Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

If sleep feels just out of reach tonight, let Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill carry you gently there. Tonight's Books at Bedtime story follows a quiet, lonely woman through one ordinary Sunday afternoon in the park, her small joys and quiet ache unfolding slowly, read to ease you toward sleep.

 

This is a Calming Anxiety production, read by host Martin Hewlett as part of our nightly Books at Bedtime and Coffee Break for the Soul series of classic story readings for insomnia and relaxation. For more sleep stories and calming audio whenever you need it, download Anchored on iOS, with Android arriving September 2026.

👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

First published in The Athenaeum in 1920 and later collected in The Garden Party and Other Stories, Miss Brill is one of Katherine Mansfield's most loved short stories and is now in the public domain. Let her Sunday afternoon unfold slowly in the dark, and let your own thoughts settle as hers do.

 

If you enjoyed this reading, explore more classic story episodes in our Books at Bedtime and Coffee Break for the Soul archive, available wherever you listen to Calming Anxiety.

 

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Why Do I Feel Dizzy? — Anxiety-Induced Lightheadedness Relief | Guided Meditation with 4-4-8 Breathing

 

If the floor has ever seemed to tilt beneath you, or the room's gone soft and swimming for no reason at all, today's guided meditation is for you. Calming Anxiety sits with anxiety-induced dizziness, the frightening, light-headed feeling that convinces you something is medically wrong, when the real cause may simply be anxious breathing.

 

We slow the body first with 4-4-8 breathing (in for four, hold for four, and a long, slow exhale for eight), a technique Martin has used often as a paramedic kneeling beside people who were certain they were about to collapse. For daily support beyond this episode, download Anchored on iOS, with Android arriving next month.

👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

Clinical hypnotherapist Martin then guides you through calming affirmations that remind your body it isn't betraying you, followed by three daily caring tips for catching light-headedness before it spirals. If you've felt this before, you've got through it before, and you will again.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

 

* 00:00 – Cold Open: The Dizzy, Swimming Feeling

* 01:09 – Welcome & Host Introduction

* 02:05 – Slowing the Body: 4-4-8 Breathing

* 04:20 – Grounding: You're Still Here

* 04:33 – Affirmations for Feeling Safe in Your Body

* 08:23 – Three Daily Caring Tips

* 09:17 – Coming Back & Grounding

* 09:47 – Closing, Personal Note & Anchored App

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

 

Let these words land, and repeat them silently or out loud if you wish:

 

* I am safe in this moment.

* I am here.

* I can allow this feeling to pass.

* Anxiety can make my body feel strange, but I do not have to be frightened of the feeling itself.

* My breathing can make me feel light-headed.

* I can slow it down.

* I do not need to take bigger breaths.

* I need quieter, slower breaths.

* My body is not betraying me. It is trying to protect me, sometimes a little too enthusiastically.

* I have felt this before, and I have got through it before.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

 

1. Sit and settle: When the light-headed feeling starts, sit down if you can and put both feet flat on the floor. Don't fight to stay upright — lower yourself safely and give your body a moment to settle.

2. Check the basics: Water, food, sleep, and caffeine. Sometimes the simplest things can make an already anxious nervous system much more reactive.

3. Practise the long exhale: Once today, for one single minute, breathe out for longer than you breathe in. You're teaching your body, on a calm day, that it doesn't need all that extra air.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

 

If this dizzy, swimming feeling comes back to mind, download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours.

👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

If this episode helped, even a little, please share it with someone who needs to hear it today, and leave a quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts — it means more than you know.

 

And in everything, my friend, be kind.

 

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The New Dress by Virginia Woolf — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

If sleep feels far away tonight, let Virginia Woolf's The New Dress carry you there. Tonight's Books at Bedtime story follows Mabel Waring through a single anxious evening at a party, her insecurities rising and falling like a slow tide, read gently to ease you toward sleep.

 

This is a Calming Anxiety production, read by host Martin Hewlett as part of our nightly Books at Bedtime and Coffee Break for the Soul series of classic story readings for insomnia and relaxation. For more sleep stories and calming audio whenever you need them, download Anchored on iOS, with Android arriving September 2026.

 👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

First published in 1927 in The Forum magazine, The New Dress is one of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway party stories, quietly modern and deeply human, and is now in the public domain in the US. Let Mabel's evening unfold slowly in the dark, and let your own thoughts soften as hers do.

 

If you enjoyed this reading, explore more classic story episodes in our Books at Bedtime and Coffee Break for the Soul archive, available wherever you listen to Calming Anxiety.

 

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Anxiety Relief for Irritability & Overwhelm — I Just Need to Feel Calm Again | Alternate Nostril Breathing Guided Meditation

 

Anxiety relief for those days when everything is getting under your skin. This ten minute guided meditation is for the moment you catch yourself thinking "I just need to feel calm again" — when the noise, the questions, the one more thing have worn your patience thin, your shoulders are tight, your jaw is clenched, and your voice is sharper than you meant it to be.

 

Underneath irritation there is almost always something quieter. You're tired. You're overloaded. You've been holding too much together. Today we use alternate nostril breathing — nadi shodhana, the balancing breath — breathing in for four and out for six, giving your mind one gentle thing to do at a time while your nervous system finds its way back down. Slow, rhythmic breathwork for stress relief, overwhelm and an overstimulated nervous system.

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, Calming Anxiety is a daily ten minute guided meditation for anxiety relief, panic attacks, stress and sleep. You don't have to become a different person today. You don't have to be endlessly patient. You simply need a little more space.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

 

* 00:00 – I just need to feel calm again

 

* 00:20 – When the smallest things get under your skin

 

* 00:47 – What's underneath the irritation

 

* 01:13 – Welcome — this is your moment

 

* 01:31 – Finding your quiet place

 

* 01:42 – Alternate nostril breathing (nadi shodhana) explained

 

* 02:23 – Guided breathing — in for four, out for six

 

* 04:24 – Softening the shoulders, forehead and hands

 

* 04:56 – Visualisation — laying the weight down

 

* 05:44 – Today's gentle affirmations

 

* 08:04 – You don't have to become a different person

 

* 08:21 – Three daily caring tips

 

* 09:14 – Returning to the room

 

* 10:05 – Anchored, sharing and closing thoughts

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

 

Repeat these in your mind's eye, on the outbreath, and see them in your thoughts.

 

* I am allowed to slow down.

 

* I do not have to carry everything at once.

 

* I can feel irritated without becoming irrational.

 

* My feelings are signals. They are not instructions.

 

* I can pause before I react.

 

* I am safe in this moment.

 

* I am here in this moment.

 

* I can be gentle with myself while I find my balance.

 

* I am allowed to feel calm again.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

 

1. Catch the first flicker. When you notice the first flickers of irritation today, don't try to argue with it. Take one slow breath all the way out and give yourself three seconds to respond.

 

2. Ask what's underneath. Ask yourself, "What am I actually feeling underneath this? Am I overwhelmed, hungry, unnerved?" Sometimes irritation is simply the messenger.

 

3. Check in before the day runs away. Tomorrow, use Anchored daily to check in before the day gets away from you. Thirty seconds, just enough time to ask yourself, "How am I actually doing right now?" You don't have to wait until you're overwhelmed.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

 

If you'd like this feeling again, come back tomorrow — and download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours. 👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com

 

And if someone you love has been feeling unusually tense, irritable or simply not quite themselves, please share this episode with them. They may not need fixing — they just may need somewhere safe to put the weight down.

 

If the show helps you, a 30-second rating and review on Apple Podcasts helps someone else find it.

 

Be gentle today with who you are. You don't have to carry everything. Breathe, soften, come back to yourself. I'm Martin, I'll be here again tomorrow. Be kind.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Ad-Free Listening: Enjoy Calming Anxiety without ads at https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety--4110266/support

 

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Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calming

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The String Quartet by Virginia Woolf — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

Drift off tonight to a dreamlike bedtime story for sleep and insomnia, read slowly and gently to help you fall asleep naturally.

 

Tonight on Books at Bedtime, Martin reads Virginia Woolf's "The String Quartet" — a short, hypnotic piece from her 1921 collection Monday or Tuesday.

