This new Netflix series offers to help you sleep at a time when the world just won’t let you
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How often have anxiety, negative news, worries about health, kids at home, and too much screen time kept you awake at night? For those with long-term sleep issues, and for those new in this territory, a web series is offering a timely solution. Ideally, one wouldn’t head to an OTT platform to find a solution to their sleepless nights, especially if the platform itself is notorious for feeding into their screen addiction. That would be odd; but here we are, watching Headspace Guide to Sleep, a seven-part series on Netflix, the result of a collaboration between Vox Media Studios and Headspace, a guided meditation company. And so, ahem, we binge-watched.
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The episodes are narrated by Headspace’s director of meditation Eve Lewis Prieto in a voice that’s soothing enough to lull us into slumber or at least put us into a more zen state of mind. But it also has a sense of authority when she states scientific facts. From learning about sleep and enhancing your relationship with it for a more restful night, to understanding REM and circadian rhythms and dealing with insomnia, stress, phone addiction and sleeping pills, each episode is carefully researched, well-crafted, and explores the different aspects of our connection with sleep. The show also challenges several myths, including that of the importance of eight hours of sleep and of the time to go to bed—because after all, great sleep is about quality, not quantity.
Overall, the emphasis is on mindfulness and meditation, and each episode—running for an average of 15 minutes—has a guided wind down of about eight to 10 minutes. The video features buoyant music and soothing soundscapes (think rainfall in a forest) juxtaposed with a series of dreamy animations, like that of a bed floating in space. These aid viewers on their meditation journey, while breaking down several aspects of the mind and thoughts in an engaging manner. This writer tried two of the meditation practices and couldn’t finish either in one go—she drifted into sleep halfway through them. What we liked about the meditation is that it is integrated into the episode and that it doesn’t ask you to push your thoughts away. We, too, agree that’s not possible. Instead, Prieto asks the users to acknowledge them, and move on in order to bring in a sense of calmness to the thoughts.
Well, Netflix usually doesn’t quite promote its wellness programming as much as it should, so you’ll probably find the series in some quiet corner of the catalogue, brought up only by a manual search. Look for it, because we dare say that it might be a nice way to end a night of mindless binge-watching.
What: Headspace Guide to Sleep
Where: Netflix
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