Unwind with Jessica Porter

What if you could teach your nervous system a new way to respond to anxiety?

Our subconscious minds are extraordinary learning machines. Through repetition, they develop habits and automatic responses—including the habit of becoming increasingly activated when we encounter uncertainty or stress. But the same learning ability that reinforces anxiety can also help us develop a new response.

In this Deep Unwind, Jessica guides you through a gentle hypnosis exercise designed to help you relax your muscles even when your nervous system feels activated. Settling into a comfortable armchair beside a crackling fire, you'll discover an imaginary volume dial that allows you to practice turning down the intensity of your response, one small degree at a time.

With practice, activation can become a cue for softness, relaxation, and greater ease. You're teaching your subconscious mind a new habit—and discovering that you can meet life's uncertainties with more space, balance, and calm.

This Unwind includes:

Anxiety relief, nervous system regulation, retraining your nervous system, guided hypnosis, subconscious reprogramming, anxiety response, stress response, calming the nervous system, anxiety feedback loop,  building new habits, relaxation for anxiety.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind: Finding Your Oasis of Calm 🌴 

What if calm isn't somewhere you have to escape to, but a place within you... that you can return to, tend, and strengthen?

In this Daily Unwind, we travel into the desert toward a cool, green oasis: palm trees moving in the breeze, clear water fed by an underground spring, smooth stones warmed by the sun. As the body settles and the mind softens, the oasis becomes something more than a place. It becomes a reminder of the natural spring of wellbeing within you—and the more often you return to it, the more familiar the path becomes.

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This Unwind includes: guided relaxation, hypnosis, oasis meditation, nervous system regulation, calming anxiety, inner peace, guided imagery,  stress relief, mindfulness, subconscious mind, nervous system regulation, wellbeing.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind: Practicing Gratitude to Stay Centered 🙏 

When the world feels uncertain, gratitude can bring us back to the place where our own life is actually happening: inside our bodies, inside our nervous systems, and within our own spheres of influence. In this Deep Unwind, we settle into a deeply relaxed state and explore gratitude as a way of grounding ourselves in what is here, what is meaningful, and what we love.  

After a gentle hypnotic unwind, I share some of the things I’m grateful for right now: a dining room table that brings people together, the first colors of a New England autumn, my enormous old Garland stove, and even the strangely satisfying pleasure of solving problems.  

And finally, I’m grateful for you — the people who followed me from Sleep Magic to Unwind, who listen, receive, and make this strange and wonderful relationship possible. 

This Unwind includes:

gratitude meditation, guided relaxation, nervous system regulation, grounding exercise for anxiety, appreciation, calming an active mind, emotional regulation, body awareness, relaxation for anxiety, positive focus, guided hypnosis. 

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind Library: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 📖 

Relax into one of the most beloved spiritual novels of the twentieth century: Siddhartha.

We’ll begin with some fascinating background on Hermann Hesse—his unusual childhood connection to India, his own restless search for spiritual understanding, and the remarkable second life his work found among the counterculture of the 1960s. At the heart of Siddhartha is a question that still feels contemporary: How do you know something for yourself? 

Then we’ll relax... deeply... as we enter Hesse’s world: We meet young Siddhartha—admired, gifted, deeply loved, and yet acutely aware of a longing that religious teachings cannot satisfy. Beneath the banyan trees, beside the river, and under a changing night sky, the first steps of his extraordinary journey begin. 

Let the story wash over you as you relax into Hesse’s timeless exploration of wisdom, self-discovery, and the inner life.

This Unwind includes:

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, classic literature, relaxing literature, hypnosis, spiritual journey, self-discovery, Eastern philosophy, Brahman, Atman, meditation, nervous system regulation, relaxing storytelling, classic books, literature for relaxation

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Daily Unwind: Unplug and Recharge 🔌 

We spend so much of our lives plugged in—to phones, computers, the news, social media--as we vibrate with the constant buzz of the digital world. In this Daily Unwind, we power it all down and return to quieter, more powerful, sources of energy.

We’ll begin by relaxing deeply into the body, allowing all that digital energy to drain away. Then, we recharge by connecting with the more natural sources of energy all around us: the air, the earth, the sun, good food, and the warmth and energy we exchange with other human beings.

A short daytime hypnosis for feeling private, contained, connected, energized—and fully alive.

This Unwind includes:

guided hypnosis, daytime relaxation, unplugging, digital detox, nervous system regulation, screen break, deep relaxation, positive energy, guided imagery, stress relief, recharging, mindfulness, self-hypnosis, mind-body connection, digital overwhelm, and calming an active mind

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind: Relax Into Change… A Little at a Time 🍁 

Change rarely happens all at once. A whisper of cool air appears in the late-summer breeze. A single maple leaf turns yellow. One small shift creates the conditions for another, until almost imperceptibly, something new has emerged.  

