Today’s blog is a bit of a departure, since it’s a recommendation of a podcast my human, Annie, has been getting huge benefits from recently (they’re not sponsoring this in any way – we just love it!).

 

Do you ever have trouble getting to sleep, or wake up in the middle of the night and can’t drop back off? If that’s because you have too many thoughts running around your head, Annie can definitely sympathise! My head is full of stuffing, so I don’t suffer from this problem!

 

Anyway, a few months ago, Annie discovered a podcast called Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories for Adults. It was created some years ago by a woman called Kathryn Nicolai, who has the most beautiful, restful voice of any human I’ve come across.

 

In each episode, she reads a story where – you’ve guessed it – nothing much happens. They’re lovely little tales about making tea, tidying up, walking in nature, going to a cafe, buying stationery – any manner of mundane but very pleasing activities you can think of. Kathryn reads the story twice, going a bit slower the second time around, and the idea is that her soothing voice allows you to let go of your thoughts and drift gently off to sleep.

 

Annie was very sceptical at first – and it did take a few weeks to really start having an effect – but it works! Or at least it has done for Annie. She tells me she now very rarely gets past the first few minutes of the first telling of the story (they usually last about ten minutes).

 

And, the best thing is, Kathryn offers a tactic for getting back to sleep if you wake up in the night as well. Once you’ve got to know a few of the stories, you can tell yourself bits and pieces of them and that gives your mind something innocuous to focus on – and it sends you right back to sleep! Annie has several favourites that she falls back on regularly for this.

 

Because the only downside to it being so successful is that Annie now never gets to find out what happens in most of the story! And while it’s true that nothing much does happen, the stories are usually really lovely.

 

Annie has come up with two ways to combat this problem – if she particularly wants to hear the rest of a story, she listens to it while she’s doing her exercises in the morning. And she also bought the Nothing Much Happens book, which contains lots of the stories in text format, so Annie can read them any time and add more of them to her mental repertoire for getting back to sleep in the middle of the night.

 

I can’t guarantee listening to the podcast will be as successful for others as it has been for Annie – but at the very least, you’ll get to listen to some lovely stories in bed!

 

Don’t forget to let me know how you get on if you give the podcast a try, or if there’s anything in your life you’d like my thoughts on!

 

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