Strange way to attain lucidity

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Originally Posted by Eddydpyl

I would say that what we do is open the passage wide and actually "hear" the air flow. So we now know what it is, but what does it have to do with LD? Maybe we should focus more on the eye thing?

I guess now experimentation is the way to go? I did try and WILD this way yesterday but fell asleep.

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Yes, maybe it is better to focus on the eyes and use the ears in two ways: 1. Be mindful if any changes at onset of sleep or after wake 2. Possibly as a RC

With regards to number one: I did give this technique some thought before bedtime but was taking too long to fall asleep so decided to drop wilding at that point. Interestingly, and perhaps it was a coincidence or maybe due to me playing with my ears a while before that, as I was drifting off, there was a single little pop/pressure change in my ear, which I found most peculiar. No ld though.

About the use for RC, LDman's test look quite promising and perhaps this can indeed be used unless you start replicating it perfectly. My blow through nose RC was actually trying to pop my ears like you would after altitude change and I thought I had it nailed until couple of lds it started feeling exactly the same way...

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Originally Posted by VagalTone

I am curious to know more about his relaxation approach...that may play a role, as different relaxation techniques can have different brain signatures, despite the same background of the hypometabolic relaxation response

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I'll ask him right away, though he's taking some time to answer my emails.

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Originally Posted by LDman

As you can see there was a difference, this means this could be used as a quick and very discreet RC though it might not be as reliable as the nose-plug RC. I will probably make more tests in the future, just before I fell asleep this morning I looked up with my eyes several times and if 'VagalTone' is right with the alpha wave thing caused by the eye movement then we might have a possible alternative for the SSILD technique here.

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Cool, I'll to experiment with this, thought I'll focus on replicating exactly what he does and hope for results.

Thanks Eddy! Btw, a reference for my first post

Go Ahead…Roll Your Eyes | The Best Brain Possible

Just an interesting preview

Alpha waves are present in the relaxed awareness of a day dreaming mind. An alpha state is the intermediate ground between waking and sleeping and provides a bridge to the subconscious mind. Alpha brain waves allow for vivid, lucid imagery and can assist in creativity and insight.

Eye rolling has long been used as a meditation technique because it more quickly leads to an altered state of consciousness and to the theta brain waves desired in deep meditation.

For some creative inspiration, a brief break in your day or during meditation, you can kick start your brain’s alpha waves by doing this simple but profound exercise which Anna Wise details in her book Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Brainwaves:

^^ Bookmarked, will read throught later, the website seems interesting by the way.

@VagalTone

That sounds very interesting, I'll probably start reading the book very soon!

I tried the eye roll back and looking for any sensation in my ears last night during an awakening. I didn't try to do anything with my ears, only observe and didn't notice anything. I may have been in the early stages of sleep. I only tried it once when I was feeling relaxed and at a time when I was also getting some light vibrations via my eye clinch thing. I didn't WILD but I did have a DILD later, but I don't think it was related unfortunately...but who knows for sure.

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Originally Posted by Eddydpyl

Could you explain what do you mean by clenched eyes "action"? I'm not native and had to look up the word, do you mean closed eyes?

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I gently squeeze my eyes closed, a little more tightly than simply closing them. When I am awake I am actually doing it with my physical eyes and when asleep I am only doing this "action" with my dream eyes I assume. It is less clear when I am in between awake and fully asleep. It seems as if when I am between wake and sleep I am able to get the reaction of lighter vibrations, whereas I get strong vibrations when I am fully...or more fully asleep.

^^ Interesting, and as for the experimentation, I haven't had any luck either and my friend does not seem answer to my emails anymore.