 

It begins in a crowded London drawing room, full of overheard fragments — the weather, the traffic, a rent too high, a glove left on the train. The small anxious chatter of a mind that cannot settle. Then four musicians take their seats, the first violin counts one, two, three, and everything changes.

 

The music carries the listener somewhere else entirely. A pear tree on a mountain. Fountains and falling drops. The waters of the Rhône running swift and deep over silver fish and yellow pebbles. Lovers on the grass, silver horns at dawn, a rose leaf falling from an enormous height like a little parachute.

 

It is one of the loveliest things Woolf ever wrote about how it feels when sound takes over from thought — when the fretting mind finally lets go and simply floats. Which makes it, we think, close to perfect for the last thing you hear tonight.

 

There is no need to follow the story. There is no plot to lose. Let the words move over you like the music moves over the people in that room, and let yourself drift.

 

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) remains one of the most quietly beautiful voices in English literature, and this piece is in the public domain.

 

Read by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, host of Calming Anxiety and Coffee Break for the Soul.

 

Sleep well, my friend.

 

 

Buy Me a Coffee: Support hosting costs at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/calminganxiety

 

Newsletter: Subscribe on Substack at https://calminganxietypodcast.substack.com/?r=6zm0sc&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Comparison Anxiety — A Guided Meditation for When You Feel Behind in Life | Box Breathing

 

Comparison anxiety can creep in on the most ordinary days — that quiet sense that everyone else has the job, the relationship, the plan, and you're still standing at the same crossroads. This guided meditation is for anyone who feels like the only one who hasn't got it together, using box breathing (4-4-4-4) to calm the nervous system before a set of gentle affirmations that put the measuring stick down for good. Download the free Anchored app — the one app with no feed, no likes, nothing to compare yourself against — at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, this episode gently separates life-stage comparison anxiety from doomscrolling — it's not about the scroll itself, but about what we do to ourselves when we hold our own life up against someone else's highlight reel. You'll be guided through steady box breathing, then a golden-light visualisation and a set of affirmations to help you feel calm, grounded, and enough exactly as you are.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

* 00:00 – Cold Open: The Only One Who Hasn't Got It Together

* 01:00 – Box Breathing (4-4-4-4)

* 05:00 – Golden Light Affirmations

* 09:00 – 3 Daily Caring Tips

* 10:00 – Outro & Anchored

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

Let these settle in gently, in your own voice:

 

I am not behind. I am exactly where my life is.

 

Another person's chapter twenty is not my chapter five.

 

I am enough, at this pace, on this ordinary day.

 

What looks like getting ahead is only ever someone else's outside.

 

I let go of the race that no one is actually running.

 

I am safe. I am here. There is nothing to fear right now.

 

My worth was never a number, a milestone, or a moment I think I missed.

 

I am allowed to be a work in progress and still be whole.

 

You are not the clouds racing across the sky, my friend. You are the sky. Wide. Unhurried. Already complete.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

1. Question the comparison: When you catch yourself comparing, gently ask — whose life am I actually measuring, and do I even know the whole of it?

 

2. Celebrate small wins: Write down one thing you did today that your younger self would be proud of, however small it seems.

 

3. Take a feed break: Take a short break from the feed today — even one single hour — and notice how much quieter your mind becomes.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

If this brought you some quiet, download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours.

👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

If someone you love has been feeling left behind, share this episode with them — and if it helped, a quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts helps this show reach more people who need it.

 

And in everything, my friend, be kind.

 

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The Searchlight by Virginia Woolf — Full Short Story Read Aloud | Sleep Story for Insomnia, Anxiety & Deep Sleep | Books at Bedtime

 

A calming bedtime story to help you fall asleep — the complete, unabridged short story The Searchlight by Virginia Woolf, narrated slowly and softly for anyone who can't sleep, lying awake with insomnia, anxiety or a racing mind at three in the morning.