In this Deep Unwind, Jessica explores the gentle, incremental nature of change and the remarkable ways your body is  adapting from moment to moment. As you settle beneath a warm blanket, you'll watch a maple tree outside your window respond to the changing season—first with tiny flecks of yellow and gold among the green, then gradually surrendering to brilliant autumn color.  

Along the way, you'll bring your attention inward to the countless subtle processes happening inside your own body as breathing, circulation, muscles and the nervous system continually adjust. With each return to the body, you'll relax a little more deeply, allowing one small shift to lead naturally into another. 

This Unwind includes:

Guided hypnosis, deep relaxation, seasonal transition, nervous system regulation, mind-body connection, letting go, sensory awareness, stress relief, and deep rest.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Daily Unwind: Create a Healthy Trigger 👌 

We hear a lot about triggers—the words, events, sensations and experiences that can create powerful emotional responses. But what if you could intentionally create a trigger for something you want to feel?

In this Daily Unwind, Jessica guides you into a deeply relaxed state and introduces a simple practice for creating a positive association between a physical gesture and a feeling of peace. 

After relaxing deeply, you'll pair that peaceful state with a simple gesture: gently touching the tip of your index finger to your thumb while saying the word “peace.” By repeating and practicing  this new "trigger", you can strengthen this gesture as a personal cue for reconnecting with a calm, relaxed state—something you can return to at any time throughout your day.

This Unwind includes:

Guided hypnosis, positive triggers, subconscious associations, nervous system regulation, positive reinforcement, anchoring, calming an active mind, emotional regulation, relaxation practice, self-hypnosis, stress relief, and a simple relaxation technique you can practice anywhere.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind: Relax Into the Sweetness of Late Summer 🌽 

Late Summer has a rhythm all its own—a time when gardens are full, sunlight turns golden, sweet foods ripen, and the expansive energy of summer begins to settle.

Inspired by the fifth season of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this Deep Unwind takes you into a late-summer garden at the end of a warm day. As you relax more and more deeply, you'll wander among tall rows of sweet corn, tightly layered cabbages, climbing green beans, heavy butternut squash and apple trees bending beneath ripening fruit. Along the way, you'll touch, smell and gather the foods of the season, experiencing the garden through your senses.
Finally, you'll rest,  as the last golden light of the day warms your face, allowing yourself to receive the richness of the garden and experience that same sweetness and fullness within yourself.

This Unwind includes:

Guided hypnosis, deep relaxation, TCM Five Elements, Late Summer, sensory visualization, garden meditation, nervous system regulation, parasympathetic relaxation, mindfulness, receiving, guided imagery, subconscious relaxation, stress relief, and deep rest.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Daily Unwind: Come Back to Your Senses 👂

Your senses offer six different channels into the experience of being alive.

In this Daily Unwind, Jessica leads you through a simple sensory practice inspired by an exercise she learned at New York City's School of Practical Philosophy. You'll move through touch, hearing, sight, smell and taste, before turning your awareness inward to notice the physical and emotional sensations arising inside your body.

This is an Unwind to return to again and again. With practice, your senses can become more vivid and accessible, creating little moments throughout your day when you naturally drop below thought and into the direct experience of being here—seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and feeling your life... as you're living it!

This Unwind includes: Sensory awareness, guided hypnosis, mindfulness, grounding, body awareness, interoception, nervous system regulation, relaxation for overthinking, calming an active mind, sensory meditation, and mind-body connection.

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Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica

Deep Unwind: Practicing Self Acceptance 💚

What if you accept yourself ... as you are?

In this Deep Unwind, you'll follow a quiet path through the woods, at the edge of a moonlit lake, to a hammock suspended between two maple trees. Wrapped in a warm blanket beneath the stars, you'll settle deeper and deeper as the waves whisper against the shore.

Beginning with the physical body, you'll practice simply being present with each part of yourself, from your face... all the way down to your feet. Then you'll turn toward your emotional world—experiencing feelings as they arrive in their own shapes, textures and rhythms, while your awareness becomes wider and calmer.

Finally, you'll look upward into a sky filled with stars and connect with the steady inner being that witnesses every thought, feeling and story—the deepest part of yourself, peaceful and expansive, resting within the larger world around you.

This Unwind includes:

Guided hypnosis, self-acceptance, body acceptance, self-compassion, deep relaxation, nervous system regulation, parasympathetic relaxation, guided visualization, inner peace, and subconscious relaxation.

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Support the show

Explore Unwind behind-the-scenes at Patreon.

Thanks for unwinding with me!

💗 Jessica