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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. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you for showing up for this experience. But that really means showing up for yourself and practicing relaxation which as you practice gets easier and easier and has so many benefits. So if you're enjoying Sleep Magic and want more, please subscribe. You get extra episodes, no ads, and access to the whole back catalog. And thank you no matter what for simply listening. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.

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Tonight Ways of Nature by John Burroughs A few years ago I was looking for an apartment with a friend. We sat down and talked about our bottom line requirements for a place to live. Mine were a bathtub, a dishwasher and I had to be able to hear the birds. You see, I'd lived in cities most of my life and I realized I wanted to feel closer to nature. So sure enough, we found a place where I could sit outside or even inside and hear the birds. Now, I'm not a bird watcher or particularly interested in birds themselves. Sorry birds. But my gut knew that hearing them was something I needed. Something special. And I was right. Hearing the birds was fantastic. Is fantastic. Well, tonight I'm going to let John Burroughs wax eloquent on the specifics and benefits of birdsong. But my personal takeaways are these. First, birdsong is a test of my self centeredness. My mind can be so cluttered and active sometimes that when it finally opens up to hear the birds, I'm like whoa, there's a whole symphony of birds I wasn't even hearing. My thinking was so loud it had drowned it out. Second, birdsong seems like a natural upper. It sort of tickles and stimulates the brain. It seems to speak to parts of my brain that the modern digitized world cannot reach. Birdsong feels downright healthy and sure enough, there are studies that show exactly that. I looked online and found a quote the study on birdsong revealed that birdsong not only positively impacted anxiety, depression and general well being, but it also helped individuals self regulation, allowing for deep concentration and focus. So Tonight we hear more about birdsong from John Burroughs. Burroughs was a naturalist in New England, born in 1837, who was active in the conservationist movement and became good friends with other nature lovers like John Muir and Walt Whitman. He was extremely prolific, always writing about his favorite topic, the Great Outdoors. And the chapter I'm reading tonight on birds comes from his 19th book, Ways of Nature, published in 1905. As always, we'll begin with some deep relaxation and just allow the sound of my voice and Burrow's gentle, loving words. Well, burrow into your consciousness, taking you deeper and deeper. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position. And let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And now bring your awareness to your breath. And just as you bring your awareness to your breath, your mind is invited to have a little focus on the breath, a gentle focus. We don't need to be sort of razor sharp or laser focused. It's just softly inviting your awareness to land like a bird back home with your body. Hmm. Now, before we go on, I want to try one thing tonight where you will let yourself think about a moment that occurred today that you felt good about. Maybe something new happened and it was a surprise, or someone did something cool or generous, or you did something that you felt good about. Maybe it's just a moment where you appreciated something. Let's just relive that moment. Bring it back into your consciousness. Let yourself have that good feeling again. Good. Now, I'd like you to bring your awareness up into your eyelids and imagine that your eyelids are feeling heavy and relaxed. Just imagine that they're like these big, heavy velvet curtains in a theater. Heavy. And as your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier, I want you to accept the suggestion that they're so heavy you can't open them. And in a moment, I'm going to ask you to test them to make sure you can't open them by wiggling your eyebrows. And of course, you can open them if you want to, but we're imagining you can't. So now wiggle your eyebrows while your eyes remain closed. Good. And for some of you, already, you're beginning to go really, really deep, because you've practiced this. And just as you have practiced many, many other things in your life, like walking and talking and eating, you've gotten better and better at those things, and they happen automatically. Now, just as relaxation is beginning to be automatic inside you, your nervous system opening, relaxing so easily, like a default mode. Good. And this heaviness in your eyelids is the same warm heavy feeling that you will soon have throughout your entire body as you imagine that feeling moving back into your head, almost like a set of heavy velvet curtains is being drawn inside your head. And your head is feeling heavy on the pillow. And that wonderful heaviness is taking over your whole brain. And the heaviness is moving down your face now. And it feels nice to allow things to get heavy, especially at the end of the day, because the day is done and you are letting go. And you are designed to let go at the end of the day as you imagine the heaviness moving down into your shoulders, your shoulders feeling lovely and relaxed, letting go. All the burdens you've carried on your shoulders, the responsibilities, all melting down into a puddle on the floor. And in the morning you can find those things, things you want to find on the floor, pick them up if you want to. But you're noticing lately that you still get a lot of things done and are very active in the world without the