← Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf | Hypnotic Bedtime Story
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Jessica Porter
Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Hi everyone. Thank you all for being here. You know, I want to say something sort of weird and corny maybe. I want to thank you for daring to relax. You know, we live in weird times and it may feel counterintuitive to relax because relaxing makes us slow down and look inside and let go of running the show. And in that way, it helps us become part of a bigger picture. And paradoxically, it helps us to be ourselves fully. And that's cool because life is full of paradoxes. In fact, the whole system is kind of run on paradoxes. So it takes courage to relax. And I may be the first person to have ever said that, but I really think it's true because there's a letting go in it, letting go of ego and control. And yet I think in that relaxation we find much deeper power and connection and possibility. So thank you for coming here and doing that with me. I really, really appreciate it. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible. Have you ever gone through something like a breakup, burnout, big life stuff, and thought, I wish I had someone to talk to, someone trained to really help? I've been there. And what I love about Rula is that they've made therapy so much easier to access, especially when it feels hard to start. Rula is a healthcare provider, not just an app, and they help match you with a licensed therapist who takes your insurance. You can schedule sessions that work for you, sometimes as soon as the next day. And the average cost is just $15 per session. And Rula doesn't stop at matching you. They check in, support your progress, and really stay with you on your mental health journey. So if therapy has been on your mind, or if you've ever thought, I could really use someone to talk to, this is your sign. Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well being. So head on over to rula.com sleepmagic to get started today and after you sign up, they'll ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and tell them Sleepmagic sent you. Go to r u l a.com sleepmagic and take the first step towards better mental health. Today you deserve quality care from someone who cares. Okay, tonight I'm reading from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. When I first started reading books Here at Sleep Magic, the first novel I read from was to the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. So this is a bit of a circling back. Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in London into an intellectually vibrant and well connected family. Her father was a literary critic and her mother a nurse who was also a celebrated beauty. And although the household was devoted to literature and Virginia had access to her father's library, she was denied a formal education, at least university education, like her brothers received. So she was largely self taught. And perhaps this deprivation is part of what gave her her feminist spark and also allowed her to be so stylistically fresh and experimental in her own work. She never really learned how to the more formal rules, so she didn't feel bound by them. In 1904, Virginia and her siblings moved to the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury, where they eventually started a circle of writers, philosophers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. They were totally ahead of their time discussing politics, art and sexuality. And Virginia Woolf seemed not only ahead of her time, but sort of outside of time altogether. So as we circle back to her writing, it strikes me that hers is the most hypnotic of all the writers I've read over the last few years. Her style, and she was one of the first writers to use stream of consciousness writing, well, it meanders in a sort of dreamlike way, the same way our minds sort of let go as they relax. So it's perfect for reading to you guys as you drift and float and dream Tonight. Night and Day is one of her earlier works published in 1919, and it's set in Edwardian London. In it, she explores the lives and romantic entanglements of two young women, Catherine Hilbury and Mary Datchett, against the backdrop of societal expectations and the burgeoning women's suffrage movement. Night and Day delves into love, marriage, and the search for personal fulfillment in the face of societal pressures, especially for women at that time. As always, I will begin with some deep relaxation, but after that, Virginia Woolf will take you on a verbal ride into sleep. So just let her words take you deeper and deeper. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position. And let's begin. Just allow your eyes to close easily and gently and bring your awareness to your breath. That's the first thing we do here every night. Close our eyes and bring our awareness to the breath. And as your awareness comes home to your breath, comes home to your body, everything begins to slow down. Whether it's quickly or slowly. Your mind begins to settle like a puppy dog settling down. Good. So now let's bring your awareness up into your eyelids for a moment. I'd like you to imagine that your eyelids are feeling heavy, sleepy, very relaxed. And as you allow that heaviness to take over your eyelids, let's imagine for a moment that that heaviness is so complete, so total, that your eyes will not open. Now, obviously, your eyes can open if you want them to, but we're engaging the imagination right now, so let's imagine that they can't. And as you allow your imagination to really take over, and in a moment, I'm going to ask you to test your eyelids to make sure they will not open by wiggling your eyebrows. And we're just pretending. Just pretending. So let's imagine now that your eyes will not open. And I'd like you to test them by wiggling your eyebrows while your eyes remain shut. Good. You can stop now. Well done. We've just told our brains, hey, I'm pretending now. I'm in pretend mode. And that's a great place to be because it opens up a whole dimension inside of you. So now let's allow that relaxation you have in your eyelids. Just imagine that it's so heavy, so relaxed, so comfortable, that it's spilling back into your brain. Let's imagine a whole sort of waterfall of relaxation from your eyes, back through your brain. And that relaxation is causing your head to feel nice and heavy. Heavy on the pillow. And just allow your head to sink into the pillow like a bowling ball. Good. And now that your head is so heavy, I'd like you to imagine that the muscles of your face are becoming soft. Soft and relaxed. Good. The muscles of your face may even feel. Feel heavy as well. Great. So let's imagine this wonderful waterfall of relaxation that has moved from your eyes back into your head. Let's imagine it moving down throughout your neck into your shoulders, Like a waterfall of relaxation is pouring over your shoulders like you're standing in a waterfall of relaxation. And it's moving all the way down your shoulders, down your arms, causing your arms to feel so nice and heavy, held down by this lovely waterfall. So nice to allow your shoulders and your arms to just surrender to the relaxation. Good. And you'll notice that this waterfall of relaxation is also creating a mist. Like every waterfall has a beautiful mist. And now you're inhaling this mistake of relaxation as it moves down into your chest, moves down into your torso, deep into your belly. Just imagine that mist of relaxation moving inside of your body. And now that it's inside your rib cage is expanding everything internally is becoming nice and soft, your belly letting go and your breath dropping deeper into your body. Good, the muscles of your back softening all the way down to your lower back and buttocks relaxing, letting go, feeling nice and heavy on the bed, your pelvis feeling heavy, heavy on the bed because the day is done as that waterfall of relaxation moves all the way down your legs, down your thighs, through your knees, down your calves, through your ankles, all the way down into your feet, the soles of your feet and your toes feeling so heavy, heavy and it's so nice to let go. And I'd like you now to bring your awareness to any sounds that may be going on around you. Just notice if there are sounds from your environment, maybe an air conditioner or sounds from the street or even birds outside, other people in your home, and just allow those sounds to simply move through your body as they take you deeper and deeper. This is the magic of your own mind, deciding how you will experience your reality, making choices that work for you, as the sound of my voice also takes you deeper and deeper. And with every word that I read tonight, you'll relax more and more as you drift and float. Chapter One it was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Catherine Hilbury was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight. But although she was silent, she was evidently mistress of a situation which was familiar enough to her, and inclined to let it take its way for the 600th time, perhaps without bringing into play any of her unoccupied faculties. A single glance was enough to show that Mrs. Hilbury was so rich in the gifts which make tea parties of elderly, distinguished people successful that she scarcely needed any help from her daughter, provided that the tiresome business of teacups and bread and butter was discharged for her. Considering that the little party had been seated round the tea table for less than 20 minutes, the animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively was very creditable to the hostess, it suddenly came into Catherine's mind that if someone opened the door at this moment, he would think that they were enjoying themselves. He would think, what an extremely nice house to come into, and instinctively she laughed and said something to increase the noise for the credit of the house, presumably, since she herself had not been feeling exhilarated at the very same moment, rather to her amusement, the door was flung open and a young man entered the room. Catherine, as she shook hands with him, asked him in her own mind, now, do you think we're enjoying ourselves enormously, Mr. Denham? Mother, she said aloud, for she saw that her mother had forgotten his name. That fact was perceptible to Mr. Denham also, and increased the awkwardness which inevitably attends the entrance of a stranger into a room full of people much at their ease, and all launched upon sentences