Ultimate Guide to Sleep Meditation – with 20 Best Guided Audios To Help With Insomnia

Imagine coming home exhausted from a hectic workday, only to lie awake with your mind racing about emails, meetings, and tomorrow’s to-do list. If you’re a busy professional, this scenario might feel all too familiar. In fact, a recent survey found that 85% of U.S. workers lose sleep due to work-related stress^[1]. This is where sleep meditation comes in. Sleep meditation is a simple practice that can help calm your overactive mind at night, making it easier to drift into deep, rejuvenating sleep. In this guide, we’ll explore what sleep meditation is, why it’s so effective for stressed professionals, and how you can start using meditation for sleep to finally get the rest you need.

Why Stress Keeps You Up at Night

Work stress and sleep problems go hand in hand. When you’re under pressure, your brain stays on high alert. Racing thoughts trigger the stress response – the “fight or flight” mode that floods your body with cortisol and adrenaline. This is useful in a morning presentation, but not so much at 2 AM when you’re trying to sleep. For many people, sleep disorders are closely tied to stress^[2]. Stress makes it hard to “switch off” at night, leading to insomnia or restless sleep. The next day, you’re groggy, irritable, and less productive, creating a vicious cycle of stress and sleeplessness.

Sleep meditation breaks this cycle by eliciting what Harvard cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson famously calls the “relaxation response.” The relaxation response is the opposite of the stress response – your heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and your mind begins to quiet ^[3]. Essentially, meditation helps mediate between your busy mind and your need for sleep – it’s like a gentle negotiation (“sleep mediation,” if you will) that convinces your brain to let go of the day’s worries. By calming the nervous system, meditation creates fertile ground for sleep to take over.

What Is Sleep Meditation?

Sleep meditation

 is any meditation practice done at bedtime (or during nighttime awakenings) to help you fall asleep. It often involves focusing your attention on something calming – like your breath, a soothing voice, or gentle music – and letting go of the stream of stressful thoughts. Over time, this practice trains your mind to relax and prepares your body for sleep.

There are many forms of meditation for sleep. Some people prefer mindfulness meditation, where you simply observe your breath and thoughts without judgment, gently returning your focus whenever your mind wanders. Others use guided sleep meditation, which means an audio narration leads you through a relaxing sequence (for example, a voice might guide you to release tension from each muscle or visualize a peaceful scene). These guided meditations for sleep are especially helpful if you find it hard to meditate on your own – you just follow along and let the guide carry you into relaxation.

Nighttime guided meditation can be as simple as lying in bed with your eyes closed, listening to a recording on your phone. There are even “sleep stories” and meditative bedtime stories on popular wellness apps that function as guided meditation sleep aids. The key is that you’re evoking a state of calmthat makes it easier to drift off. Think of it as a bridge between wakefulness and sleep. Instead of scrolling on your phone or stewing in anxious thoughts, you’re engaging in a deliberate wind-down ritual.

Glossary:

• Guided Sleep Meditation: A recorded meditation (audio or video) specifically designed to help you sleep, often featuring a narrator’s calming voice and relaxing background sounds.
• Mindfulness Meditation: A practice of training your attention to the present moment (often the breath) to cultivate calm awareness. When adapted for sleep, it helps quiet worry about past or future.
• Body Scan: A common guided meditation for sleep where you progressively relax your body from head to toe, releasing tension in each area.
• Visualization: Using your imagination to picture soothing images or scenarios (like walking on a beach at night). This can be part of night time meditations to lull the mind toward sleep.

