Calming Anxiety | Guided Meditation, Sleep Hypnosis & Panic Attack Relief

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

A gentle bedtime story to help you drift off tonight: Beatrix Potter's charming woodland tale The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, read slowly and unhurried for sleep and insomnia relief. This is a new author joining the Books at Bedtime strand — also known as Coffee Break for the Soul — from the Calming Anxiety podcast, a series of classic story readings designed as a calming audiobook for restless nights.

For the full library, plus ambient night-light features for the small hours, download Anchored: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored (Android) or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669 (iPhone).

 

Narrated softly by Martin Hewlett, clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic, this reading follows a cheeky little red squirrel called Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry, and their cousins as they sail on twig rafts to Owl Island each day, bringing offerings of mice, minnows, and honey to old Mr. Brown, the owl who owns the nut bushes. While the other squirrels ask politely, Nutkin can never resist a rude riddle instead — and by the sixth day, his impertinence very nearly costs him more than his manners. A whimsical, sing-song read full of old English riddles, ideal for falling asleep, insomnia, and quieting an anxious mind before bed.

 

First published in August 1903, Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is in the public domain worldwide (Potter died in 1943); this reading is Calming Anxiety's own narration of the classic public-domain text. Potter originally wrote the story as a picture letter for a real little girl named Norah Moore, and dedicated the finished book to her — "a story for Norah."

 

This episode introduces Beatrix Potter to the Books at Bedtime strand, joining Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, classic short fiction from Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Kate Chopin, and longer serialised reads including Alice in Wonderland, The Time Machine, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, with new instalments added regularly to the main Calming Anxiety feed.

 

 

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Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

I'm Tired But Wired — A 10-Minute Meditation for a Body That Won't Switch Off | The Switch Off Breath

 

That feeling where you're so tired — not ordinary tired, the kind where your eyes ache and your thoughts have gone slow and thin — and yet you sit down, and your body hasn't got the message. Jaw still set, shoulders still up near your ears, a restlessness in your legs while the rest of you is running on empty.

If you've been quietly asking yourself why you're so tired but your body won't switch off, this episode is for you. Anchored is now on Android as well as iPhone, and if you can't face listening to a voice tonight, not even this one, the app's visual breathing tools work without any narration at all:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored (Android) or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669 (iPhone).

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, today's episode puts the paramedic hat on to explain bracing — the body's habit, after weeks or months of pressure, of staying slightly above idle all day, muscles tight and breathing shallow, whether or not you've actually sat down. We use vagus nerve breathing, four in and eight out, which Martin calls the switch off breath, followed by a warm amber light body scan to help release what the day left behind.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

* 00:00 – Cold open: tired, but your body hasn't got the message

* 00:52 – Channel open: Anchored on Android & the breathing tools

* 01:31 – The paramedic's view: why the body keeps bracing

* 02:28 – Breathing: the switch off breath (4 in, 8 out)

* 04:38 – Deepening: a warm amber light

* 06:38 – Today's Gentle Affirmations

* 08:17 – Three Daily Caring Tips

* 09:30 – Coming back, stretch and open your eyes

* 10:04 – Outro & be kind

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

Say them in the middle with me, in your own voice:

I am tired but wired, and that is something my body is doing, not something I am failing at.

I am tired but wired, and it can pass.

I do not have to force my body to relax. I only have to stop holding it tight.

My long out breath is a signal my nervous system understands. My long out breath is safe. My long out breath is enough.

I release the anxiety I have been holding in my body.

I am allowed to be still, even with things unfinished.

I am safe. I am here. There is nothing to fear right now.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

1. **The four-second reset** — Set a phone alarm for the middle of your afternoon, and when it goes, do nothing except unclench your jaw and drop your shoulders. It takes four seconds and interrupts the bracing before it sets.

2. **Legs up before bed** — Tonight, before you get into bed, lie on the floor with your calves resting on the seat of a chair for three minutes and let your legs be somebody else's problem.

3. **Leave one thing unfinished** — Choose one thing on today's list that genuinely doesn't have to be done today, and cross it off unfinished. Your body is reading your workload as much as your mind is.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

Anchored is with you whenever you need it, now on Android as well as iPhone — including breathing tools with no narration at all, for the nights even a voice feels like too much. 👉 [Get Anchored on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored) 👉 [Get Anchored on the App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669)

 

If this episode found you at the right moment, would you share it with one more person? Someone in your life is exhausted and buzzing tonight and hasn't got the words for it — this might be the words they need.

 

…be kind.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The Butterfly That Stamped by Rudyard Kipling — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

A soothing bedtime story to help you drift off tonight: Rudyard Kipling's warm, funny Just So Story The Butterfly That Stamped, read slowly and gently for sleep and insomnia relief. Kipling wrote the Just So Stories specifically as bedtime tales, to be told "just so," word for word, until his own daughter drifted off to sleep — which makes this collection some of the most naturally calming listening in the whole Books at Bedtime strand, also known as Coffee Break for the Soul, from the Calming Anxiety podcast.

For the full library, plus ambient night-light features for the small hours, download Anchored: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored (Android) or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669 (iPhone).

 

Narrated softly by Martin Hewlett, clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic, this reading follows the wise King Solomon, his 999 quarrelsome queens, his beloved and clever Queen Balkis, and one very small, very boastful butterfly who claims he can make the whole palace vanish with a single stamp of his foot. Gentle, playful, and quietly wise about marriage and pride, it's an easy, unhurried listen for falling asleep, insomnia, or quieting an anxious mind at the end of the day.