Hi Eddydpyl- hope you don't mind if I join your interesting thread - interesting discussion! I had 2 thoughts
1. LaBerges original verson on MILD is different from the more commonly cited technique as described in EWOL. In the original tech developed by La Berge (c.1980) the 'mantra' is the same but the 'subject visualises his body lying asleep in bed, with rapid eye movements indicating he is dreaming. At the same time, he sees himself being in the dream just rehearsed' (my bold). The eye movement bit is interesting - I can't find the research immediately to hand but from what I remember la berge initially thought he could induce dreaming by mimicing REM's - he later ruled this out, hence its not in the EWOL book. Perhaps your friend has stumbled upon a similar finding.
2. Maybe of more interest (but along the same lines) is the possibility your friend is inducing mechanical phosphenes. Phosphenes are illusionary spots of lights as perceived by the brain. I often get people coming to see me complaining of these. Basically if you push your eye into an extreme direction of gaze (like looking straight and inward as you saw your friend) this deforms the globe of the eye (through the eye muscles yanking on it) which puts pressure on the retinal cells, stimulating them sending a message to the brain that its seeing light (sparkles, ovals) if you've got your eyes closed or its pitch black. You can get a similar effect if you rub your closed eyes for a while (sparkles/shapes - I used to do this as a kid with my eyes pushed into a pillow). The link here is that you also get (non mechanical) phosphenes when people are dropping into hypnagogic sleep - the geometric patterns that people see that then form imagery prior to WILD'ing are the same think ultimately occuring in the same place (the brain) but just of a different origin. I don't know but maybe your friend is accelerating/controlling the sleep stage by mechanically inducing the onset of these - rather than having to wait their natural onset.

I did a similar thing with my eyes around 6 nights ago (though this was the middle of the night) , I'd been trying to WILD (I'm still pretty new to LD'ing as NyxCC my excellent dream guide can vouch for! :) ), anyways I'd been waiting for about 40mins and started to get some thrumming vibrations throughout my body, I knew I should be getting close to WILDing but also knew my alarm clock was about to go off to tell me to go to work, so I squeezed my eyes looking in and up and this produced more vivid geometric patterns (like expanding snow flakes) - but I couldn't 'get into' any visualisations and after a min or two gave up. But the eye position def seemed to increase and accelerate the visual patterns (phosphenes).

Anyway - these ideas could be completely unrelated to your friends success (sorry in advance!) - but thought it might be useful to share as the phosphene connection might be another way of suggesting why your friends eye positioning helps induce lucidity.

^^ Cool! We have already figured out the ear popping thing (while awake that is) but the eyes part is still a bit of a mystery, though some have suggested possible explanations. He did recognize HH when I explained it to him but didn't give it too much importance, which doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't, as I said I had some difficulties communicating with him about this. Anyway, I didn't know about this so much appreciated :)

Great info Tlaloc! The part about more vivid phosphene stimulation with the eyes movement adds another piece to our puzzle. :goodjob2:

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Originally Posted by Eddydpyl

^^ Interesting, and as for the experimentation, I haven't had any luck either and my friend does not seem answer to my emails anymore.

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Perhaps he is just busy. I tried it again last night and did have some success with inducing more sleepiness than before. I previously bookmarked and finally now read VagalTone's link: Go Ahead…Roll Your Eyes | The Best Brain Possible and it seems to have a lot of correlation with what you are looking into here. Interesting!

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Perhaps he is just busy. I tried it again last night and did have some success with inducing more sleepiness than before. I previously bookmarked and finally now read VagalTone's link: Go Ahead…Roll Your Eyes | The Best Brain Possible and it seems to have a lot of correlation with what you are looking into here. Interesting!

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Just read it, I remember having seen someting similar elsewhere but can't tell where. We could then say that the NREM skip (if possible) may be explained by the stimulation of the brain waves that appear in REM?

Edit: Remembered, NLP, it's mentioned in the comments section in the article.

That's weird my eyes tend to role up and my eyelids flutter by them self's when i've been lying for a long time trying to wild. Not sure if that's the same thing, it happens naturally to me and can feel quite intense and prefer it when it doesn't happen.

Just out of self curiosity I did the 'eyes up and in' thing this morning a couple of times after very brief wakings early in the mornings (so this was different from the original method in that that one was done at the start of the night). It didn't trigger any sort of WILD but it did send me back off to sleep very quickly, quicker than normal I would guess - in that I wasn't aware of drifting off rather I just dropped back to sleep - I did it once I felt sleepy (like the tech suggested), so it more or less just speed the process up. It almost seemed like an extension of a SSILD routine - focusing on sight (slight phosphenes) and sensation (eyes pulling up). I did get lucid after doing this after the 2nd attempt (second microawakening) but this was a DILD noticing an abnormality in the dream, so I don't think the eye rolling thing directly caused it. I also couldn't get the popping thing, but I was quite impressed by how it helped me return to sleep so I see no harm in incorporating it into my routine. If I notice anything new I'll let you all know. Cheers - T :)

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Originally Posted by flight

That's weird my eyes tend to role up and my eyelids flutter by them self's when i've been lying for a long time trying to wild. Not sure if that's the same thing, it happens naturally to me and can feel quite intense and prefer it when it doesn't happen.

