Sleeping with a fan affect dreaming? (and LDing)

Hiya, I mentioned this in one of my posts many months ago...but got no direcft anwsers to it.

When i was younger and i had surgery, my mom would take naps in my room...and she slept with a fan going. (like a table fan...)

After a week or 2 of constantly hearing the fan... i HAD to have some constant noise for me to sleep. So i got me a Noise maker... one that has many settings... (rain...stream...whire noise) I mostly kept it on rain....

2 years ago i wondered....why haven't i been dreaming? I thought it was so interesting...yet i never dreamed.... The sound machine always put me into a deep...deep...sleep. So i thought i would downgrade to a small fan (nice with a constant humming noise) in hope of having some dream recall.

Few months ago after taking a Psychology class i discovered LDing and this site! WOW! YOU CAN DO THIS?!, i thought... So i've been hooked ever since.

Now... Is my fan (constant humming) going to effect my chances? I've tried sleeping without it and i cant... Also my ceiling fan isnt as consistant... it klanks around.

So should i learn to sleep without the fans? (even thought it would be hard) or will i be ok?

Thanks :roll:

Dear Tazaran,

Dreams can incorporate a great deal of ambient noise. I've had Dreams that incorporated my Dream Induction Tapes and Mantra Tapes -- putting that narrative into the story somehow. So a little bitty fan should not be a problem... unless it is a problem.

Electrical fans may have an electromagnetic effect ill suited for dreaming. We could experiment and do a tape recording of an electrical fan and see if the noise is sufficient enough to laul you to sleep but which wouldn't have any of the insidious electromagnetic waves. But such a fan doesn't involve much horsepower and so I could hardly expect that the magnetic waves would extend much beyond the immediate location of the fan.

But, if you are sleeping so lightly that it matters whether or not you have some background noise going, I would sooner suspect that you are sleeping too close to the surface.

What can one do to sleep more deeply? Hmmmmmm? Live a good simple life with a clean conscience. All Anxieties, Worries, and residual Angers will effect one's sleep.

If you keep cats, then try to wake their little butts up during the day so that they will need to sleep soundly at night, instead of yowling about disturbing your own sleep. With that in mind, I have a few little butts to wake up....

I've slept with a fan on since I was about 5 years old. I've always had above average vivid dreams, and quite a few lucid dreams in the past couple years, and especially the last couple months. If anything, I'm sure the fan may help somehow. I am quite sure it doesn't detract from dreaming

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Originally posted by Matchbook
I've slept with a fan on since I was about 5 years old. I've always had above average vivid dreams, and quite a few lucid dreams in the past couple years, and especially the last couple months. If anything, I'm sure the fan may help somehow. I am quite sure it doesn't detract from dreaming

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Good! Thank God we could clear that up without much difficulty.

But this recalls to mind that I once kept a Negative Ion Generator. It was supposed to help with such things, but what it would do was make the walls very sotty where-ever I would put it and so I soon discounted whether it was helpful spiritually because it was such a nuisance materially. do they still have such things?

I sleep with a fan every night unless it's too cold and it actually helps me with inducing W.I.L.D.S. As I'm drifting off I'll notice the sound of the fan vanish and if I don't become too conscious of this I can ride it into SP or right into the dream.
If I don't sleep with my fan on I use nature sounds normally like rain with light thunder. I can sleep with silence but where I live there's not much of that.
It's funny, when I was a teen I had to have my stereo blasting to fall to sleep. Now I like quiet peacefull sounds to fall to sleep to.

Here's a question. I wonder if listening to a fan while sleeping affects your brainwaves like listening to a tones cd of Alpha, Theta. ect... or binereal beats? I wonder if it can help slow down your brain waves on a low setting and maybe speed them up if you have the fan on a high setting and it actually keeps you more consciousness because if it's faster sound while sleeping?

There are two good forms of noise. The first is Classical Music from the Mozard Period, before the Romantic Movement added modulations in volume and 'feeling' to the music. Good music at unmodulated volume without crashes and bangs.

Then there is the TV or Radio set on an empty channel so that only static and noise is received. it is very close to being White Noise.

If one wishes to set up Noise as a barrier to more disturbing noise -- neighbors playing that loud hippityhop music -- then the TV or Radio set to a non-station may be the best option.

