Season 1, Episode 5: The Night Palace

This is the sleepiest thing I have ever created. Frankly, it’s the sleepiest thing I have ever listened to.

The first time I recorded this, I had to listen to it in five-minute increments to keep from falling asleep. To this day, I only listen to the track when I absolutely want to fall asleep. Recording it means I’m groggy for hours afterward. Recording it was incredibly intimate, almost like an ASMR track, and I recorded and re-recorded this one many times for this final version, to make it as optimized as possible to help folks find sleep.

I used the lessons from my teachers, Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and Nirlipta Tuli, in their yoga nidra sleep course, which is excellent. I used the Satyananda rotation, because for me it’s the sleepiest of the rotations, and it always takes me deep into the lower brain wave states that can lead to sleep. I also made the track super long, to prevent there being any pressure on the listener to drop immediately into sleep.

I used some hypnotic deepening techniques too, only I flipped the descending staircase technique to be an ascending staircase, because I like the idea of moving up into dreams as I fall asleep, rather than going deeper into darkness, which just seems like a creepy thought as I’m falling asleep.

For me, at least, this track is incredibly effective as a narcoleptic. I’d love to hear from you about how it works or doesn’t for you, when you’re trying to get back to sleep in the middle of the night.