Choose a place where you’ve felt at ease, real or imagined. A beach, a kitchen, a park bench, a room you love. Pick one without strong ties to loss or hard memories. If you don’t see pictures in your mind, that’s common. Thinking about the place, or remembering how it sounds and feels, works too. If something upsetting comes up, open your eyes, look around the room, and name a few things you can see. If you’ve been through trauma and closing your eyes or turning inward doesn’t feel safe, keep your eyes open, or try this first with a therapist.

Narration

Female voiceMale voice

Read along

1. Get comfortable, sitting or lying down. Let your eyes close, or rest them on one spot.
2. Take a slow breath in, and a long, easy breath out. One more like that.
3. Think of a place where you’ve felt at ease. Somewhere you’ve been, or somewhere you make up. Take your time choosing.
4. Picture yourself arriving there. Are you standing, sitting, or lying down? Notice what’s under you. Grass, sand, a wooden floor, a soft chair.
5. Look around slowly. What’s close to you, and what’s farther off? Notice the colors, and how bright or dim the light is.
6. Pick one thing and look at it more closely. Its shape, its color, the way the light lands on it.
7. Now listen. What sounds belong to this place? Wind, water, birds, voices far away, or a deep quiet.
8. And the air on your skin. Is it warm or cool? Is there a breeze, or sun, or shade?
9. Breathe in through your nose, and find the smell of this place. Salt, cut grass, rain, bread, wood smoke, whatever belongs here.
10. Feel your body in this place. Your hands, your feet, the weight of you resting. Let yourself be as comfortable here as you’d like.
11. Stay a while. If your mind wanders off, find your way back through one sight, one sound, or one feeling from this place.
12. If you like, give the place a word, something short that brings it back. You can use that word another time to return.
13. Rest here. There’s nothing to do. Let the scene be as clear or as faint as it is.
14. When you’re ready, let the place fade. If you’re going to sleep, stay with whatever is left of it. If not, feel the surface under you, take a fuller breath, and open your eyes.
15. Your calm place will be there whenever you want to go back.

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Everyday Insight’s tools are for education and personal reflection. They are not therapy or medical care, and they are not for emergencies. In an emergency, call 911. If you are in crisis in the United States, call or text 988.