and most of us waste it. As you drift off, your brainwaves slow from the busy hum of waking life into softer and softer rhythms, until you reach that dreamy threshold between awake and asleep. It's the same state deep meditators reach for, and it's where the mind is most open and receptive. Whatever you carry across that threshold, worry or blessing, goes with you into the night. Edison and Dalí both knew this. They would doze in a chair and catch the ideas that came to them in that twilight.

Then the night moves in waves, about ninety minutes each, four or five times through. In deep sleep, the body does its repair work. Tissues mend, cells renew, and the brain literally rinses itself clean, flushing out the debris of the day. In dream sleep, the mind sorts through everything you lived, softening the charge of hard moments and weaving in what you learned.

So every night, you step through a doorway into the place where you heal, release, and renew. Your may I is how you choose what you carry through that doorway.

Why It Works

Say you've had a stressful day. You're wired and tired, overwhelmed, with too much on your plate. This is when it matters most.

When you say may I, you're asking all the parts of yourself: the wounded child, the magical child, the adult, the pusher, the critic, all of them. You aren't commanding them. You're asking their permission and inviting them in, so they come along with you on your sleep journey. You're inviting your physical, biological form into rejuvenation and relaxation.

May I creates an opening, and it's such a beautiful way to end the night.

And then comes the morning. You wake refreshed and rejuvenated, with a clarity in your eyes and in your mind. Your body feels as though it has moved through a cleansing ritual all night long, because it has. You chose how you would sleep, and your whole being answered.

What I notice most is how the day unfolds from there. More creativity. More clarity. More ease. I make better decisions, clear and concise ones, because I'm not being triggered into them. I'm not reacting from yesterday's leftovers. I'm responding from a rested heart. The day feels spacious, the little things roll off more easily, and I have more of myself to give to my work, to the people I love, and to me.

Into the Heart

Once I've said my may I's, I drop into the sacred space of my heart. I bring my third eye, that busy seer that has been scanning and sorting all day long, down into my heart, and I let it rest there. The mind stops leading and starts listening. The eye that has been looking out at the world turns and looks in.

Feel how different that is. The mind alone wants to plan, replay, solve, and fix. The heart doesn't work that way. The heart receives. When the two come together, the clear mind held inside the open heart, something in you exhales. You're no longer running the show from the top of your head. You're being held from the center of your chest.

Every time you do this, you're healing your nervous system. You're teaching it, night after night, that it is safe to soften. You're rewiring yourself to reconnect with Mother Nature below you and Father Cosmos above you, and the heart is where they meet. That's who we are: the bridge between earth and sky, the living conduit where heaven and earth come together. And when you rest there, you open the gateways of multidimensional communication. Dreams grow richer. Guidance comes more easily. You start to hear the quieter voices, your intuition, your body, the plants, the stars, that the noise of the day drowns out.

This is the part I invite you to practice most of all. It doesn't need to be perfect. Just drop in, breathe, and let yourself be held. The more you go there, the easier the path becomes, until one night you realize you don't have to find your way to the heart anymore. You're already home.

If you'd like a guide for the way in, my Gold Heart Meditation was made for exactly this. It's my voice and music dropping you gently into the sacred space of your heart and letting you rest there. Play it as you settle into your cocoon, and let it carry you through the doorway of sleep.

I'll stop there, because that's my next dispatch for you: our multisensory being.

For tonight, start with may I. Let it be an invitation for your whole being, body, mind, soul, and spirit, to join you on this journey called sleep.

With a loving heart,

Narayan