Learn How to Access the Power of Liminal Dreaming

There’s a swirling, kaleidoscopic, free-associative experience on the edge of your mind. You’ll find it in the space right between awake and asleep, where your meandering consciousness mixes memory and thought with visionary imagery. I call this experience liminal dreaming. “Liminal” refers to the spaces in between things, the transitional condition of thresholds or boundaries. There are two dream states that, together, make up liminal dreaming: hypnagogia and hypnopompia. These constantly morphing states cling to the edges of sleep. You’re probably familiar with both, but you may never have given them much thought. As you slip into sleep at night, or during naps or fatigued delirium, you pass through hypnagogia, but you might first notice it when you are fighting to stay awake. In a darkened movie theater, in an overheated lecture hall, or alone on your couch late at night waiting up for someone to come home, you might experience hypnagogia as a kind of exhausted hallucination. As you slip into a nap, it might manifest in the form of vivid visions. When you drift off at night, perhaps you see eerie faces turning toward you, hear alien radio stations, or jolt out of the feeling of falling. When your arm or leg jerks involuntarily, you know you’re experiencing hypnagogia. In the morning, you surface from sleep through the swimmy realm of hypnopompia, the twin of hypnagogia that emerges on the other end of sleep. Lying warm and cozy in your bed as you slowly awake,...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Dreams Publishers Spirituality & Health consciousness exploration Creativity dream states Dreaming hypnagogia hypnopompia liminal dreaming problem solving Sleep Source Type: blogs