Thread: Tips on how to experience hypnagogia?

Try laying on your back as you fall asleep. Repeat a simple mantra, just a couple words. Do not think. just relax and keep the mantra going. If you feel like you may be starting to experience something, do not focus on it.

Good suggestions Sivason!

I've been digging into this lately, as I find hypnagogia very helpful for making non-linear creative connections. I have most success when I'm close to sleep (i.e. tired) but not needing to sleep for long. I know I pass through hypnagogia as I fall to sleep at night, but because I don't wake until much later, the experience is carried away before I can catch it in memory. A short nap during a circadian lull is just the thing, as I'll pass into sleep fairly quickly, then wake while I'm mid-reverie, giving me the chance to encode it right away.

For me, the best way to do what I call "dipping the well" is lying on my back and bringing a thought into mind without actively dealing with it (right now, I'm trying to work out how to communicate some pretty abstract concepts in a novel I'm working on, so I'll just hold that framework loosely in my attention). I seek a state of loose focus on this thought and disregard my body, and within a few minutes, I'll be in hypnagogic reverie.

This won't last long, and soon I'll realize that I'm lying on the floor in a state totally incongruous to the very detailed, visually rich, utterly deep and broad microcosm of hypnagogia. With luck, I'll have brought insight back up from the well, and since the experience is fresh, I'm able to encode it or record it in a lasting way.

Even if I don't have results specifically keyed to my intention, the experience of hypnagogic reverie is a fascinating way to explore consciousness. I have fallen immediately, in media res, into detailed narratives complete with alternate identities, complex memory structures, and nuanced characters. The fact that this is all generated within seconds yet appears to have existed for far longer gives it the feel of dimensional travel. It's brought me insight into the workings of memory and how deja vu might arise from misunderstanding it.

At any rate, good luck with your explorations!

I am meditating. Breath, body, counting, listening, looking ect. Than, when I am relaxed, and I feel the "effects of meditative state", my focus turns on visual things. Playing with my imagined hands. Sitting in a bus station, and looking for the bus. Looking around in the "nothing" as in the real 3d world. In the last days, I have constant success with my hands. You can play hundreds of things with your hand and with some imagined primitive objects. I see, feel, and hear my hands. After a (relative) short time (aprox 20 min.) my hands appear from the swirling blackness. Very sharp and detailed. I always fall before the transition. There I faint to a normal dream. I was always more the visual type. I will experiment with this hand thing. Very promising.

I made once a WILD so that I was meditating until I experienced the hypnagogia. After, I was focusing behind the imagery. There are coming faces, places, patterns. All the time I was constantly refocusing, to "look" behind the pictures. I was sliding very fast in a deeper region, and in the next moment, I was in a lucid dream. I need to try this too.

I think the important point (as everyone has said) is to keep your mind gently occupied with something (a thought, a word, or a feeling) but in a loose and relaxed way. I also third the suggestion to do this lying on your back. Hypnagogia can/will begin when your brain begins to transition into sleep; the mantra or object of attention will keep you from losing consciousness entirely. Basically the beginning of a WILD but without the added challenge of entering fully into a dream.

You could also try the trick attributed to either Thomas Edison or Dali (and probably not invented by either of them) where you keep some marbles in one hand over a plate on the floor and sleep in an armchair. You will enter the hypnagogic state, but when you start to fall asleep, the falling marbles striking the plate will wake you up. Has anyone actually tried this? Anyway, good luck.

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

Has anyone actually tried this? Anyway, good luck.

I had not heard of that exact thing. I will take two pill bottles and hold them together with one finger of each hand. I sit for meditation so the bottles are held end to end with ease. You barely notice holding them, but must stay somewhat aware or they drop. Then try to get as close to sleep as you can without dropping the bottles.

Some of my best hypnogogia occurs in the morning after I sort of wake up but am still sleepy. Some are close to WILD as I almost enter the dream, but I think I am too awake to cross over. I am a DILD guy so maybe I just need more skill to turn these into WILD, but it is at the end of my sleep cycle, so maybe not possible.