I remember when I was once in a powerful nation's land army and was stuck in a tent with a platoon of noisy men. I found a small radio with headphones and found a non-station and could sleep well, setting up a noise barrier against all the real noise. Then late at night it seems some Station somewhere in the world began broadcasting into that frequency and woke me up with a startling little song. It was an old American Negro Blues Song from perhaps out of the 30's... "I'm Too Happy Today Blues" It was about a lady who could not be happy since the day was simply going too well, but finally it began to rain or whatever and so her toes began to "tippee tippee toe tapping" in her shoes. What a surreal little song that was.

i find if i have any kind of noise i can't sleep...even if the radio is on low downstairs, i can hear it, and it keeps me awake.
Although, then again, i find i can't sleep because it's too quiet...however, if i hear the rain outside my window, that will send me to sleep!
Confusing or what?
if i've left my computer on, that keeps me awake...the low humming noise...although it is right next to my bed...so maybe its chucking out waves in spite of being on stand by and making no noise.

I'm not sure about the "negative ion generators". I've never heard of one. But I'm sure they are still around somewhere. Google it or search on Ebay. If they are still around, they are probably better and cheaper than before.

About using a fan to simulate binaural beats to affect your brainwaves, I don't think it would work the same way. Using those binaural beats requires that you can distinguish clearly left from right, by having headphones or surround sound, because the frequency is caused changes from left to right. With a fan it wouldn't cause that, BUT it probably simply helps by almost hypnotizing you with the monotonous and droning sound, which will help you relax faster and fall asleep.

I have my fan on a loud, high setting. I sleep on my side and have a habit of putting a pillow on top of my head to feel more ensconced and secure. But I can still hear the fan clearly. By hypothesis is that it sometimes helps bring me into lucidity. I don't recall hearing it during my non-LD dreams, but I do recall hearing a droning sound during several of my LDs. It may work in tandem with my reality checks to help me realize the situation. It may subconsciously remind me that that is the same sound I heard just prior to going to sleep, so I am actually asleep. Oddly, I don't actually have to do reality checks very often. Most of my lucidity is simply random, or caused by some dreamsign. I'm wondering if maybe the fan sound breaking into my dream is enough to launch me into immediate lucidity. Then again, it may have absolutely nothing to do with reaching lucidity.

its just whitenoise, bro.

whatever makes you comfortable...is best, unless it really puts you to sleep i guess. But i have had LD's with the usual fan in the background.

I have an air conditioning unit in my room and it works well to put me to sleep, especially when there could be outside noise ie chirping birds etc. I have yet to have a lucid dream but as of late I have been able to remember my dreams and I even realized I was dreaming last night but lost the dream immediately afterwards.

I mostly sleep with either my fan running, or my TV on. I don't think either have an effect on my dreaming..Except they help me to get to sleep easier. xD

Off Topid: Holy crap, Merck, your avatar scares me. xDDD Is that a zebra? o_o;

I sleep with a large window fan every night. It doesnt bother me in dreaming, but It does keep my mind from wandering. If it is TOTALLY silent, I hear every sound the house makes (ex: Fridge, Ice machine, AC/Furnace) and the animals outside and anything else that might, "creep me out" (ex: wierd popping sounds, thumps, bangs, things moving "ghosts") Whenever I hear unexplainable sounds whenever I try to sleep I get kinda jumpy and cant get to sleep, so a fan DOES HELP.

The one thing though that I think kinda bothers me are lights of ANY KIND, whenever Im trying to sleep. Like the light of my computer, the DVD light, or the little red light on the PS2. Especially the DAMN STREET LIGHT OUTSIDE. That really bothers me If I let it get to me. A TV doesnt help though because I have a habit of dreaming whats on TV. lol.

I like it to be totally dark. This wasnt the case when I was little. I had to have some kind of light, to kinda keep me attached to REALITY. So My mind wouldnt drift and see things in the dark that most kids see that scare them. Hallucinations. you know.

Sometimes ambient noise drives me nuts. But this white noise I cannot see as being detrimental to LDing. The only thing I see as affecting it would be the fan. It would probably keep you in a lighter sleep, good for getting into an LD, bad for staying in one.

I find.. when you cannot anticipate what will come next on a sound maker (ie. mp3 player, radio, alarms), these trigger LDs the best, because your mind tends to come up with something unexpected. If you've heard the cd many times, usually it can be shrugged off (though sometimes you get a storyline based around it). In any case, new music's words have extreme impact.

Ambient noise however... I can see it being used to focus, pissing you off, or not doing anything, however once in a dream or sleep, i doubt it matters.