Lack of sleep led me to find a possible new way to enter dream state (at least new to me) "spinning"

Please feel free to read my Dream Journal to get the full story of what happened last night.

But the quick story is this:

I have been having trouble sleeping lately. My hours have been all messed up, I've been going out, coming home late. Not going to bed until 3 or 4 am, laying in bed until 12 pm...

Bottom line is I haven't been sleeping well.

Last night I was staring into the blackness and decided to try something. If "spinning" could keep a Lucid Dream going longer then perhaps some type of "spinning" could help me attain lucidity?

Please keep in mind I had not slept at all that night and poorly the night before.

I imagined a circle like a galaxy in the blackness and started it spinning. It was a bit hard to do at first but eventually I was able to get it spinning very fast.

I then imagined that circle was a portal to my dream. Eventually I could actually see a tunnel and was able to imagine myself going through the tunnel and entered my dream state where I was lucid.

I was not able to keep the state going very long however it did work. It was a weird OOB/LD but it definitely happened.

I can not link this to a sleep state since I have been so screwed up lately and have no idea if that was the only reason this actually worked or not.

So has any one else tried this and been successful? Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

Let me know

Drake

Hi Drake.... I believe what you are experiencing is a form of self-hypnosis while in a Theta brainwave state. When we visualize we use the same part of our brain as when we dream. I would keep experimenting (it works for me, too)

Being an insomniac, and a general fan of the night, I'm going to try this technique. If this is indeed a type of self-hypnosis then would this be easier to do if you're more suggestable? Plus, again if this is hypnosis, can someone else guide you into this?

@ Tuesday - I am going by personal experience here but I think that lack of sleep had something to do with it. My mind was tired and probably in a more "open" place to suggestion and imagery.

From personal experience years ago I had someone walk me through a relaxation technique / guided mediation over the phone. It was a focus on each body part, tense and relax type of thing. That night I had a series of amazingly vivid dreams and I think I actually had an OOB experience but at the time I wasn't sure what it was. So I do believe that you can be guided to that state.

@Faceonmars - Thank you.Typically in the past when I have tried this technique or "stared at the imagery" in my eyes it just ends up keeping me up all night and I get nothing out of it. This time I was also up all night but there was a pay off...

Lol, my last lucid what when I got 3 hours of sleep on day and 10 the next on a school week since I lasted in REM more longer and I was happy :).

This sounds like a form of Dream Exit or Dream Re-entry. Not sleeping the night before and the same night would mean that you are set for REM rebound. The insomnia that you are describing might be a form of Non-REM sleep where you are actually asleep, but do not fully lose consciousness (NREM2). It's possible that your visualization excercise pushed you towards a deeper sleep stage.

Form personal experience, I've had a similar experience with "backflipping" out of my bed, which caused a short, but incredibly crazy lucid dream, where I was floating in a cube of bubbling water suspended in darkness.

Now let me ask you this, I have a hard time falling asleep in general, so when I lay down I will think of all the stuff that has happened in my day, and the one time all of a sudden a random thought just went in my head, almost like if you have a folder on your computer and there is a bunch of videos that will play automaticaly after the one prior to it has finished. Well it was like someone almost stuck a random video in that folder and it just started playing, and I didn't even think anything of it (maybe cause I was only partially concious) but then I remembered it was time to start stomping my feet, and then I did and for some reason I appeared over my body.