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Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

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Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#211

Post by smusamashah »

Vedor wrote: post #208
smusamashah wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dont even have slight hallucinations while falling to sleep, just like in the linked article? My first sign is I usually start hearing voices which I almost always know are not real.

I think I had them when I was kid, but not anymore. And just to be clear, I didn't mean that I fall asleep as soon I close my eyes. It's just that there is no "transition" between being conscious and sleeping. And then, suddenly, I'm awake. I have that idea that my mind suppresses the memories of dreaming and falling asleep, because when I was a kid I had two recurring nightmares that I dreamed of almost every night.…

So if you try to stay awake like Dali you will only skip time intervals without seeing anything? That's interesting. If I am too sleepy but still awake I even start hearing sounds and start seeing vivid images in my head with open eyes.

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#212

Post by smusamashah »

burglekutt wrote: post #149
pier25 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What worked for me years ago was writing down my dreams. After a while I got really good at recalling them and even lucid dreaming at times. It was really cool, but I was single. Now I wouldn't want to wake my wife.

I used to do that and I had to stop because my recall of the dreams was so detailed that it took me an hour to write it all down in the morning. The details were too vivid to gloss over or not write down, and eventually I wanted that hour back so I stopped writing the dreams down. It was very cool while I was doing it though.

You could have taken voice notes instead. Must have saved lots of time.

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#213

Post by nayaketo »

distantaidenn wrote: post #117
josefrichter wrote: post #79

Wow. I didn’t know this, but I was actually able to observe this state on myself. When going to sleep, my mind is wandering. But at one point it drifts from real world thoughts to completely abstract concepts and wild imagination that sometimes makes no sense. It’s almost like a hallucination. What’s most interesting is that sometimes I am able to notice the transition to this state and consciously observe it. Usuall…

Wow, I have this exact same experience before falling asleep. It feels like a direct shift in the thought processes, and as you described it, it feels as though you have become a passive observer of your own thoughts. The images are sometimes so absurd and creative that I almost laugh to myself. But I also, don't KNOW if the images are creative or absurd, but just my brain believing it so -- is there even a differenc…

Something like this happens to me too.

> The images are sometimes so absurd and creative that I almost laugh to myself.

For me the images and thoughts are absurd but in a terrifying way. I usually wake up when this happens. I analyze the thoughts and images after waking up and they make absolutely no sense, yet in my sleep they make me very very afraid/upset, disturbing enough to make me get up terrified. I have anxiety disorder, and that's most certainly causing me to feel this way.

I also get voices speaking random gibberish that gets progressively louder which forces me to get up from my sleep. After getting up I'm usually like 'wtf was that' and go back to sleep.

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#215

Post by c64d81744074dfa »

Just realized that there's almost no mention in the comments so far about the similarity to hypnosis: access to previously inaccessible memories, hallucinations, high suggestibility...

Not sure how much I believe about hypnosis, but maybe it's related. Could it be just helping people get into this N1 state while awake?

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#217

Post by dlkf »

There is an interesting discussion to be had about the experimental design. The intervention was essentially: "the subject managed to fall asleep, and then woke up in the N1 stage." This assignment is not "random" in the same way that a drug trial is random. There are many general-state variables which likely govern our ability to fall asleep (anxiety, hunger, etc) and this study doesn't block any of them in the same way that a drug trial would (via randomization). That being said, the fact that participants who fell asleep and _didn't_ wake during N1 did not see improvement over control makes me more intrigued. (Assuming this is all true: brain scan research is really noisy and small-sample-size and has an atrocious replication record).

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#218

Post by mdp2021 »

Other commentary on the original research article, on Scientific American:

Spark Creativity with Thomas Edison's Napping Technique - Waking yourself from the twilight state just before sleep may help you to solve a challenging problem, a study shows

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-na...

Even better, there is an article from the very original research coordinator Delphine Oudiette on The Conversation [Fra]

https://theconversation.com/pour-doper-votre-creativite-fait...

which, miraculously - since a dozen online magazines commented on this but never linked it (?! !!! !) -, contains the link to the original research article,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#219

Post by jhot »

Vedor wrote: post #174
rubicon33 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda jealous. I couldn't be more different. I can't remember the last time I had a dream. Months ago probably. Random question but - do you consume any caffeine?

I, too, rarely have (or remember) dreams – once per month, maybe. But lack of dreams is not a problem for me. What I find annoying (and I'm really curious if you have similar experience) that I don't have feeling of passed time. My sleep is like blink of an eye. It's night, I close my eyes, then I open them, and there is morning already. I's always the same, no matter how long I have slept, whether I am well rested o…

I'm with you, I fall asleep to blackness and it's instantly morning. When my kids were babies and we were getting up a lot in the night to feed and change diapers I actually had an uptick in awareness of my dreams, but otherwise it is extremely rare for me to be conscious of anything during the night.

Re: Sleep technique used by Salvador Dalí works

#220

Post by ra88it »

distantaidenn wrote: post #117
josefrichter wrote: post #79

Wow. I didn’t know this, but I was actually able to observe this state on myself. When going to sleep, my mind is wandering. But at one point it drifts from real world thoughts to completely abstract concepts and wild imagination that sometimes makes no sense. It’s almost like a hallucination. What’s most interesting is that sometimes I am able to notice the transition to this state and consciously observe it. Usuall…

Wow, I have this exact same experience before falling asleep. It feels like a direct shift in the thought processes, and as you described it, it feels as though you have become a passive observer of your own thoughts. The images are sometimes so absurd and creative that I almost laugh to myself. But I also, don't KNOW if the images are creative or absurd, but just my brain believing it so -- is there even a differenc…

I have this also. So many things to say I don't know where to begin. I feel like there is a distinct difference between the experiences of seeing the images when you are falling asleep vs seeing the images when you have recently come out of sleep. And then there is a third state where you have recently come out of sleep but you aren't done sleeping yet so you are also falling back to sleep. This last one often allows me to start having a lucid dream.

1) Weird things like this happen to me most often in the early morning hours when I'm still drowsy but I've woken up for a few minutes.

2) It is sometimes accompanied by a "whooshing" sensation that used to frighten me and usually caused me to "back out" into normal consciousness. Eventually I learned how to relax and let it unfold without panicking. Quite often I have the sensation of rolling out of my body, off the bed and onto the floor.

3) I am paralyzed when it happens, in the sense that if I move my hand, the hand that moves is a dream hand. My real hand of course doesn't move. It doesn't feel like paralysis because I can "move" in my dream. But I am consciously aware that my real body is lying still in bed.

4) I have to be very careful not to wake myself especially at the beginning (edit: and being careful is paradoxical because if I am too careful then that will wake me too, sort of like the paradox of needing to be both loose and tight in sports). I am also aware that if my wife coughs or makes some kind of noise, I might wake up. I have discovered an odd remedy for this however: if I make "dream noise" - for instance, if I shuffle my feet loudly in the dream - I am less likely to be woken by real noise from the real world.

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