 

A warm, moonless summer night in London. An eighteenth-century mansion is a club now, and after dinner a small party drifts out onto the balcony above the park to drink coffee in the dark. Rods of light wheel across the sky — the Air Force practising, searching for enemy aircraft — sweeping over a stone front, over a chestnut tree in full blossom, and then, for a second, straight across the balcony itself. And Mrs Ivimey says: you'll never guess what that made me see. You can listen offline, any time you wake in the night, in the Anchored app —

 👉 download on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

What she saw was 1820. A boy alone in a ruined tower in Yorkshire, with nothing but moor and sky in every direction, green and blue, green and blue, forever and ever. Every night when the old people had gone to bed he climbed up with a telescope and looked at Jupiter and Aldebaran and Cassiopeia, and asked the questions you ask when there is nobody to talk to. What are they? Why are they? And who am I?

 

Then one perfect still June day, with nothing whatsoever to do, he turned the telescope down from the stars and pointed it at the earth instead — at a dark mass of wood on the horizon, then a farmhouse among the trees, then a girl in the doorway feeding pigeons. And what he saw next sent him running down the stairs and across miles of fields and lanes and high road, arriving under the stars covered in dust and streaming with sweat.

 

This is a quiet, spellbinding twelve minutes: a woman telling a story on a balcony while the light passes over her, and a hundred years collapsing into nothing. There is no jeopardy, nothing to solve, and nothing you need to hold on to. Just stars, a tower, and a voice in the dark. Perfect for anyone who finds classic literature and long-form audiobooks more restful than silence, or who needs something gentle to wind down to at the end of a long day.

 

If you drift off in the first few minutes, that is exactly what this reading is for. Sleep, if it comes. Rest, if it doesn't. Both are enough.

 

This is our eighth Virginia Woolf reading in the Books at Bedtime series, following Kew Gardens, The Mark on the Wall, Solid Objects, The Lady in the Looking Glass, A Haunted House, In the Orchard and The Man Who Loved His Kind — all of which are in the feed if this one suits you. The Searchlight was among the stories Woolf left unpublished at her death, and first appeared in 1944 in the posthumous collection A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, assembled by Leonard Woolf.

 

Books at Bedtime is the sleep story and classic audiobook series from Calming Anxiety, hosted and narrated by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett — alongside Coffee Break for the Soul and the daily ten-minute guided meditations for anxiety, panic attacks, stress and sleep. If long-form bedtime stories for adults help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep, this series is written for those long, wakeful hours.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

 

Download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours.

 👉 Download Anchored on the App Store today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

If this reading helped you sleep, please share it with someone who lies awake, and leave a 30-second rating or review on Apple Podcasts — it is the single kindest thing you can do for a small independent show.

 

Sleep well. And until tomorrow …be kind.

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Title NSDR / Non-Sleep Deep Rest — Reach Deep Rest Without Forcing It | 10-Minute Physiological Sigh Meditation

 If you feel tired in a way that sleep never seems to touch — wired, switched-on, unable to power down even when you're exhausted — this 10-minute NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) session is for you. Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, this guided meditation helps you reach deep rest without forcing it, resetting an overstimulated nervous system while you're still awake to feel it happen.

Today's practice is built around the physiological sigh — a double breath in through the nose followed by one long, slow breath out. Research from Stanford found it's one of the fastest ways to bring the body down out of high alert, flipping the biological off switch and engaging the vagus nerve.
 From there we let the breath go completely free and sink into non-sleep deep rest: nothing to solve, nothing to reach, entirely off duty. Whether you're looking for anxiety relief in the middle of a racing day, a way to quiet a "tired but wired" mind, or a daily NSDR habit to protect your calm, give yourself permission to lie down, soften, and let the whole system settle. ⏱️ Time Chapters