How Sleep Meditation Improves Your Sleep (Backed by Science)

You might be wondering, does meditation actually help you sleep better?Science says yes. Meditation directly combats the two biggest enemies of sleep for professionals: stress and an overactive mind. By calming the nervous system and refocusing the mind, meditation creates the ideal mental and physical state for sleep. Here’s what research and experts have found:

• Reduces Insomnia Symptoms: In a small study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, middle-aged adults with sleep troubles who completed a six-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly less insomnia, fatigue, and even depression than a control group that only did standard sleep education ^[4]. In other words, meditation outperformed basic sleep hygiene advice. This suggests that beyond just trying to sleep, actively meditating can address underlying issues (like a restless mind) that keep us awake.
• Triggers the Relaxation Response: Meditation techniques activate your body’s relaxation response, which is a deep physiological shift opposite to the stress response ^[5]. Dr. Benson notes that this relaxation response helps ease many stress-related ailments – and since stress often causes sleeplessness, reducing stress directly improves sleep ^[6]. When you meditate, your breathing slows and deepens, your heart rate drops, and your muscles unclench. This state is much closer to sleep. It’s as if meditation walks you right up to the doorstep of sleep, so falling in becomes much easier.
• Quiets a Racing Mind: Ever notice how your mind leaps from one worry to the next when you can’t sleep? Meditation trains you to gently break that train of everyday thoughts ^[7]. Practices like focusing on the breath or a mantra give your mind something calming to do, interrupting cycles of worry or overthinking. Over time, you develop a reflex to enter a calmer state. Dr. Benson likens it to creating a relaxation “muscle memory” – so when you lie down at night, you can more easily slip into tranquility ^[8].
• Helps You Fall Asleep Faster and Sleep Deeper: Regular meditation may actually improve the architecture of your sleep. According to the University of California, Davis Health, meditation can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and improve sleep quality ^[9]. Many people report that after a meditation session, they not only fall asleep sooner but also wake up less often during the night. By calming the mind and body, meditation increases your chances of entering the deeper stages of sleep that leave you feeling refreshed.
• Improves Sleep Quality in Just Weeks: If you’re worried you don’t have time to meditate, here’s some good news. Even a small commitment can yield results. In one study out of the Netherlands, participants with no prior meditation experience were asked to meditate 10 minutes each day (five minutes in the morning and five after work) for two weeks. The outcome? The new meditators experienced steady improvements in sleep quality and even slept longer over that short period ^[10]. This “low-dose” meditation was specifically designed to fit into busy workdays, and it still helped calm their hyperactive minds at night. (However, the same study noted that to maintain and deepen these benefits, ongoing practice is needed – meditation isn’t a one-shot cure, but a skill you build.)
• Lowers Anxiety and Nighttime Stress: Numerous studies and reviews have found that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety and daytime stress ^{[11] [12]}. This is critical because anxiety about not sleeping can itself keep you awake. By practicing meditation, you learn to handle anxious feelings better. Over time, you may approach bedtime with less dread or urgency, which paradoxically makes it easier to fall asleep. Instead of forcing sleep (which never works), you’re allowing it to come naturally once you’re in a calm state.

Expert Insight:

 “The idea is to create a reflex to more easily bring forth a sense of relaxation,” says Dr. Benson, who recommends meditating for about 20 minutes during the day. “That way, it’s easier to evoke the relaxation response at night when you can’t sleep.” ^[13] In other words, if you make meditation a habit, your body learns how to relax more readily, like building a mental ‘off switch’ you can use at bedtime.

Benefits of Sleep Meditation for Busy Professionals

Why should a stressed professional make time for sleep meditation? Simply put, it offers actionable benefits that directly improve your busy life. Here are some of the key benefits you can expect from incorporating meditation into your nighttime routine:

• Fall Asleep Faster: Instead of tossing and turning for an hour, you might drift off in minutes. As noted above, meditation practice can significantly shorten the time it takes to fall asleep ^[14] by calming your nervous system and quieting mental chatter.
• Better Sleep Quality: Meditation often leads to deeper, more restful sleep ^[15]. Many people report fewer midnight wake-ups and more time spent in rejuvenating slow-wave and REM sleep. The result? You wake up feeling more refreshed, even if you didn’t get “enough” hours.
• Reduced Stress and Anxiety: A meditation habit will gradually lower your baseline stress levels. You’ll carry less tension into the night. And if you do wake up at 3 AM, you’ll have tools to handle anxious thoughts (like focusing on your breath). Over time, you break the cycle of stress → poor sleep → more stress. Less stress means more peace at night, and vice versa.
• Improved Next-Day Focus and Mood: When you sleep better, you perform better. After a night of guided meditation and solid rest, expect to see improvements in your concentration, patience, and mood the following day. You may find you’re less irritable and more resilient to workplace challenges. In short, better sleep = better you.
• Non-Pharmaceutical Solution: If you’ve ever been tempted to rely on sleeping pills or that extra glass of wine to knock yourself out, meditation offers a healthy alternative. It’s free, has no side effects, and actually equips you with life-long skills to manage stress and sleep naturally. For busy professionals concerned about long-term health, this is a huge plus.
• Flexibility and Convenience: You don’t need any special equipment or a huge time commitment for sleep meditation. You can do a night time meditation right in your bed, in your pajamas. Even sleep meditation for beginners can be as short as 5-10 minutes. This makes it one of the most accessible self-care practices for a packed schedule.