heaviness on your shoulders, that you don't actually need it. And it feels so nice to let it go, let it melt away. Good as the heaviness moves down into your arms now, down into your biceps, down into your forearms, down into your hands, all becoming so heavy and relaxed as you let go. Letting go feels good. Letting go feels right. And now you notice that any sounds going on around you, sounds you may be hearing from within your environment, notice that they too are taking you deeper and deeper as you allow them to simply move through you, becoming part of the heavy, lovely, relaxed feeling deep inside as you go deeper and deeper. And the sound of my voice is taking you deeper and deeper. And my voice may even sound far away at certain times, or detached, as you allow yourself to drift and float and dream. You notice now that your whole torso is softening and relaxing, muscles in your belly becoming soft. Any tension you may have held in your chest during the day has dissolved. And any tension you may have held in your back is melting down into the bed. And you notice a softness deep inside as your breath becomes deeper and the relaxation moves deep inside of you. And your pelvis is feeling nice and heavy on the bed as the heaviness moves down your legs, all the way into your feet and your toes. Letting go, letting go. Because the day is done. Chapter 2 Bird Songs I suspect it requires a special gift of grief, grace to enable one to hear the bird songs. Some new power must be added to the ear or some obstruction removed. There are not only scales upon our eyes so that we do not see there are scales upon our ears so that we do not hear. A city woman who had spent much of her time in the country once asked a well known ornithologist to take her where she could hear the bluebird. What? Never heard the bluebird, said he. I have not, said the woman. Then you will never hear it, said the bird lover. Never hear it with that inward earth that gives beauty and meaning to the note. He could probably have taken her in a few minutes where she could have heard the call or warble of the bluebird. But it would have fallen upon unresponsive ears, upon ears that were not sensitized by love for the birds or associations with them. Bird songs are not music, properly speaking, but only suggestions of music. A great many people whose attention would be quickly arrested by the same volume of sound made by a musical instrument or by artificial means, never hear them at all. The sound of a boy's penny whistle, there in the grove where the meadow would separate itself more from the background of nature and be a greater challenge to the ear than is the strain of the thrush or the song of the sparrow. There is something elusive, indefinite, neutral about bird songs that makes them strike obliquely, as it were, upon the ear. And we are very apt to miss the them. They are a part of nature, the nature that lies about us, entirely occupied with our own affairs, and quite regardless of our presence. Hence it is with bird songs, as it is with so many other things in nature. They are what we make of them. The ear that hears them must be half breath creative. I am always disturbed when persons not especially observant of birds ask me to take them where they can hear a particular bird in whose song they have become interested through a description in some book. As I listen with them, I feel like apologizing for the bird. It has a bad cold, or has just heard some depressing news. Sometimes it will not let itself out. The song seems so casual and minor when you make a dead set at it. I have taken persons to hear the hermit thrush, and I have fancied that they were all the time saying to themselves, is that all? But should one hear the bird in his walk, when the mind is attuned to simple things and is open and receptive, when expectation is not aroused, and the song comes as a surprise out of the dusky silence of the woods, then one feels that it merits all the fine things that can be said of it. One of our popular writers and lecturers upon birds told me this incident. He had engaged to take two City girls for a walk in the country to teach them the names of the birds they might see and hear. Before they started, he read to them Henry Van Dyke's poem on the Song Sparrow, one of our best bird poems, telling them that the song sparrow was one of the first birds they were likely to hear as they proceeded with their walk. Sure enough, there by the roadside was a sparrow in song. The birdman called the attention of his companions to was some time before the unpracticed ears of the girls could make it out. Then one of them said the poem she had just heard, I suppose, still ringing in her ears. What, that little squeaky thing? The sparrow's song meant nothing to her at all. And how could she share the enthusiasm of the poet? Probably the warble of the robin or the call of the meadowlark or of the high holes, if they chanced to hear them, meant no more to these girls. If we have no associations with these sounds, they will mean very little to us. Their merit as musical performances is very slight. It is as signs of joy and love in nature, as heralds of spring, and as the spirit of the woods and fields made audible that they appeal to us. The drumming of the woodpeckers and of the ruffled grouse give great pleasure to a countryman. Though these sounds have not the corporation quality of real music. It is the same with the call of the migrating geese or the voice of any wild thing. Our pleasure in them is entirely apart from any considerations of music. Why does the wildflower, as we chance upon it in the woods or bogs, give us more pleasure than the more elaborate flower of the garden or lawn? Because it comes as a surprise, offers a greater contrast with its surroundings, and suggests a spirit and