• 00:00 – "The Tiredness Sleep Doesn't Touch" (Why You Need Deep Rest, Not More Sleep)
• 00:36 – Today's Focus: I Can Reach Deep Rest Without Forcing It
• 00:41 – Introduction from Martin & Anchored App Overview
• 01:16 – Resetting the Nervous System Before We Rest
• 01:38 – The Physiological Sigh & the Stanford Research Behind It
• 01:56 – Settling In: Lying Down, Letting the Body Fall Heavy
• 02:15 – Guided Physiological Sighs (Three Rounds Together)
• 03:15 – Letting the Breath Go Free: Effortless Rise & Fall
• 04:31 – Planting Today's Truth: The Warm Amber Light
• 04:52 – NSDR Affirmations for Nervous-System Reset (First Pass)
• 06:32 – Staying Off Duty: Nothing to Solve, Nothing to Reach
• 06:41 – Affirmations for Deep Subconscious Integration (Second Pass)
• 08:00 – Reuniting Mind, Body & Soul: You Are Worthy
• 08:27 – 3 Daily Caring Tips for Building an NSDR Habit
• 09:12 – Gently Awakening & Returning to the Room
• 09:47 – Closing Reflection & Notice How You Feel Now
• 09:55 – Outro, Community Support, & Sign-off

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations Repeat each line silently on your out-breath, picturing the words as a warm, amber light glowing at the centre of your chest — or simply let them land without fighting to believe them right away:

• "I allow my body to enter non-sleep deep rest."
• "This NSDR practice is resetting my nervous system right now."
• "I do not have to force calm. Deep relaxation comes to me naturally."
• "My vagus nerve is my built-in off switch, and I know how to find it."
• "Rest is not something I learn. It is something I allow."

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

1. After Any Rest Like This, Rehydrate: Drink a full glass of water. Deep rest shifts your system out of high alert, and a little water helps you come back gently and clear-headed.
2. Protect One 10-Minute NSDR Window: Set a single 10-minute NSDR window in your day and protect it the way you would protect a meeting. Deep rest works best when it is a habit, not a rescue.
3. Use the Sigh Before the Alarm Builds: When your mind races tonight, use one physiological sigh — two breaths in, one long breath out — to switch the alarm off before it climbs.

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere If this session gave you a little more room today, download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours.
👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today If you know someone who's running on empty but can't seem to switch off, please share this episode with them. Leaving a short rating or review on Apple Podcasts takes just 30 seconds and helps another anxious listener find us.
Until tomorrow, my friend… be kind. 


👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

Support the Show:Ad-Free Listening: Enjoy Calming Anxiety without ads at https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety--4110266/support

Buy Me a Coffee: Support hosting costs at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/calminganxiety

https://calminganxietypodcast.substack.com/?r=6zm0sc&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!



YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

Backing Music: Chris Collins

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Affiliate links to the gear I use the items that give me a more tranquil life.

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Items I use for a more relaxed way of life :)
Organic Pure Hemp CBD Capsules - https://amzn.to/3

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Calming Anxiety: Finding Light When You Feel Low

When you wake up to a low, grey weight rather than a racing mind or sharp panic, simply getting through the day can feel like too much to ask. In this episode of Calming Anxiety, Martin Hewlett—clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic—guides you through a gentle, 10-minute session designed to help you set that heavy weight down without forcing a mood change or trying to fix how you feel.Through a grounding breathwork practice focused on lengthening the exhale and filling the space behind the heart, we signal to your nervous system that it is safe to soften.

Accompanied by soothing hypnotherapy-inspired affirmations, this session offers a compassionate space to meet yourself with tenderness rather than blame on the days when you feel low.This session and over 3,000 others are available on Anchored, our companion app. Featuring a vast library of soothing meditations, Books at Bedtime, and a soft nightlight feature, Anchored is ready for you whenever you need it, day or night.Time Chapters

• 00:00 – Intro & Welcome: Meeting the Low, Grey Days
• 00:51 – Introducing Anchored: Your Companion App for Sleep & Mindfulness
• 01:20 – Grounding Breathwork: Lengthening the Exhale to Release Tension
• 03:04 – The Lifting Breath: Making Room Behind the Heart
• 04:32 – Affirmations for Low Mood & Self-Tenderness
• 08:15 – 3 Daily Caring Tips for a Happier, Gentler Life
• 09:33 – Awakening, Outro & Be Kind

Affirmations for Healing & Self-TendernessRepeat these gently to yourself or simply let them settle as you listen:

• "This heaviness is not the whole of me."
• "I am allowed to feel low, and I am allowed to feel better."
• "I am worthy of care, even on the days I cannot feel it."
• "When I feel low, I meet myself with tenderness, never with blame."
• "The light returns in its own time, and I allow it."
• "I am allowed to rest without first having to earn it."
• "I am still here, and today, that is enough."