at the same time. It seemed to Mr. Denham that as if a thousand softly padded doors had closed between him and the street outside, a fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather empty space of the drawing room, all silver, where the candles were grouped on the tea table and ruddy again in the firelight. With the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head and his body still tingling with his quick walk along the streets and in and out of traffic and foot passengers. This drawing room seemed very remote and still, and the faces of the elderly people were mellowed at some distance from each other and had a bloom on them, owing to the fact that the air in the drawing room was thickened by blue grains of mist. Mr. Denham had come in as Mr. Fortescue, the eminent novelist, reached the middle of a very long sentence. He kept this suspended while the newcomer sat down and Mrs. Hillbury deftly joined the severed parts with by leaning towards him and remarking, now what would you do if you were married to an engineer and had to live in Manchester? Mr. Denham? Surely she could learn Persian broke in a thin elderly gentleman. Is there no retired schoolmaster or man of letters in Manchester with whom she could read Persian? A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in Manchester, Catherine explained. Mr. Denham muttered something which was indeed all that was required of him, and the novelist went on where he had Left off. Privately, Mr. Denham cursed himself very sharply for having exchanged the freedom of the street for this sophisticated drawing room, where, among other disagreeables, he certainly would not appear at his best. He glanced round him and saw that, save for Catherine, they were all over 40, the only consolation being that Mr. Fortescue was a considerable celebrity, so that tomorrow one might be glad to have met him. Have you ever been to Manchester? He asked Catherine. Never, she replied. Why? Do you object to it? Then? Catherine stirred her tea and seemed to speculate, so Denham thought upon the duty of filling somebody else's cup. But she was really wondering how she was going to keep the strange young man in harmony with the rest. She observed that he was compressing his teacup so that there was a danger lest the thin china might cave inwards. She could see that he was nervous. One would expect a bony young man with his face slightly reddened by the wind and his hair not altogether smooth to be nervous in such a party. Further, he probably disliked this kind of thing and had come out of curiosity, or because her father had invited him. Anyhow, he would not be easily combined with the rest. I should think there would be no one to talk to in Manchester, she replied at random. Mr. Fortescue had been observing her for a moment or two, as novelists are inclined to observe, and at this remark he smiled and made it the text for a little further speculation. In spite of a slight tendency to exaggeration, Catherine decidedly hits the mark, he said, and lying back in his chair, with his opaque contemplative eyes fixed on the ceiling and the tips of his fingers pressed together, he depicted first the horrors of the streets of Manchester, and then the bare, immense moors on the outskirts of the town, and then the scrubby little house in which the girl would live, and then the professors and the miserable young students devoted to the more strenuous works of our younger dramatists who would visit her, and how her appearance would change by degrees, and how she would fly to London, and how Catherine would have to lead her about as one leads an eager dog in a chain past rows of clamorous butcher shops. Poor dear creature. Oh, Mr. Fortescue. Exclaimed Mrs. Hillbury as he finished. I had just written to say how I envied her. I was thinking of the big gardens and the dear old ladies in mittens who read nothing but the spectator and snuffed the candles. Have they all disappeared? I told her she would find the nice things of London without the horrid streets that depress one. So there is the university, said the thin gentleman who had previously insisted upon the existence of people knowing Persian. I know there are moors there because I read about them in a book the other day, said Catherine. I am grieved and amazed at the ignorance of my family, Mr. Hillbury remarked. He was an elderly man with a pair of oval hazel eyes which were rather bright for his time of life and relieved the heaviness of his face. He played constantly with a little green stone attached to his watch chain, thus displaying long and very sensitive fingers, and had a habit of moving his head hither and thither very quietly without Altering the position of his large and rather corpulent body, so that he seemed to be providing himself incessantly with food for amusement and reflection, with the least possible expenditure of energy. One might suppose that he had passed the time of life when his ambitions were personal, or that he had gratified them as far as he was likely to do, and now employed his considerable acuteness rather to observe and reflect than to attain any result. Catherine, so denham decided, while Mr. Fortescue built up another rounded structure of words, had a likeness to each of her parents, but these elements were rather