Terrible title, I know, but let me explain:

Recently, I've been practising something called "image streaming" - which I think has a terrible and confusing name, by the way - which basically involves you being completely focused on the "scenes", for lack of a better word, your subconscious shows you, and trying to describe everything in them, such as feelings, what you see, what you hear, and so on; in as great detail as possible, and without any sort of censorship. The main objective here is threefold, from what I can gather from the poorly and vaguely written sources I've found so far: to get used to letting your subconscious aid you in creative thinking, by letting it run wild and seeing what it can come up with; to increase your ability to feel through your subconscious, and to learn and, eventually, change the connections your subconscious makes.

One thing that really struck me, is how similar this focusing on the subconscious seems to a regular dream (albeit one with a much lesser effect). This made me wonder: is there really much difference between our brains when we simply let our subconscious dictate our experience while awake, and REM sleep? I've read that, while in REM, our brain shows as much activity as when we're awake, so I wonder if the only difference between REM and our subconscious experience while awake, is that while we are awake, our outward connected senses "bleed" into the subconscious experience, while when we dream, the only senses we have are those mimicked by our subconscious, meaning those will be greatly amplified.

So, why is this interesting? To me, there are two reasons: the first one, is that if what is stated above is true, this could be used to induce a dream state at will if we become good enough at blocking outside experience. Maybe this is the whole premise of WILDs, and I just don't know. I've never had a WILD before, so I don't know it very well, but I've always been very curious about the differences between a "normal" REM cycle, and a WILD induced sleep state.

A less wacky, and perhaps more useful, reason is this: I've noticed these sessions are very much like actual dreams; they're almost like a weak version of dreams. More specifically, they're fleeting, and hard to remember afterwards, and if you do let them go without giving them attention for too long, they'll simply vanish from your memory, and you'll remember nothing. Now, what I'm trying to get at here, is that maybe we could practice dream recall, by practising recalling these excursions into the subconscious, which, if true, seems to be a very helpful thing for people starting out with dream recalling, for instance, and who might not be that good at it yet; it could alleviate the frustration from night after night of remembering nothing (we already have ways of dealing with this, but still), or simply accelerate progress.

I'd like to know what you guys think about this, as I can't decide if it is of any value or not. Try it out, maybe, and tell me what you think.

Also, if there are any articles or research related to this, I'd be happy to know.