wild nature that seems to take thought of itself and to aspire to beautiful forms. The songs of caged birds are always disappointing because such birds have nothing but their musical qualities to recommend them to us. We have separated them from that which gives quality and meaning to their songs. One recalls Emerson's I thought the sparrow's note from heaven Singing at dawn on the alder bough. I brought him home in his nest at even he sings the song, but it cheers. Not now, for I did not bring home the river and the sky. He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. I have never yet seen a caged bird that I wanted, or at least not on account of its song, nor a wild flower that I wished to transfer to my garden. A caged skylark will sing its song sitting on a bit of Turf in the bottom of the cage. But you want to stop your ears. It is so harsh and sibilant and penetrating. But up there against the morning sky and above the wide expanse of fields, what delight we have in is not the concord of sweet sounds. It is the soaring spirit of gladness and ecstasy raining down upon us from heaven's gate. Then, if to the time and the place one could only add the association or hear the bird through the vista of the years, the song touched with the melody magic of youthful memories. One season a friend in England sent me a score of skylarks in a cage. I gave them their liberty in a field near my place. They drifted away and I never heard them or saw them again. But one Sunday a Scotchman from a neighboring city called upon me and declared with vain, visible excitement that on his way along the road he had heard a skylark. He was not dreaming. He knew it was a skylark, though he had not heard one since he had left the banks of the dune a quarter of a century or more before. What pleasure it gave him. How much more the song meant to him than it would have meant to me. For the moment, he was on his native heath again. Then I told him about the larks I had liberated, and he seemed to enjoy it all over again with renewed appreciation. Many years ago, some skylarks were liberated on Long island, and they became established there and may now occasionally be heard in certain localities. One summer day, a friend of mine was out there observing them. A lark was soaring and singing in the sky above him. An old Irishman came along and suddenly stopped as if transfixed to the spirit. A look of mingled delight and incredulity came into his face. Was he indeed hearing the bird of his youth? He took off his hat, turned his face skyward, and with moving lips and streaming eyes stood a long time regarding the bird. Ah, my friend thought, if I could only hear that song with his ears, how it brought back his youth and all those long gone days on his native hills. The power of bird songs over us is so much a matter of association that every traveler to other countries finds the feathered songsters of less merit than those he left behind. The stranger does not hear the birds in the same receptive, uncritical frame of mind as does the native. They are not in the same way the voices of the place and the season. What music can there be in that long, piercing, far heard note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but a native, or in the O ka' li of the red shouldered starling? As he rests upon the willows and march. A stranger would probably recognize melody in a wild wood, see quality in the flutings of the Vrie thrush. But how much more they would mean to him. After he had spent many successive Junes. Threading our northern trout streams and encamping on their banks. The Vrie will come early in the morning and again at sundown. And perch above your tent and blow his soft, reverberant note for many minutes at a time. The strain repeats the echoes of the limpid stream in the halls and corridors of the leafy woods. While In England in 1882, I rushed about two or three counties in late June and early July, bent on hearing the song of the nightingale. But I missed it by a few days, and in some cases, as it seemed only by a few hours. The nightingale seems to be wound up to go only so long or till about the middle of June. And it's only by a rare chance that you hear one after that date. Then I came home to hear a nightingale in song one winter morning in a friend's house in the city. It was a curious letdown to my enthusiasm. A caged song in a city chamber in broad daylight, in lieu of the wild, free song in the gloaming of an English landscape. I closed my eyes, abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried my best to fancy myself listening to the strain back there amid the scenes I had haunted in England. But with poor success. I suspect the nightingale's song, like the larks, needs vista, needs all the accessories of time and place. The song is not all in the singing, any more than the wit is all in the saying. It is in the occasion, the surroundings, the spirit of which it is the expression. My friend said that the bird did not fully let itself out. Its song was a brilliant medley of notes, no theme that I could detect, like the lark's song. In this respect, all the notes of the field and forest Appeared to be the gift of this bird. But what tone, what accent. Like that of a great poet. Nearly every May. I am seized with an impulse to go back to the scenes of my youth. And hear the bobolinks in the home meadows once more. I'm sure they sing. They're better than anywhere else. They probably drink nothing but dew. And the dew distilled in those high pastoral regions has surprising virtues. It gives a clear, full, vibrant quality to the birds, Voices that I have never heard elsewhere. The night of my arrival, I leave my southern window open. So that the meadow chorus may come back, pouring in before I'm up in the morning. How it does transport me athwart the