oddly blended. She had the quick, impulsive movements of her mother, the lips parting often to speak and closing again, and the dark oval eyes of her father brimming with light. Upon a basis of sadness. Or since she was too young to have acquired a sorrowful point of view, one might say that the basis was not sadness so much as a spirit given to contemplation and self control. Judging by her hair, her coloring, and the shape of her features, she was striking, if not actually beautiful. Decision and composure stamped her a combination of qualities that produced a very marked character and one that was not calculated to put a young man who scarcely knew her at his ease. For the rest, she was tall. Her dress was of some quiet color, with old yellow tinted lace for ornament, to which the spark of an ancient jewel gave its one red gleam. Denham noticed that although silent, she kept sufficient control of the situation to answer immediately. Her mother appealed to her for help. Yet it was obvious to him that she attended only with the surface skin of her mind. It struck him that her position at the tea table among all these elderly people was not without its difficulties, and he checked his inclination to find her or her attitude generally antipathetic to him. The talk had passed over Manchester after dealing with it very generously. Would it be the battle of Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada? Catherine? Her mother demanded. Trafalgar, Mother. Trafalgar, of course. How stupid of me. Another cup of tea with a thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr. Fortescue, please explain my absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman noses, even if one meets them in omnibuses. Mr. Hillbury had interposed, so far as Denham was concerned, and talked a great deal of sense about the solicitor's profession and the changes which he had seen in his lifetime. Indeed, Denham properly fell to his lot, owing to the fact that an article by Denham upon some legal matter published by Mr. Hilberry in his Review had brought them acquainted. But when, A moment later Mrs. Sutton Bailey was announced, he turned to her, and Mr. Denham found himself sitting silent, rejecting possible things to say beside Catherine, who was silent too. Being much about the same age and both under 30, they were prohibited from the use of a great many convenient phrases which launch conversation into smooth waters. They were further silenced by Catherine's rather malicious determination not to help this young man, in whose upright and resolute bearing she detected something hostile to her surroundings by any of the usual feminine amenities. They therefore sat silent, Denham controlling his desire to say something abrupt and explosive which should shock her into life. But Mrs. Hillbury was immediately sensitive to any silence in the the drawing room as of a dumb note in a sonorous scale. And leaning across the table, she observed in the curiously tentative, detached manner which always gave her phrases the likeness of butterflies flaunting from one sunny spot to another. Do you know, Mr. Denham, you remind me so much of dear Mr. Ruskin. Is it the tie, Catherine, or his hair, or the way he sits in his chair? Do tell me, Mr. Denham, are you an admirer of Ruskin? Someone the other day said to me, oh, no, we don't read Ruskin, Mrs. Hilbury. What do you read, I wonder, for you can't spend all your time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into the bowels of the earth. She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and then at Catherine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs. Hillbury seemed possessed by a brilliant idea and exclaimed, I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Catherine. I'm sure he's not like that dreadful young man Mr. Ponting, who told me that he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all, what is the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half, too, I should say, she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue. Denham Rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all there was to see that Catherine rose at the same moment, and, saying, perhaps you'd like to see the pictures, led the way across the dining room to a smaller room opening out of it. The smaller room was something like a chapel in a cathedral or a grotto in a cave, for the booming sound of the traffic in the distance suggested the soft surge of water. Waters and the oval mirrors with their silver surface were like deep pools trembling beneath starlight. But the comparison to a religious temple of some kind was the more apt of the two, for the little room was crowded with relics. As Catherine touched different spots, lights sprang here and there and revealed a square mass of red and gold books, and then a long skirt in blue and white paint lustrous behind glass, and then a mahogany writing table with its orderly equipment, and finally a picture above the table to which special illumination was accorded. When Catherine had touched these last lights, she stood back as much as to say, there Denham found himself looked down upon by the eyes of the great poet Richard Allardyce, and suffered a little shock which would have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes looked at him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with divine friendliness, which embraced him and passed on to contemplate the entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the beautiful large eyes were left dark in the surrounding dimness. Catherine waited as though for him to receive full impression, and then she said, this is his writing table. He used this pen, and she lifted a quill pen and laid it down again. The writing table was splashed with old ink and the pen disheveled in service. There lay the gigantic gold rimmed spectacles ready to his hand, and beneath the table was a pair of large worn slippers, one of which Catherine picked up, remarking, I think my grandfather must have been at least twice as large as anyone is nowadays. This, she went on as if she knew what she had to say by heart, is the original manuscript of the Ode to Winter. The early poems are far less corrected then the later. Would you like to look at it? While Mr. Denham examined the manuscript, she glanced up at her grandfather and for the thousandth time fell into a dreamy, pleasant state in which he seemed to be the companion of those giant men of their own lineage. At any rate, and the insignificant present moment was put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on the canvas surely never beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon. And it did not seem to matter what she and this young man said to each other, for they were only small people. This is a copy of the first edition of the poems, she continued, without considering the fact that Mr. Denham was still occupied with the manuscript, which contains several poems that have not been reprinted as well as corrections. She paused for a minute and then went on as if these spaces had all been calculated. That lady in the blue is my great grandmother by Millington. Here's my uncle's walking stick. He was Sir Richard Warburton, you know, and rode with Havelock to the relief of Lucknow. And then, let me see oh, that's the original. Allardice, 1697. The founder of the family fortunes with his wife. Someone gave us this bowl the other day because it has their crest and initials. We think it must have been given them to celebrate their silver wedding day here. She stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr. Denham said no, nothing. Her feeling that he was antagonistic to her, which had lapsed while she thought of her family possessions, returned so keenly that she stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at him. Her mother, wishing to connect him reputably with the great dead, had compared him with Mr. Ruskin, and the comparison was in Catherine's mind and led her to be more critical of the young man than was fair. For a young man paying a call in a tailcoat isn't a different element altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing immutably from behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular face, a face built for swiftness and decision rather than for massive contemplation. The forehead broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean shaven and at once dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean with a deeply running tide of red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine impersonality and authority, might reveal more subtle emotions under favorable circumstances, for they were large and of a clear brown color. They seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate, but Catherine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned with side whiskers. In his spare build and thin, though healthy cheeks, she saw tokens of an angular and acrid soul. His voice, she noticed, had a slight vibrating or creaking sound in it. As he laid down the manuscript and said, you must be very proud of your family, Ms. Hilbury. Yes, I am, Catherine answered. And she added, do you think there's anything wrong in that? Wrong? How should it be wrong? It must be a bore, though, showing your things to visitors, he added reflectively, not if visitors like them. Isn't it difficult to live up to your ancestors? He proceeded. I dare say I shouldn't try to write poetry. Catherine replied. No, and that's what I should hate. I couldn't bear my grandfather to cut me out. And after all, Denim went on glancing around him satirically, as Catherine thought, it's not your grandfather only you're cut out all the way round. I suppose you come of one of the most distinguished families in England. There are the Warburtons and the Mannings. And you're related to the Otways, aren't you? I read it all in some magazine, he added. The Odd Ways are my cousins, catherine replied. Well, said Denham in a final tone of voice, as if his argument were proved. Well, said Catherine. I don't see that you've proved anything. Denham smiled in a provoking way. He was amused and gratified to find that he had the power to annoy his oblivious, supercilious hostess if he could not impress her, though, he would have preferred to impress her. He sat silent, holding the precious little book of poems unopened in his hands, and Catherine watched him, the melancholy or contemplative expression deepening in her eyes as her annoyance faded. She appeared to be considering many things. She had forgotten her duties. Sam sa.