Sleepin like a Mayan and what it means for dreams
Just an fyi here. I've been sleeping in a hammock for half a year now and I can say that it certainly does interesting things to my dreams.
- It makes me LD a lot less. Maybe 80% less. Sad face.
- It makes my LDs much longer. Happy face. The best I can do in a bed is usually 5 minutes. In a hammock, 30 minutes is not uncommon, and I believe I've hit around 50 before.
- It makes my LDs less vivid, wilder. Middle face.
I want to elaborate on that last point because it is a mixed bag. While the level of detail of hammock LDs often leaves me disappointed, the content and message rarely does. In bed LDs often times I will have a false awakening and basically be stuck in the vicinity of my house at night with everyone asleep. I can fly at will, but that usually wakes me out of bed LDs (not so with hammock LDs). So I spend the whole LD walking around an almost exact replica of my house and trying to stabilize until something good happens (usually nothing does). It's like, gee, these hands of mine sure look vivid and that's really cool, but where are the elves and orcs at? (I can call or text them and have them come over to hang out but it doesn't always work they always take a while to show up and I usually wake up first.) In hammock dreams on the other hand, there are usually story-lines, forces more powerful than me, more otherworldly scenery and themes. Overall it seems a bit deeper even though it's less vivid.
I think these results are what one would expect given research showing that hammocks put you into a deeper sleep. Deeper sleep = less awareness, higher stability, and more crazy subconscious stuff? Sounds fair to me.
There are ups and downs to LDing in a hammock vs a bed and I don't prefer either one.
http://i.imgur.com/1fweoOE.jpg