 

First published in 1902 in the collection Just So Stories for Little Children, Rudyard Kipling's The Butterfly That Stamped is in the public domain worldwide (Kipling died in 1936); this reading is Calming Anxiety's own narration of the classic public-domain text.

 

This episode joins the Just So Stories already in the Books at Bedtime strand — How the Whale Got His Throat, The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, The Elephant's Child, How the Leopard Got His Spots, How the Camel Got His Hump, The Cat That Walked by Himself, and The Beginning of the Armadillos — alongside Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, classic short fiction from Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Kate Chopin, and longer serialised reads including Alice in Wonderland, The Time Machine, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, with new instalments added regularly to the main Calming Anxiety feed.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Why Do I Feel Anxious When I Finally Stop? — A 10-Minute Meditation for the Post-Stress Crash | Alternate Nostril Breathing

 

You got through it — the week, the deadline, the thing you were dreading. You held it together the entire way, and nobody watching would have guessed how much it cost you. And then you sat down, and it all arrived: the dread with no subject, the heart going for no reason. If you've ever wondered why everyone else looks forward to stopping while stopping makes you feel worse, nothing is wrong with you.

In Anchored, you choose your own session length — 3, 5, or 20 minutes, whatever you can tolerate — because being told to sit quietly for half an hour when stillness is the thing that sets you off isn't kindness, it's a dare. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, today's episode explains why anxiety needs a gap to appear in — while you're busy, your nervous system runs on adrenaline and purpose, and it simply doesn't register as anxious. It's only once the last thing is done, and there's suddenly nothing between you and yourself, that everything you've been outrunning all week catches up in one go. We use alternate nostril breathing to give the thinking part of the brain a small, harmless job while the nervous system quietly slows down.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

* 00:00 – Cold open: you got through it, and then it all arrived

* 00:51 – Channel open & choosing your own session length in Anchored

* 01:48 – Why anxiety needs a gap to appear in

* 02:32 – Breathing: alternate nostril breathing

* 05:16 – Grounding: you gave it somewhere gentle to stand

* 05:32 – Deepening: a warm golden light

* 05:56 – Today's Gentle Affirmations

* 07:11 – I am safe, I am here

* 08:14 – Three Daily Caring Tips

* 09:04 – Coming back, stretch and open your eyes

* 09:37 – Outro: this is not weakness, it's a homecoming

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

Say these quietly with me:

This is not a relapse. This is simply the bill arriving.

I am allowed to feel anxious on my day off.

Rest is safe, even when it doesn't feel safe just yet.

I do not have to earn the right to sit down.

My nervous system is not disobeying me. It is catching up with me.

I can be still without being in danger.

I do not have to relax perfectly. I only have to stay.

I am safe. I am here. There is nothing to fear right now.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

1. **Add a slow lane** — Don't go from full speed to complete stillness. Give yourself a slow lane in between, like a short walk or washing up before you sit down.

2. **Name the catch-up** — When the dread arrives on your evening off, say out loud: "This is the catch-up, not a crisis." Naming it takes most of the power away.

3. **Do one thing purely for you** — Choose one small, ordinary thing today that you do purely because you want to, and refuse to justify it to anyone, including yourself.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

The crash you feel when you finally stop isn't your body failing you — it's your body trusting you enough to let go now that it's safe. If you'd like more of this, Anchored is there in the App Store, with sessions in 3, 5, or 20 minutes to fit exactly what you can tolerate. Android is coming soon. 👉 [Download Anchored on the App Store Today](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669)

 

If you listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts but would like to support the show, downloading Anchored means everything — it takes about 30 seconds, and a review helps more people find their moment of calm.

 

…be kind.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo by Rudyard Kipling — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

A soothing bedtime story to help you drift off tonight: Rudyard Kipling's rhythmic, chant-like Just So Story The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, read slowly and gently for sleep and insomnia relief. Kipling wrote the Just So Stories specifically as bedtime tales, to be told "just so," word for word, until his own daughter drifted off to sleep — which makes this one of the most naturally hypnotic stories in the whole Books at Bedtime strand, also known as Coffee Break for the Soul, from the Calming Anxiety podcast.

For the full library, plus ambient night-light features for the small hours, download Anchored: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored (Android) or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669 (iPhone).

 

Narrated softly by Martin Hewlett, clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic, this reading follows an ordinary, four-legged grey kangaroo whose wish to be "wonderfully run after" is granted by the little god Nikaar, in the form of Yellow Dog Dingo chasing him right across the middle of Australia until his legs and hop become the kangaroo's forever. Repetitive, sing-song, and almost lulling by design, it's an easy, unhurried listen for falling asleep, insomnia, or quieting an anxious mind at the end of the day.

 

First published in 1902 in the collection Just So Stories for Little Children, Rudyard Kipling's The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo is in the public domain worldwide (Kipling died in 1936); this reading is Calming Anxiety's own narration of the classic public-domain text.

 

This episode joins the Just So Stories already in the Books at Bedtime strand — How the Whale Got His Throat, The Elephant's Child, How the Leopard Got His Spots, How the Camel Got His Hump, The Cat That Walked by Himself, and The Beginning of the Armadillos — alongside Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, classic short fiction from Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Kate Chopin, and longer serialised reads including Alice in Wonderland, The Time Machine, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, with new instalments added regularly to the main Calming Anxiety feed.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety-guided-meditation-sleep-hypnosis-panic-attack-relief--4110266/support.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.