A Relaxing Guided Meditation That Focuses on a Beautiful Vampire Squid Floating in the Deep Dark Sea

The The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute series Deep RelaxOcean has put together an incredibly relaxing, ocean-themed guided meditation video narrated by Susan von Thun. Von Thun’s lyrical voice helps viewers focus on their inhalations using tranquil footage of a beautiful vampire squid floating back and forth in the deep, dark sea. While it seems that a vampire squid would be an unlikely representative of tranquility, in truth, the squid is a small, passive creature.

It’s easy to imagine the vampire squid as a nightmarish predator. It lurks in the eternal midnight of the deep sea, has a dark red body, huge blue eyes, and a cloak-like web that stretches between its eight arms. …Even its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, means “vampire squid from hell.” In reality, the vampire squid is a soft-bodied, passive creature, about the size, shape, and color of a football. A “living fossil,” it inhabits the deep waters of all the world’s ocean basins at depths where there is almost no oxygen, but also relatively few predators.