Guided Sleep Meditation: A Simple Wind-Down Ritual

One of the easiest ways to start with sleep meditation is to use guided meditation for sleep. Guided meditations are like having a personal coach or storyteller lulling you to sleep. They require zero experience on your part — you just close your eyes and listen.

Why Go Guided?

• No Pressure to “Do It Right”: For beginners, sitting in silence trying not to think can feel impossible. Guided sessions remove that pressure. A soothing voice gives you instructions (e.g. “Breathe in… breathe out…” or “Now imagine you’re on a quiet beach at dusk”), so your mind has gentle direction. There’s no “right” or “wrong” — you just follow along, and if you miss a few words because you started to doze, that’s fine (actually, that’s kind of the goal!).
• Engages Your Attention Just Enough: A good guided sleep meditation engages your mind just enough to keep it from wandering back to work stress, but not so much that it keeps you awake. It’s a delicate balance. The guide might tell a very slow, calming story or walk you through relaxing each part of your body. This gives your busy brain a task that’s positive and calming, distracting you from anxious thoughts until, before you know it, you’re asleep.
• Accessible Anytime (Many Are Free): You can access guided meditation for sleep (free as well as paid) easily via smartphone apps, YouTube, or meditation websites. For example, the popular app Insight Timer offers guided sleep meditations at no cost, and platforms like YouTube have countless free sleep meditation videos. Just search for phrases like guided sleep meditation or sleep meditation for beginners and explore. (Tip: Look for recordings with soft music or nature sounds if you enjoy a little background ambiance, or plain voice-only tracks if you prefer silence apart from the guidance.)
• Variety of Styles: Guided meditations come in various flavors. Some emphasize breathing, others visualization, and some incorporate techniques like progressive muscle relaxation. There are even guided meditations that blend into white noise or soothing music after a while, so you can keep sleeping to the sound. This variety means you can find a style that suits you. If one recording doesn’t click, try another. Experimentation is encouraged.

How to Choose a Guided Meditation

• Match the Length to Your Needs: If you typically fall asleep quickly, a 5-10 minute meditation might suffice. If you’re a hardcore insomniac, you might choose a longer 30 or 60-minute track that gently transitions you into sleep. (Don’t worry – you’re not expected to stay awake for it all. It’s okay if you zonk out halfway through; the audio will likely just continue into soft music and then stop automatically.)
• Pick a Voice and Style You Like: Guided meditations are very personal. One person might love a female narrator with a British accent, another might prefer a baritone male voice, and someone else needs just rain sounds with minimal talking. Try a few different recordings. When you find one that makes you feel safe and relaxed, note it and use it consistently. Consistency helps train your brain that “Oh, this sound means sleep time.”
• Ensure It’s Truly for Sleep: Not all meditations are intended to make you sleep. Some are energizing! When browsing, look for keywords like “sleep,” “bedtime,” “nighttime” in the title or description. A nighttime guided meditation usually has a slower pace and a sleepy vibe. (If it’s a general relaxation meditation, that’s fine too, but avoid things labeled “morning meditation” or anything with an upbeat tone late at night.)
• Consider Guided Meditation Sleep Stories: If you’re the type who likes a bedtime story, some guided meditations are essentially calming tales meant for adults. They start as a narrative and gradually become more and more quiet. This can be a charming way to end your day, almost like you’re a kid being read to at bedtime – except the stories are crafted to ease adult anxieties.

