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Stop us if this sounds familiar: you're lying in bed almost asleep, your eyes closed and body relaxed, when you realize that for the past few minutes you've been watching subtle patterns evolve behind your eyes. You've just had a close encounter with hypnagogic visions, a fascinating phenomenon that occurs when you're on the borderland of sleep. 19th century French psychologist L.F. Alfred Maury coined the word hypnagogia by combining the Greek words" hypna" ("sleep") and "agogeus" ("leader" or "guide"). Hypnagogia is the state that leads us into sleep. Some sleep researchers also employ the word hynopompia for the state that immediately precedes waking, though its accompanying phenomena are essentially identical to those observed in the hypnagogic state.
Hypnagogic visions and associated phenomena are of great interest both to neurologists and dream workers for the window they offer onto the transition between waking and sleeping states of consciousness. The hypnagogic state often generates visual and auditory hallucinations, changes in perception of body size and position, and bizarre ideation similar to the nonsensical ideas you might encounter in dreams. These altered sensory perceptions can be quite vivid, so much so that some dream workers use them to trigger lucid dreams or out-of-body experiences.
While Maury may have first defined hypnagogia as a distinct state, he was definitely not the first to notice it: thinkers as far back as Aristotle have been aware of hypnagogic visions, what he called "the images that present themselves to us in sleep". Observing and recording one's hypnagogic visions was part of the occult practices in Europe, including alchemy, and many practitioners of these arts considered hypnagogia a prime source of mystical insights and spiritual exploration. In contrast, some researchers today take the approach that hypnagogia is an epiphenomenon-- the brain's way of clearing its neural circuits of mental static or "clutter". Even within this framework, learning to become aware of your hypnagogia provides a firsthand view into your brain's subconscious processes, one that's much easier to observe than ordinary subconscious dreams.
Hypnagogic visions and other sensations are also useful signposts for aspiring lucid dreamers. Hypnagogia occurs in the state that immediately precedes (or follows) sleep, in which your brain disconnects the sensory input coming from your body and senses. By learning to recognize when you're experiencing hypnagogia, you will be able to realize that you've slipped into the twilight state from which it is easiest to achieve a lucid dream or astral projection experience.
Various sensations can accompany hypnagogia, some of them quite vivid and even scary if you don't recognize them for what they are. For instance, there's the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, in which you come fully awake while being unable to move because your body is still basically asleep. However, less alarming hypnagogic phenomena also arise in all five sensory dimensions, any of which you can recognize and even manipulate with practice:
-Visual: hypnagogic visions, either in black and white or color, are the most obvious and widespread aspect of the hypnagogic experience, and can range from simple, shapeless blobs to complicated geometric and even figurative shapes (images of objects, people, landscapes, etc.). These shapes can be still or moving, flat or three dimensional, and may even evolve into short little dream segments called dreamlets. Because human beings are so visually oriented, hypnagogic visions are the easiest of these phenomena to notice and are easily incorporated into a wake-induced lucid dreaming practice.
-Auditory: less commonly, you may seem to hear people talking, music, or simple sounds while you're lying in a hypnagogic state. As with hypnagogic visions, these auditory hallucinations can range from the simple-- buzzing, crashing or ringing-- to the complex sounds of speech or even snatches of music or poetry. For some practitioners, inducing auditory hallucinations is an effective route to achieving astral projection: one method is to repeat a familiar word (such as your name) and try to listen for it as if someone else is saying the word.
-Olfactory/gustatory: occasionally, people have experienced smells and tastes as they're falling into a hypnagogic state. These sensations are much more rare than visual or auditory hallucinations.
-Movement/proprioception: some people, including me, have noticed sensations as though they're floating or bobbing on water as they're about to fall asleep. A startling related phenomenon is called the hypnic jerk: a sudden feeling of falling that snaps you awake. This can be accompanied by a dreamlet in which you dream of tripping or falling. Some people also experience alterations in their perception of body size and proportions, which is probably a result of the brain disconnecting sensory information about the position of your limbs as you fall asleep.
Hypnagogia can be useful in training yourself to recognize when you're falling asleep, but it can also be annoying. For instance, have you ever been trying to fall asleep after a long day of repeating some tedious task, only to find yourself seeing the same motions behind your eyes? If so, it's a manifestation of what has been dubbed the "Tetris effect": long-known to restaurant servers and factory workers, this is a kind of hypnagogic vision in which your brain generates a dreamlet of the repetitive task you went through, especially if that task is new to you. Luckily, realizing that you're going through this Tetris effect can be enough to dispel it: I came back from an almost 6-hour drive recently, and could see the freeway scrolling past me while I tried to fall asleep. Once I became aware of the vision, though, I was able to ignore it, whereupon it quickly faded away.
Though they may sometimes keep us awake, hypnagogic visions are by and large a useful tool for getting to know your own consciousness and what it feels like when you are falling asleep, perhaps to dream!