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Humm, maybe it's just part of the transition for some people? Have you ever noticed the "plugging"?

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Originally Posted by Tlaloc

Just out of self curiosity I did the 'eyes up and in' thing this morning a couple of times after very brief wakings early in the mornings (so this was different from the original method in that that one was done at the start of the night). It didn't trigger any sort of WILD but it did send me back off to sleep very quickly, quicker than normal I would guess - in that I wasn't aware of drifting off rather I just dropped back to sleep - I did it once I felt sleepy (like the tech suggested), so it more or less just speed the process up. It almost seemed like an extension of a SSILD routine - focusing on sight (slight phosphenes) and sensation (eyes pulling up). I did get lucid after doing this after the 2nd attempt (second microawakening) but this was a DILD noticing an abnormality in the dream, so I don't think the eye rolling thing directly caused it. I also couldn't get the popping thing, but I was quite impressed by how it helped me return to sleep so I see no harm in incorporating it into my routine. If I notice anything new I'll let you all know. Cheers - T :)

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Looking forward to it :) I myself can't seem to be able to get anywhere with this method, though WILD was never one of my strong points so...

Yes if plugging is the outside sounds get plugged out and i start hearing my own internal sounds? Not sure totally what is meant by plugging. I would think that would be the same for most people though when they are around the hypnogogic or hypnopompic states.
I would hate to be seen as a expert at WILD or natural lucid dreamer like your friend, I have to work hard like most people but enjoy it and have more DILD's than anything else.
I guess the spontaneous eye movements would be an indication that my brain is starting the generating process. Many people may not get the eye movements as with the usual buzzing, spinning, humming and vibrations, i don't know. As for inducing a LD by eye movements i'm not sure it would work. But its always fun to play around and give things a try.

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Originally Posted by flight

Yes if plugging is the outside sounds get plugged out and i start hearing my own internal sounds? Not sure totally what is meant by plugging. I would think that would be the same for most people though when they are around the hypnogogic or hypnopompic states.
I would hate to be seen as a expert at WILD or natural lucid dreamer like your friend, I have to work hard like most people but enjoy it and have more DILD's than anything else.
I guess the spontaneous eye movements would be an indication that my brain is starting the generating process. Many people may not get the eye movements as with the usual buzzing, spinning, humming and vibrations, i don't know. As for inducing a LD by eye movements i'm not sure it would work. But its always fun to play around and give things a try.

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It definitely is :)

Not even the OP is entirely sure about what exactly the plugging refers to :tongue:, my friend described it as follows: A gradual but fast transition from hearing outside sounds as we normally do to hearing them but muffled, half as loud. When this happened, if he focused too much on external sounds the "plugs" will go away and the sound come back. He could possibly be referring to his attention drifting to the HH, if that's what you mean by internal sounds.

The relationship between the plugging and the eyes is still unclear though, as well as how one triggers the other. :uhm:

I hope you guys don't mind if I chime in with a little less enthusiasm:

[Initially I read the OP and kind of rolled my own eyes, and decided I would heed my mother's advice and stay silent if I had nothing nice to say. But then I followed the thread with growing interest and a little chagrin, and, finally after a nudge from Eddy, I figured I should add my 2 cents.]

First, I think Eddy's friend might be a little confused about his "technique." You guys already covered most of what was really going on -- that this was just a version of SSILD/WILD. Aside from wondering why a "natural" would need a technique at all, I also must emphasize that rolling your eyes up in your head and plugging your ears will not make you lucid all by itself. If it could, I would have been saying so myself many years ago.

