June 15, 2022 - Category: General

When you snooze you… WIN!

when yoiu snooze you WIN - how to utilize hypnagogic state talk on dreams

We’ve always been told that when snoozing (pushing the snooze button and drifting off for another 5-10 minutes) – we are losing. Well, most snoozers are in fact… winning. Especially when doing this – instead of simply falling asleep again:

It’s as if the whole world is taking a major turn at the moment. Like a gazillion super tankers simultaneously changing their course. It takes time of course. To change what for many years seems to have been the mantra; “get as much as possible out of your day!” – which would then also entail staying awake for as many hours in the day as possible (“sleep is overrated”).

Now this is not a post promoting the benefits of sleep (of which there are incredibly many, for instance if we tell ourselves “I’ll sleep when I’m old” – most likely we are not getting that old).

Instead – this is a post promoting what could happen if you – instead of rushing out of bed the minute your alarm goes off – you stay in bed for 5-10 minutes. Not sleeping as such but staying in that half-awake half-asleep state – also called “the hypnagogic state.” *

Why is that a good idea? Simply because the hypnagogic state is a state in which our brain is in a very fluid state – which again turns out to be an extremely CREATIVE state. Very often highly creative solutions to some of our biggest (work-related or personal problems) are given to us in this state. Either because of that state as such. Or because we have woken up in the middle of a (REM-) dream likewise working hard to solve our problems.

Again, if you just rush out of bed, those creative ideas are most often lost! Some of the biggest inventions have been made in dreams / in the hypnagogic state. Like the underlying technical solution of Google. Or the structure of the periodic table. Or the discovery of the benzene molecule (a revolution in organic chemistry). And I could go on (this list is really long).

So – are you going to snooze tomorrow morning?

(Talks/webinars on utilization of your sleeping intelligence at your workplace? Michaelrolsen.com/booking).

Michael
P.s. I of course don’t encourage pushing the snooze-botton several times with the intention of simply sleeping more – this is not going to do much good for you. Rather – push the button with the intention of seeing what comes up in your mind while lying there.

 

*Historically the transition from wake to sleep (typically evening) has been labelled “the hypnagogic state”, and the transition from sleep to wake (typically morning) “the hypnopompic state.” More and more this transitional phase is just labelled the hypnagogic state. Also, this is a state in which you can experience scary hallucinations during a specific substate called sleep-paralysis. If the latter is something you suffer from, try googling “sleep paralysis” – and find help. Also, hypnagogic jerks are the apparently involuntary jerks many have when falling asleep – a reflection of our muscles becoming fully relaxed (paralyzed) – where we often dream that we are falling (relaxing and going into deeper sleep).