What Is A Hypnogogic Hologram?
For many people, the very word “Hypnogogic” doesn’t ring any bells. Did you know that we all experience Hypnogogic moments at one time or another throughout the day? So what is Hypnogogic?
The Webster’s dictionary describes it as:
“Of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding sleep: Hypnogogic hallucinations.”
With today’s information overload, many of us are insomniacs who have to go to work early and find ourselves in this “intermediate consciousness” stage throughout the day! The problem is we’re not trained to control it (but we can actually learn to control it and make better use of it). This page hopes to break this state of mind down and how to use it on purpose, invoke it any time you want, and use it to do many wonderful things from meditation to rekindling long lost memory associations, to repairing your internal dialogue in a very fun way.
Accidental Hypnogogic States Are Common
Many of us experience this passively in scenarios like thinking you see something in your peripheral like a shadow only to turn your head instantly and see nothing evident of what could have caused this. The Hypnogogic hallucination is the shadow. Sometimes we see a more vivid representation of something, and often we don’t see this only in our peripheral, we can see things very clearly one second and nothing the next leaving the mind to wonder what just happened. To give you a visual of this type of experience-
Have you ever walked through a store with someone, a friend, family member, or someone else your close to, and they take off in another direction (while you think they are still right beside you) and you see something interesting then go to tell them about it without turning around, a few minutes goes by and you come to realize you’ve been talking to yourself- or worse, some unsuspecting stranger standing close to you gets an earful from a stranger. This is not a hypnogogic state but it’s how it feels when you have one, at first seems natural and real, then awareness penetrates and you feel confusion or shock (or embarrassment).
What this shadow in your peripheral may have been is simply a thought, desire, emotion, or anything your thinking about manifesting a visualization of something and something in your peripheral had the same shape as the image in your mind’s eye and the vision you see in your peripheral mixed with the thought you had sort of crossed paths in your brain and your brain was tricked into thinking it saw what it was thinking about, even in passing.
It’s sort of the same thing that happens at night when you see outlines of something that looks like something scary and you get a chill. It’s a matter of an overactive imagination bringing your “fears” into manifestation by perceptively seeing something that isn’t there, or rather mis-defining what it is you’re seeing.
Natural Hypnogogic States Occur Just Before Passing Out
The most common sensation of a hypnogogic state is just before bed every night. Hypnogogic states happen when the brain enters into theta brain state just before falling asleep. When the conscious mind is almost asleep (relaxed) but still a bit awake, and you enter into theta you can enter into a hypnogogic state. Weather or not you hallucinate will depend on how active your conscious mind is, and how deep into theta your brain state is.
Many know hypnogogic (but not by title) as the moment just before your immersed into the dream world, where you’re too sleepy and lazy to acknowledge anyone talking to you (you certainly could but choose not to), yet not yet in the “sleep” stage (so you know and are aware of them talking to you, and will even usually remember the whole conversation later). Being hypnotized in many ways is a hypnogogic state that is controlled, this is why people tend to see things the hypnotist is describing but they are also aware of the audience and other things in their immediate environment.
One toe in the conscious world, one in the dream state
This is a fascinating state of mind actually, as, in this scenario, it is your brain with one toe in the dream world’s first stage, where usually you consolidate your day’s events, your worries become assignments for the dream world to mull over, and everything you think about during this state will become included in the soon to follow dream sequences.
The first stage of sleep is where the mind prepares to boot up into the dream world, a chemical is released by the brain to make you drowsy (melatonin and another chemical is released to paralyze your body so you don’t physically act out your dreams).
This first stage is a world of high creativity, vivid imagery, and connected with the subconscious mind, yet another toe is in the conscious reality, but the conscious filters are weakened, sort of like the guard is there but not paying attention. In this state all of your senses are working your just basically ignoring most of them (like someone kicking your foot to see if you’re awake, you take note to kick their butt later but don’t move because this would mean you’d have to concentrate and that’s too much work). It is in this state that many wonderful things happen for creative people, and can happen for the rest as well.
I Get My Best Ideas Just Before I Fall Asleep, It Keeps Me UP!
Many creative types or people who do a lot of creative work like writing, planning, building, sculpting, art work, etc… talk about the best ideas coming to them just before falling asleep, a moment where the brain is running full throttle with great ideas effortlessly as if by divine intervention. What makes this stage just before sleep so wonderful is that the conscious mind is pretty much tucked in and ready to pass out, your thinking is unbound by the cumbersome filters that plague your thought stream all day.
It is in a highly suggestible state, and the filters you view your world through are in a state of flux. Thoughts crystallize into vivid visualizations if your eyes are closed, and if open you see a sort of movie playing but your in the movie as your conscious mind explores everything your subconscious mind thumbs through, yet your conscious mind often is not paying attention to what your eyes are consciously/physically seeing in the room, (i.e. you’ll be staring at posters, windows, shapes in the drywall, but not really looking at these things, they become sort of triggers for your thoughts as you see shapes represented by your thoughts then the imagery starts to flood like a day dream your totally immersed in).