Why? Well, funny coincidence here, but very often (not always -- I'm a bit lazy) I myself turn my eyes upward during WILD dives. I do this because -- as has been known by the meditation crowd for centuries -- for some reason turning your (closed) eyes upward seems to help you with visualizing; probably because your eyes are not looking forward and trying to "see" through your closed eyelids what you are visualizing and adding a blank image to your visualization (sorry third-eye guys; the effect is probably that simple). So, if you can manage it, turning your eyes up can help, but doing so won't make you lucid, it'll only assist in the process.

Regarding the ear thing: I'm not real sure what Eddy's friend was talking about, though it sounds like he was recognizing a bit of HI as he fell asleep. I highly doubt that plugging your ears would make absolutely any difference at all, and no, there is no muscle meant to close ears off from sound. This ear-plugging thing is very obvious, and would have been common by now, if it were significant. Again, given that I personally have worn ear plugs many, many times without noticing any difference in my WILD process (even when I had my eyes rolled up at the same time), I must add anecdotally that there really is no relation between plugging your ears/rolling your eyes and lucidity.

I really think Eddy's friend was making the wrong connections, perhaps is enjoying an extremely unusual ability, or (though I hope not) might just be either pulling Eddy's leg or making stuff up to impress him.

That said, given the excitement and depth of the conversation that ensued here, I think it's a great idea that you guys are pursuing this. Though at best you might get better at visualization and maybe have a few placebo WILD's, at least the conversation is moving forward, and we're learning more about the things that happen while we're falling asleep.

So I hope you don't mind my interjection, and be assured I do so with the best of intentions, no matter how negative I may appear.

tl;dr: Rolling your eyes up and plugging your ears will not make you instantly lucid, at least not after the placebo effect wears off.

Just thought I'd add - I tried this again this morning and did get lucid ( :) ), but much as my prev post I think this was not due to the eye rolling thing per se. Firstly again this was a DILD preceded by NLD'ing, and it followed 6hrs of sleep (and I didn't get any ear pop thing at all).
BUT I think it did help me return to sleep quicker (as I mentioned before) so I am happy to add it onto my routine. It almost felt a bit like doing that relaxation technique where you clench various muscles and relax them - jamming up eyes up and in took some effort to maintain, and then I slowly relaxed from it into sleep, the added advantage was that it had an added visualization effect, some of this seemed to be the soft phosphenes (light show) from the retinal stimulation (subtle but there) and part might be what sageous and others have mentioned as a sort of soft psychological link to the eye and brain thing (we often look up when we day dream).

anyway - no harm came from it, I got to sleep quick and lucid so I am happily adding it my routine! Thanks for mentioning it again :)

Thank you Sageous. :) I definitely always lean in when you are chiming in to a thread I am following. I see you also updated your LD count at some point, nice!

I think it likely just coincidence, but yesterday at the onset of a 15 minute nap I did the eye roll and did get muted audio senses...it never did this during WBTB or daytime tests for me so far. I tried the eye roll again last night during WBTB, primarily for the relaxing effect but also experimenting to see if anything else was noticed and did not note the muted audio senses. I got lucid again last night, but like Tlaloc I don't think it had anything to do with the eye roll but much to do with my refocus on the RRC (thank you again Sageous!). It was also a DILD. An exhilarating one that has me a little more active on DV than I have been in a while!

Thanks for coming by Sageous! I wouldn't think my friend told me anything wanting to impress or lie to me, he did seem at a loss for words trying to describe his method though. So we probably miscommunicated. Either that or he's a marvelous liar. We have at least learnt lots (I for sure have), so thanks everyone :)

I'll keep on investigating anyways, and inform if I learn anything new.

Hi guys, I forgot to mention this in all of my previous posts but I have this weird feeling where I lay down with my eyes closed and I feel like I'm spinning around floating very fast. This always happens when I tried to look at something very close to my eyes, the only difference is that there is nothing near me to look at and instead I focus on my eyelids. This same thing has happened during some of my WILDs where I didn't do the eye thing.

Sounds like HH to me, ¿you feel this when looking at something when awake or asleep?

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Originally Posted by Eddydpyl

Sounds like HH to me, ¿you feel this when looking at something when awake or asleep?

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I can do this whenever I want, I just close my eyes and focus on the eyelids. I don't do it very often cause it often causes me to stay awake for several hours.

Well I've felt exactly that but as HH, mening I can't trigger it at will.