years and make me a boy again. Sheltered by the paternal wing. On one occasion, the third morning after my arrival, a bobolink appeared with a new note in his song. The note sounded like the word baby uttered with a peculiar, tender resonance. But it was clearly an interpolation. It did not belong there. It had no relation to the rest of the song. Yet the bird never failed to utter it with the same joy and confidence as the rest of the song. Maybe it was the beginning of a variation that will, in time, result in an entirely new bobolink song. On my last spring visit to my native hills, my attention was attracted to another songster not seen or heard there in my youth, namely the prairie horned lark. Flocks of these birds used to be seen in some of the northern states in the late fall during their southern migrations. But within the last 20 years, they've become regular summer residents in the hilly parts of many sections of New York and New England. They are genuine skylarks and lack only the powers of song to make them as attractive as their famous cousins of Europe. The larks are ground birds when they perch, and sky birds when they sing. From the turf to the clouds, nothing between. Our horned lark mounts upward on quivering wing in the true lark fashion, and spread out against the sky at an altitude of 2 or 300ft, hovers and sings. The watcher and listener below holds him in his eye, but the ear catches only a few faint, broken, half inarticulate note now and then, mere splinters, as it were of the song of the skylark. The song of the latter is continuous and is loud and humming. It is a fountain of jubilant song up there in the sky. But our lark sings in snatches. At each repetition of its notes, it dips forward and downward a few feet and then rises again. One day I kept my eye upon one until it had repeated its song 103 times. Then it closed its wings and dropped toward the earth like a plummet, as does its European cousin. While I was watching the bird, a bobolink flew over my head between me and the lark and poured out his voluble and copious strain. What a contrast, I thought, between the voice of the spluttering, tongue tied lark and the free, liquid and varied sound of the bobolink. A very interesting feature of our bird songs is the wing song or song of ecstasy. It is not the gift of many of our birds. Indeed, less than a dozen species are known to me. As ever singing on the wing, it seems to spring from more intense excitement and self abandonment than the ordinary song delivered from the perch. When its joy reaches the point of rapture, the bird is literally carried off its feet and up it goes into the air, pouring out its song as a rocket pours out its sparks. The skylark and the Bobolink habitually do this, while a few others of our birds do it only on occasions. One summer up in the Catskills, I added another name to my list of ext ecstatic singers, that of the vesper sparrow. Several times I heard a new song in the air and caught a glimpse of the bird as it dropped back to the earth. My attention would be attracted by a succession of hurried chirping notes followed by a brief burst of song, then by the vanishing form of the bird. One day I was lucky enough to see the bird as it was rising to its climax in the air and to identify it as the vesper sparrow. The burst of song that crowned the upward flight of 75 or 100ft was brief, but it was brilliant, so striking and entirely unlike the leisurely chant of the bird while upon the ground. It suggested a lark, but was less buzzing or humming. The preliminary chirping notes, uttered faster and faster as the bird mounted in the air, were like the trail of sparks which a rocket emits before its grand burst of color at the top of its flight. Probably the perch songster among our ordinary birds that is most regularly seized with a fit of ecstasy that results in this lyric burst in the air, as I described in my first book, wake Robin, over 30 years ago, is the ovenbird or word accentor. The golden crowned thrush of the old ornithologists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this pretty speckle breasted, olive backed little bird which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards from him, moving its head as it walks like a miniature domestic fowl. Most birds are very stiff necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body. Not so the ovenbird or the other birds that walk as the cow bunting or the quail or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet. The sharp, reiterated, almost screeching sound of the oven bird, and it perches on a limb a few feet from the ground. Like the words preacher, preacher, preacher or teacher, teacher, teacher, uttered louder and louder and repeated six or seven times, is also familiar to most ears. But its wild, ringing, rapturous burst of song in the air high above the treetops is not so well known From a very prosy tiresome unmelodious singer it is suddenly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric poet of great power it is a great surprise the bird undergoes a complete transformation what a change. Up it goes through the branches of the trees leaping from limb to limb faster and faster till it shoots from the treetops 50 or more feet into the air above them and then bursts into an ecstasy of song rapid, ringing lyrical brief but thrilling emphatic but musical from its habit of singing at twilight and from the swift darting motions of the bird I am inclined to think that in it we have solved the mystery of Thoreau's night warbler that puzzled and eluded him for years Emerson told him he must be aware of finding and booking it lest life should have nothing more to show him him the older ornithologists must have heard this song many times but they never seem to have suspected the identity of the singer Sam It.