Many creative types will have waking hypnogogic moments all day (theta brainwave state to a less degree or a bouncing from alpha, beta, and theta to the extreme back and forth where thoughts crystallize in a daydream state then you instantly put them to work in the physical world with your art, writing, etc..) but often the conscious world gets in the way. The more focused you are as a person the more useful the theta state can be for doing creative work. Writers, carpenters, painters and the like utilize theta state a great deal.
Creatively Gifted People Can Shift Brain States To Theta At Will Easily
One who can access theta at will is often seen as “creatively gifted” but anyone can do this, it just takes practice. Our hypnogogic tracks can help you train your mind to utilize this state effectively. You can of course practice it on your own as well. The track will essentially force a hypnogogic hologram state then you just work within the framework, your imagination being the main event in the play. Often getting into a hypnogogic state on purpose is the hardest part. Taking a sleeping pill and trying to force yourself to stay awake can do it, but is not the best or healthiest way.
As you experience this Hypnogogic or theta state during waking hours (this is where you tend to go into a light trance and stare into space as ideas start to flood and you try to guide this imagery towards your goal), you will often be able to fight the sleep phase transition and will quickly grab the pen and paper or tape recorder next to your bed to jot down or record the idea, then, and often only then, can you go back to sleep. You pretty much bounce out of theta and into alpha or beta to get the idea recorded, and for many this shift may push the idea out of their mind, so you have to be “quick on the draw” or you’ll lose it!
The difference between, for example, using our hypnogogic hologram track to enter theta/hypnogogic states and the one you experience just before passing out, is chemical releases in the body. With the track instigating the theta state you enter into the state a creative type enters into while awake, no chemicals in the body are trying to put them to sleep so the process is more vivid and lucid. In the “just before sleep” scenario, your fighting sleep (melatonin releases, and the chemical that paralyses you so you don’t act out your dreams physically).
Others will find it difficult to fight the sleep state and will get these great ideas but may lose them like a dream they remember thinking about but can’t figure out what it was about. They will often rationalize that they will remember it in the morning, I mean it’s a great idea and I feel excited about it right? But sadly many forget unless something associated with it triggers the memory again. Sadly the “just before bed” hypnogogic state is luxurious but crippled by the body’s trying to prepare you for sleep (indigenous chemical releases)
For many still, these great ideas come in troves and it causes insomnia. Processing the days activities in a forced hypnogogic state (about 4 hour before bed or greater) will help relieve your mind’s “clutter” and will help you sleep. Many can get to that stage where they could pass out easily, actually on the cusp, but the ideas coming in are so exciting, so fresh, and so useful, that they find themselves pondering them like a kid in a candy store. The only problem is that this candy store disappears like most memories of our dreams.
The easiest way to enter theta/Hypnogogic states is to simply be tired enough to fall asleep and yet force yourself not to pass out. It’s not as easy as it sounds to manufacture this state like this, as the very state itself is so relaxing, so luxurious it will often put you to sleep! Everyone is different but just about everyone experiences hypnogogic states just before bed in one way or another. Hypnogogic entrainment can be used to induce sleep actually using binaural beats psycho acoustic audio.
Personally when I realized that this state of mind where all the best ideas were coming to me actually had a name, a description, and a brain state (theta) associated with it, I got very excited. I would say aloud to my friends “I wish there was a way to harness that creative moment I experience before bed every night and use it when I feel blocked, or can’t think and so on”. One of my friends said, “why can’t you? It’s just theta state can’t you use binaurals and all you’re other technologies to induce it?” I was on a mission at this point to learn all I could about it. What I discovered was pretty exciting.
A year later I had created the perfect “ride” to not only induce it but to use it for many different things which I’m about to explain below. The first Hypnogogic Hologram CD uses a basic set of binaural beats to induce an intense hypnogogic state very quickly, it has no training wheels on it but it’s the best way to enter the state quickly and experience it fully. It is also the best way to prepare for the second CD “Halucinatrix” which is a more guided tour of the state and a way to use it more effectively. This second version has training wheels but they quickly fall off once you experience the ride.
The first run it just sounds like fascinating music, but subsequent rides become much more interesting. At first any theta tones are going to be high pitched and “shocking” to the senses (ears, mind, etc..) but you get used to it and sync up. I introduce the tones in a tapered (fade in) fashion over several minutes so you don’t get blasted with a debilitating (due to shock) tone. Now that you (hopefully, let me know if you don’t) know what a hypnogogic state is and how it works, lets go a bit deeper into the concessions of a hypnogogic state- how to use it to do more than just meditate and visualize for pleasure.
How You Can Use The Hypnogogic State To Your Advantage.
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