What is Deep Rest? An energy system for a calm passage from evening into night

For many years one of the sentences I heard most from students was this: “The day ends, but my mind doesn't.” The light goes out, the body is in bed, and the thoughts are still walking around inside the day. I founded Deep Rest for that passage.

Deep Rest is an energy system I founded, creating and programming its energies specifically for this system. Its subject is sleep and rest through the night: it accompanies you as you turn the minutes before bed into a calm transition, prepare your bed and bedroom for the night and rest through the night.

Sleep cannot be forced

This is the system's first principle: sleep cannot be forced, and this energy does not force either; it only invites. In Deep Rest you do not push yourself to “get to sleep”; you soften the evening and let the body settle into the bed and the mind into rest.

The second principle is rhythm. Sleep loves a routine. A five-to-ten-minute practice at the same time each evening often gives more than a long one now and then.

What is an evening practice like?

The short daily practice takes five to ten minutes. You dim the lights, put your phone out of reach and lie down in bed. You take three slow breaths, noticing your shoulders drop on each out-breath. Then you call in Deep Rest and rest your hands in turn on your forehead, your heart and your belly.

The full self-practice takes 25–30 minutes: eight hand positions from the eyes to the soles of the feet. In the heart position you say inwardly, “The day is done. I did what I could.” If sleep comes before you finish, you simply sleep; you can give thanks in the morning.

Programming the bed and the bedroom for the night

In Deep Rest you programme the energy to a person, a place and a time. Every programming follows the same five steps: intention, scope, duration and repetition, the “for the highest good” safeguard, and closing.

For example, once a week, on the day you change the sheets, you programme your bed and bedroom for seven nights, between the hours you choose, with calm and restful energy. If you share the room, you ask the other person first; if they would rather not, you programme only your own side.

Situations from everyday life

The handbooks include separate practices for situations that come up often. A few of them:

• Waking at 3 am: without switching on the light or looking at the phone; writing whatever is on your mind in a single word in the notebook by the bed and letting it go.
• Travel and time differences: a night programming in the local time of where you are going, and preparing the hotel room for a few nights.
• Shift work: “night” is your sleep time; the programming follows your own hours.
• The night before an important day, an afternoon rest, an unfamiliar bed, or the broken sleep of a home with a new baby.

The three levels

Who is it for?

For people whose minds will not quieten in the evening and who carry the day into bed, for anyone who wants a short, regular evening routine, and for shift workers and frequent travellers. You do not need to have received another energy system. The attunement is given at a distance and only to people aged 18 or over.

Deep Rest is a complementary energy practice; it does not replace a doctor, a psychologist or medication, it does not diagnose and it is not a treatment. If a sleep problem has lasted for weeks or is making your days hard, see your doctor first, and do not stop any medication on your own.