How to Get Started: Sleep Meditation for Beginners

Ready to give it a try? The great news is that sleep meditation for beginners requires no special skills. You don’t need to be “good” at meditation; in fact, you don’t need to call it meditation at all if that word intimidates you. Think of it as a simple wind-down routine. Here are some practical steps and tips to help you get started tonight:

1. Set the Stage for Relaxation: First, prepare your sleep environment. Dim or turn off the lights, shut down electronics (blue light from screens can wake you up), and make sure you’re comfortable. If possible, finish any intense work or discussions at least an hour before bed so your mind has time to shift gears. You might even consider gentle stretching or yoga for a few minutes to release physical tension.
2. Choose Your Meditation Method: Decide if you want to meditate in silence, with an app, or a guided audio. For beginners, we highly recommend a guided sleep meditation because it requires less effort. Queue up the meditation on your phone or device before you get into bed, so you’re not fiddling with technology when you’re already sleepy. (Many meditation apps allow you to pre-download sessions – useful if you want to put your phone in airplane mode to avoid late-night notifications.)
3. Get Comfortable and Breathe: Lie down in bed on your back, or assume whatever position you normally sleep in (it’s not like traditional meditation where posture matters – the goal is to fall asleep, after all!). Close your eyes. Take a few slow, deep breaths: Inhale through your nose for a count of 4, exhale through your mouth for a count of 6 or 8. This starts signaling to your body that it’s time to relax.
4. Press Play and Let Go: Start your guided meditation or begin your silent practice. As you listen, give yourself permission to do nothing else. You’ve set aside this time to rest; emails and tasks can wait until tomorrow. If your mind drifts (and it will, especially at first), gently bring your focus back to the voice or to your breath. Don’t worry about “doing it wrong” – there is no wrong. Even if you spend the whole time rehashing a work conversation in your head, that’s okay. The act of trying to refocus is still training your mind. Over successive nights, it will get easier.
5. Use Techniques That Work for You: As you practice, you’ll discover certain things help you more than others. Maybe you fall asleep fastest with a body scan meditation, or maybe breathing exercises work better. Build your own routine. For instance, one night you might do 5 minutes of mindful breathing, then switch to a 10-minute guided body scan. Another night, you might repeat a mantra in your head (“I am at peace” or any calming phrase) until you doze off. There’s no one-size-fits-all – the best meditation is the one that helps you sleep.
6. Be Consistent (But Flexible): Try to meditate at bedtime regularly, whether that’s every night or a few nights a week. The consistency will reinforce the habit and benefits. However, remain flexible and kind to yourself. If you skip a night because you got in late or you fell asleep before you could meditate, it’s no big deal. The goal is to reduce stress, not add to it! Just pick it back up the next night.
7. Leverage Free Resources: You don’t need to spend money to meditate effectively. There are plenty of guided meditation for sleep freeresources online. Apps like UCLA Mindful and Insight Timer offer free guided sessions. Websites like Sleep Foundation provide scripted exercises (for example, progressive muscle relaxation scripts) that you can learn and do on your own. Explore these to keep your practice engaging. As a beginner, sampling different guided meditations is like trying out various instructors until you find a voice and style you love.

Making the Most of Sleep Meditation: Tips and Tricks

To wrap up, here are a few extra tips to help you maximize the benefits of your new bedtime practice:

• Pair Meditation with Your Bedtime Routine: Incorporate meditation as the last step of your evening routine. For example: change into pajamas, brush your teeth, do a 10-minute nighttime guided meditation, then lights out. This way, meditation becomes the bridge between wakefulness and sleep every night, training your body and mind that “after meditation, we sleep.”
• Avoid Stimulants and Late-night Work: Meditation can work wonders, but it’s not a magic erase button for caffeine. Be mindful of having coffee too late in the day, and try to disconnect from work emails in the evening if possible. The more you can set yourself up for calm, the better the meditation will work. (Think of meditation as the anchor of your wind-down, but it helps to calm the surrounding waters too.)
• Use Headphones if Needed: If you live in a noisy environment or have a partner who isn’t meditating with you, consider using comfortable earbuds or headphones for your guided sessions. Some people use wireless sleep headbands that won’t dig into your ears when lying down. The clearer you can hear the guidance (without disturbing others), the easier it is to focus on it.
• Don’t Stress About “Failure”: It’s important to approach sleep meditation with a light attitude. There will be nights when meditation doesn’t knock you out. Maybe you meditate for 15 minutes and find yourself still awake. That’s okay! Avoid the trap of “performance anxiety” about meditation. Remember that the goal is to relax – if you achieved relaxation, you’ve succeeded, even if sleep takes a bit longer to come. On tougher nights, you can always do a second meditation, or simply enjoy the quiet time. Trust that even resting your mind and body has benefits, and sleep will come when it’s ready.
• Keep a Consistent Sleep Schedule: Meditation works best when supporting healthy sleep habits. Try to go to bed and wake up around the same time each day, even on weekends. Your body’s internal clock (circadian rhythm) will then be more primed for sleep at your chosen time. Meditation can then act as the trigger that tells your brain “we’re doing our usual bedtime ritual; it’s time to power down.”

Experiment and Find What Works (Final Takeaway)

Every individual’s path to restful sleep is a little different. The beauty of sleep meditation is that it’s adaptable. As you start exploring meditation for sleep, pay attention to what resonates with you. Maybe you discover that a body scan meditation every night is your secret weapon against insomnia. Or perhaps alternating between a guided imagery session one night and simple breath-focused meditation another keeps things fresh. You might even combine techniques – for example, breathing deeply for a few minutes, then listening to a nighttime guided meditation story as you drift off.

The key takeaway is to treat it as an experiment in self-care. Give yourself permission to play with different styles of meditation until you find your groove. Some popular options to try include:

• Mindful Breathing Meditation – Focus on slow, deep breaths. When thoughts arise, gently return focus to breathing. This can be done solo or with guidance.
• Body Scan or Progressive Muscle Relaxation – Systematically relax your body. For instance, tense and release muscle groups from toes to head, or simply envision a warm wave flowing through each body part releasing tension.
• Guided Imagery – Listen to a meditation that paints a serene scene (like walking through a calm forest or floating on a cloud). Let your imagination engage the scene; this can be wonderfully immersive and sleep-inducing.
• Ambient Sound Meditation – If voice guidance isn’t your thing, you can meditate to sounds. Try focusing on soft music, nature sounds (rain, ocean waves), or even white noise. This still counts – you’re anchoring your attention on a sensory experience, which keeps the mind from wandering.

Finally, be patient with yourself. Like any skill, meditation gets easier and usually more effective with practice. The first few nights you might feel restless or unsure – that’s normal. Stick with it for a week or two and you’ll likely notice that you start looking forward to those few minutes of peace each night. Even high-powered professionals have room for a moment of zen at bedtime.

In conclusion: Sleep meditation is a low-effort, high-impact tool to help you reclaim your sleep from the clutches of stress. It’s accessible to anyone – whether you’re a complete beginner or someone who’s tried meditation before. By embracing a short meditation practice at night, you’re essentially gifting yourself a mental “off switch” and the ability to actually use it. Over time, you’ll find that not only do you fall asleep faster and sleep better, but the stresses of the day also start to feel a little lighter knowing you have this refuge each night.

Give it a try tonight – perhaps queue up a guided sleep meditation for beginners and see how you feel afterward. You might just discover that a calmer mind and better sleep are within reach, no matter how busy or stressful your day was. Sweet dreams!

Bonus: 20 Best Guided Meditations for Sleep

Here are 20 guided meditations for sleep. They are divided into 4 categories:

• Deep relaxation
• Binaural beats
• Hypnosis
• Unguided meditation

It’s not clear which type of meditation is more effective than others at helping you sleep. While they’re all intended to help you sleep better, they have slightly different goals and mechanisms for aiding your sleep. Based on the explanations and descriptions below, you can choose the one(s) that suits you best.