3 Daily Caring Tips

1. Move the Body Just a Little: You don't need a walk that fixes everything. Simply stand up, reach both arms toward the ceiling, and let them fall. Motion lifts the mood in ways thinking rarely can.
2. Lower the Bar for Today: On a low day, a good day isn't a productive one—it’s simply one you move through with kindness toward yourself. Let enough be enough.
3. Reach Toward One Connection: Send a message or make a quick call to one person. Leave the door open just a crack, and remember you were never meant to carry this heavy weight alone.

Outro & Call to ActionIf these ten minutes lifted even the smallest corner of your day, please consider sharing Calming Anxiety with someone who might be quietly struggling. Leaving a quick review on Apple Podcasts also helps other souls find their way to our community.Don't forget to download Anchored, the companion app! Get all of our daily episodes, sleep stories, and calming audio tools packed into one simple place in your pocket whenever you need them.Until tomorrow, my friend... in everything, be kind.


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Backing Music: Chris Collins

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Affiliate links to the gear I use the items that give me a more tranquil life.

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Items I use for a more relaxed way of life :)
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Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The Man Who Loved His Kind by Virginia Woolf — Full Short Story Read Aloud | Sleep Story for Insomnia, Anxiety & Deep Sleep | Books at Bedtime

 

A calming bedtime story to help you fall asleep — the complete, unabridged short story The Man Who Loved His Kind by Virginia Woolf, narrated slowly and softly for anyone lying awake with insomnia, anxiety or a racing mind in the small hours.

 

Trotting through Deans Yard one afternoon, Prickett Ellis runs straight into Richard Dalloway. They were at school together and haven't met in twenty years. There's an invitation to a party that evening, accepted before either man quite means it — and Prickett Ellis, a plain, hard-working barrister who has never cared for society, spends the whole night standing against a wall in a borrowed dress suit, watching people he has decided to despise. You can listen offline, any time you wake in the night, in the Anchored app —

 👉 download on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

That morning he had done something genuinely good: won a case for the Brunners without taking a fee, and been given a clock in thanks by two elderly people in their best clothes. He puts it on his mantelpiece and it is the proudest moment of his life. And all evening he cannot stop needing someone in that room to know about it.

 

Then he is introduced to Miss O'Keefe — arrogant, abrupt, and carrying her own private ache about a tired woman and two children shut out of a locked garden square. They sit together in the empty garden with the towers of Westminster above them, and they do each other quiet harm. Two people who love humanity, who cannot manage one conversation.

 

This is one of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway party stories, set at the same Westminster gathering as the novel, and it is a beautifully observed piece about pride, self-consciousness and the loneliness of being certain you are right. Woolf never takes a side. Perfect for anyone who finds classic literature and long-form audiobooks more restful than silence.

 

There is nothing to keep track of, no jeopardy, and nothing to solve. Just a summer evening, a party going on upstairs, and two people in a garden. If you drift off in the first few minutes, that is exactly what this reading is for.

 

This is our seventh Virginia Woolf reading in the Books at Bedtime series, following Kew Gardens, The Mark on the Wall, Solid Objects, The Lady in the Looking Glass, A Haunted House and In the Orchard — all of which are in the feed if this one suits you. The Man Who Loved His Kind was written around the time of Mrs Dalloway and first published in 1944, in the posthumous collection A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, assembled by Leonard Woolf after her death.

 

Books at Bedtime is the sleep story and classic audiobook series from Calming Anxiety, hosted and narrated by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett — alongside Coffee Break for the Soul and the daily ten-minute guided meditations for anxiety, panic attacks and sleep. If long-form bedtime stories for adults help you sleep, this series is written for those long, wakeful hours.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

 

Download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours.


👉 Download Anchored on the App Store today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

If this reading helped you sleep, please share it with someone who lies awake, and leave a 30-second rating or review on Apple Podcasts — it is the single kindest thing you can do for a small independent show.

 

Sleep well. And until tomorrow …be kind.

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.