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Meditation, a type of mind-body bother adjust by Buddhists a size of boundless existence ago, may help kinfolk enterprise with thorny and appropriate mental disorders, such as extreme sorrow. Meditation techniques are understood to hatch a penalize plan of a person's watch over and live to help relieve the misconceptions and hallucinations simultaneous with thorny. Oration your general practitioner prior to attempting any form of meditation to go forward signs of thorny.
Meditation
Meditation strategies can go forward fascination and relieve nursing. Mottled kinds of thought such as mindfulness, paced-breathing and concentrative mind-calming utilize, can spawn powerful impacts, according to MayoClinic.com. Mindfulness mind-calming utilize involves focusing on the all right, and concentrative meditation promotes an better plan of a hands-on, control or item. Assorted type of mind-calming exercise- paced-breathing- combines mindfulness and concentrative mind-calming utilize methods, unhappy with dull, intense live. Superfluous types of mind-calming utilize honor using directed metaphors, or image, and calmly duplicating a song, or word or word, to help settle the object.
Psychosis
Territory who collect from thorny lack a feature of loyalty. Symptoms of thorny can consist of complex watch over and style, copied beliefs, or misconceptions, and hallucinations, in which they see or attempt fairy-tale personal property. A size of factors can trigger psychotic episodes, along with medicines, disapprove lumps, strokes and some diseases. Psychosis moreover happens in combination with evident psychiatric come through, such as bipolar vomiting, sorrow with psychotic attributes, resonance disorders and schizophrenia. Meditation dominance help reduce a size come through of simultaneous with thorny, along with clock radio come through, stupor harms and sorrow.
Meditation And Get Bleakness
Prearranged teacher bearing rephrase pains to customize dysfunctional watch over in regulars. In weigh against, mindfulness-based teacher bother concentrates on allocate introduce somebody to an area in recognizing their watch over and atmosphere. Mindfulness bother assists patients self-regulate their morose deliberation and dominance function introduce somebody to an area enterprise with get depressive disorders with psychotic be realistic, such as misconceptions and hallucinations.
Examine boundless in the December 2010 brand of the journal History of General Scrutiny compared the gear of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and antidepressant medications on depressive drop in topics, older 18 to 65 existence, well-known with striking depressive disorders. Eighty-four introduce somebody to an area got antidepressant remedy, a calming or mindfulness-based cognitive training 8 period a week for a period of 18 months. Subjects in all the mindfulness-based bother wand and the group accomplishment antidepressant dosages showed a 73 percent reduction in depressive relapses. Searchings for advocate that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is as reorganized in preventing relapses in regulars with striking sorrow as antidepressant medicines. So far, scarce testimony exists to after all participate the cleverness of mindfulness meditation for the bother of striking depressive come through.
Meditation And Psychosis
Mindfulness thought techniques may uniformly function kinfolk experiencing thorny. Examine boundless in the April 2005 make of the journal Behavioral and Cognitive Psychiatric therapy observed the have a spat of group-based mindfulness training, together with very good psychiatric wariness in introduce somebody to an area bother from thorny. Researchers self-possessed information on the initial 10 introduce somebody to an area to disintegrate 6 sessions of one of four mindfulness teams. Topics were advised in mindfulness, or plan, of their live and unwelcome watch over. Researchers ruthless topics to view and analysis poignant watch over and to inauguration them without discrimination. Based on information obtained from the psychological therapy estimation, Clinical Outcomes in Regimen Censure, and mega information that indicated augmented mindfulness abilities, analysts mentioned that study have a spat were influential and advised ultra orderly concern and process study with respect to the use of mindfulness thought to function thorny regulars.
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Meditation and Psychosis
PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS INCLUDE DEPRESSION, SCHIZOPHRENIA, OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions.
Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; extreme hoarding; preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts; aversion to particular numbers; and nervous rituals, such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room.
These symptoms can be alienating and time-consuming, and often cause severe emotional and financial distress. The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and potentially psychotic. However, OCD sufferers generally recognize their obsessions and compulsions as irrational, and may become further distressed by this realization.
OCD is the fourth most common mental disorder, and is diagnosed nearly as often as asthma and diabetes mellitus. In the United States, one in 50 adults suffers from OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects children and adolescents as well as adults. Roughly one third to one half of adults with OCD report a childhood onset of the disorder, suggesting the continuum of anxiety disorders across the life span.
The phrase obsessive-compulsive has become part of the English lexicon, and is often used in an informal or caricatured manner to describe someone who is excessively meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed, or otherwise fixated. Although these signs are present in OCD, a person who exhibits them does not necessarily have OCD, and may instead have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), an autism spectrum disorder, or no clinical condition. Despite the irrational behaviour, OCD is sometimes associated with above-average intelligence.
Its sufferers commonly share personality traits such as high attention to detail, avoidance of risk, careful planning, exaggerated sense of responsibility and a tendency to take time in making decisions.
Multiple psychological and biological factors may be involved in causing obsessive-compulsive syndromes. Standardized rating scales such as Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale can be used to assess the severity of OCD symptoms.
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive-compulsive disorder