The meditations vary in duration. Some are under an hour, while others are several hours long. Most have guiding words at the beginning, which eventually fade out, leaving you with soft, soothing music to help you drift off to sleep.

You can listen to them as long as you want as you lie down to sleep, or you can even play them while you sleep. This is more a matter of preference.

Deep Relaxation

As the term suggests, deep relaxation meditation will help you calm your body and mind. They generally use a body scan to relax each body part, and the soothing voice and background music help calm your thoughts.

When listening to the meditations, keep in mind that relaxing the body and mind is a process. Don’t expect perfection. That is, it’s okay for your mind to wander off, or get distracted. Instead of forcing your body and mind to relax, just allow them to relax.

1. Floating Amongst the Stars by Jason Stephenson

Length: 1 hr. 2 min.

Jason Stephenson has some of the best quality meditations on YouTube. His voice is soothing, and he has the right choice of background music. His recordings have a good balance of music and voice volume. As the title suggests, this meditation gives you a sense of floating amongst the stars.

2. Blissful Deep Relaxation by The Honest Guys

Length: 18.5 min.

The Honest Guys also have good-quality recordings. In this meditation, the music is soft and slow-moving, with gentle waves in the background. This is a relatively short meditation you can comfortably listen to right before you go to bed.

3. Fall Asleep So Fast by Lauren Ostrowski Fenton

Length: 1 hr. 17 min.

Lauren Ostrowski Fenton has a soft and relaxing voice. The dreamscape music pitch is well balanced with her voice. Her guided meditation has good positive affirmations that help improve self-esteem.

4. The Happiness of Your Higher Consciousness by Kim Carmen Walsh

Length: 33 min.

This recording by Kim Carmen Walsh is designed to help you recognize your own inner happiness. It then guides you into a deep and restorative practice for improved sleep.

5. Cultivate Self Love While You Sleep by Nicky Sutton

Length: 2 hrs

This is a great meditation for sleep by Nicky Sutton. The music alone is warm and loving. Combined with her soft voice, the self-love affirmations really touch your heart.

Meditations With Binaural Beats

Binaural beats are a technique that triggers a slow-down in brain activity to make you sleepy. Here’s how it works: Your brain creates brain waves from the pulses of electrical activity when the neurons interact with each other. Generally, higher frequencies of brainwaves are associated with higher levels of alertness, such as concentration. Lower frequencies are associated with lower levels of alertness, such as deep sleep.

Ingrained in the background music are two tones of slightly different frequencies, one in each ear. Your brain, instead of processing both tones, processes half of the difference between the two frequencies. For example, if you receive a 300-hertz tone in one ear and a 280-hertz tone in the other ear, your brain will process a 10-hertz tone.

The two frequencies in the meditations are meant to slow down your brain activity for deep sleep. As you may have guessed, you need to listen to these meditations with headphones in order to get the desired effect.

Binaural beats have two more effects that benefit sleep: They raise sleep-promoting hormones, and they reduce the pain that may be keeping you awake.^[16]

6. Perfect Deep Sleep Talk down by The Honest Guys

Length: 30 min.

This is another good guided meditation for sleep by The Honest Guys. As with most of their meditations, it is short compared to most other meditations on YouTube. The music is slow, and the voice is soothing and relaxing.

7. Guided Meditation for Sleep and Healing by Meditation Vacation

Length: 40 min.

The scene of this meditation is the beach at night with a bonfire. Along with the dreamscape music, you can hear the sounds of the waves and the crackling of an open fire. This meditation will promote healing while you sleep.

8. Deep Sleep Meditation with Affirmations by PowerThoughts Meditation Club

Length: 1 hr. 44 min.

Here is a meditation that boosts your self-esteem. It will help you overcome your fears so that you can develop greater inner strength. The music is calm, the voice soothing, and the affirmations powerful. After a while, the voice fades out, and the music helps you drift into a deep sleep.

9. Deep Sleep Guided Meditation by PowerThoughts Meditation Club

Length: 1 hr.

This is a guided meditation that will help you calm your racing mind. The slow, soothing voice forces your mind to follow the slower pace. As with the previous guided meditations, the voice fades away after a few minutes.

10. Guided Meditation for a Deep Peaceful and Calm Sleep by Meditation Vacation

Length: 47 min.

This sleep meditation uses guided imagery to help calm your body and restless mind. The background music is slow and drifting.

Meditations With Hypnosis

Guided meditations with hypnosis are an effective way to reprogram your subconscious mind for the desired way of thinking or behaving. When we’re in a deep state of relaxation, our mind is more receptive to new information, so meditation is an excellent time to assimilate positive affirmations that can improve the quality of your life.

These meditations will mainly help change your views about sleep. One is geared to facilitate healing, and another will help you deal with stress and anxiety.

11. Deep Sleep Hypnosis for Mind Body Spirit Cleansing by Michael Sealey

Length: 1 hr. 30 min.

Michael Sealey is one of the more popular guided meditation artists on YouTube, and for good reason. The recordings are high quality and use a good balance of the different elements to achieve the desired effect. This guided meditation uses soft music and guided imagery to promote inner healing while you sleep.

12. Sleep Talk Down Guided Meditation by Jason Stephenson

Length: 1 hr. 2 min.

Here is another guided meditation by Jason Stephenson. This one uses hypnosis techniques to promote deep sleep. The music is soft, slow, and heartwarming. Since the voice fades out after a while, you can just start this meditation and let it play as you drift off to sleep.

13. Guided Sleep Meditation by Jason Stephenson

Length: 50 min.

This guided sleep meditation will help you reprogram your mind to release stress and anxiety. It uses guided imagery and soft, relaxing music to calm your body and mind for more restful sleep.

14. Sleep Hypnosis Meditation Female Voice by Soothing Music Relaxing

Length: 3 hrs.

Though not as popular as most other guided meditations, this one uses a female voice and hypnosis techniques to guide you into a deep sleep. Her voice is soft and soothing, and the music is a slow dreamscape that gives you a feeling of floating on air.

15. Hypnosis with Subconscious Programming To Fall Asleep by Nicky Sutton

Length: 1 hr. 16 min.

Here is another good meditation by Nicky Sutton. The first 18 minutes help you relax your body. Afterward, the affirmations help reprogram your mind to go into a deep sleep.

Unguided Relaxation Meditations

Although this list of meditations is mainly of guided meditations for sleep, there are some excellent recordings of either just soothing music, sounds of nature, or a combination. Some nature sounds, such as ocean waves, are symbolic of relaxation. When we hear those sounds, our subconscious mind will associate them with relaxation and sleep.

These are the type that you may just want to play softly in the background while you go to sleep.

16. Aura Cleansing & Balancing Chakra by Meditation and Healing

Length: 8 hrs.

This video plays heartwarming dreamscape music that will help you drift off to sleep any day of the week.

17. Dreamscape Music for Relaxation and Sleep by Peaceful Productions Studio

Length: 8 hrs.

This is another recording of soft, dreamscape music. This one uses Delta waves, the same frequency of brainwaves you experience during deep sleep.

18. Deep Sleep Music: Ocean Waves and Relaxing Music by Soothing Relaxation

Length: 3 hrs.

This meditation combines relaxing music with ocean waves to lull you into a deep, restful sleep.

19. Gentle Night Rain Sounds for Relaxing Sleep by The Relaxed Guy

Length: 3 hrs.

Some people like the sound of rain to help them relax. This recording is nothing but gentle rain.

20. Angelic Music with Affirmations for Sleeping & Healing by Jason Stephenson

Length: 2 hrs.

This guided sleep meditation is almost entirely heartwarming music with intermittent affirmations in a soft, angelic voice.

The Bottom Line

If you have trouble sleeping at night, let not your heart be troubled. These guided meditations for sleep will help you slow your racing mind and make sleep much easier. The best part is that you don’t have to do anything but just listen to them and relax.

Your sleep is important, not so that you feel better the next day but also for your long-term health and success in life. Enjoy these meditations, and enjoy your life.