Be aware of the gap between wakefulness and sleep. What is the state between sleep and wakefulness called? Sleep is controlled by the mind
Every night, when a person dreams, the brain completely turns off his ability to control his body, plunging the body into a state of paralysis so that dreams do not “break through” into reality, scientists believe, or maybe they turn us off in order to feed on our energy while we sleep. The author of the video was not afraid to install a camera and film the room while he was sleeping. True, now it’s not entirely clear how he will sleep at all after what the camera filmed.
Every night, when a person dreams, the brain completely turns off his ability to control his body, plunging the body into a state of paralysis so that dreams do not “break through” into reality, said Vladimir Kovalzon, a member of the board of the International Society of Somnologists, Doctor of Sciences.
The scientist recalled that sleep consists of two phases - the phase slow sleep, and fast or paradoxical. It is during the last phase that a person dreams.
“These are two different states - slow-wave sleep and fast sleep. Two fundamentally different states, differing from each other no less than sleep from wakefulness,” the scientist said the day before world day sleep, which this year is celebrated on March 19th.
For the first time, two stages of sleep were discovered with the advent of electroencephalography, a method of recording electrical potentials in the brain. It turned out that the brain goes through several periods during sleep. different levels activity, one of them - with relatively reduced activity - was called slow-wave sleep, the second, during which brain activity was almost the same as during wakefulness, was called fast phase.
Rapid or paradoxical sleep is characterized by the fact that a person's eyes move quickly, and the electroencephalogram becomes almost the same as that of a person who is awake.
The dream is three billion years old
For a long time Scientists could not say exactly why living organisms need sleep, in which they are defenseless against predators and other threats. You can restore strength simply by being at rest. Hypotheses have been put forward that during sleep the human body gets rid of toxins, and that during this period the functioning of the brain is restored. Experiments showed that animals deprived of sleep inevitably died.
Kovalzon says that the genes responsible for sleep appeared at the dawn of evolution, in the first microorganisms, about 3.5 billion years ago.
"These are genes associated with rhythms, with biological clock. This is the most important mechanism; apparently, already in the first stages of evolution, it was needed to adapt to the fact that there is a change in darkness and light,” the scientist said.
According to him, attempts to fight sleep, to increase wakefulness through sleep, are “nonsense.”
"Our nature is different. Three states - wakefulness, rapid and slow sleep - live inside us, and they must be realized. Fundamentally different states, three worlds that are inside us, we live this way, we are structured this way. You can’t do anything with it,” the agency’s interlocutor noted.
The scientist said that the functions of slow sleep have now been established - at this time, complex processes, which ultimately lead to the restoration of special brain formations.
“There are some molecules that “shift” when you are awake; during sleep they restore their potential so that they can work again later. This is absolutely necessary element our lives, without it neither we nor animals can exist,” Kovalzon said.
Why do you have dreams?
However, the functions REM sleep are still not completely clear. Although it is known that REM sleep in early age plays vital role in brain development, it is not clear why adults dream.
According to Kovalzon, an adult sleeps in REM sleep for no more than an hour and a half per night, but in a child this takes up to 90% of all sleep.
“It plays a crucial role; it has been shown that if experimental rats are deprived of REM sleep at an early age, the maturation of normal brain systems is disrupted - they cannot see normally, cannot feel normally, communicate. But why do adults need this? It’s still unclear,” the agency’s interlocutor said.
Nightly paralysis
Scientists were able to find out whether animals dream. Kovalzon said that in the brain there is a group of neurons that, during the REM sleep phase, turn off the muscles and paralyze the entire body.
"During REM sleep with dreams, we have an active blockade spinal cord. It sends powerful inhibitory impulses, blocks our entire body, we cannot move, we are in a state of paralysis. This is done so that we cannot realize what we dream,” the scientist explained.
If these paralyzing neurons are destroyed in a cat or rat, then one can personally observe the dreams of animals. "The cat is hunting for an invisible mouse, running from invisible dog. From this it was concluded that they dream, but we don’t know what the situation is like with other animals,” the agency’s interlocutor said.
According to him, similar disorders in people whose body shutdown does not work during sleep can lead to tragic consequences. Thus, in the USA, an elderly husband strangled his wife in her sleep at night.
“He was brought to court, but somnologists gave him a tomogram and proved that he had a brain disorder; he did it involuntarily,” Kovalzon said.
So " sleep paralysis“saves people,” the scientist believes.
Sleep paralysis astral
From time immemorial, the phenomenon of sleep paralysis has been shrouded in some mystery. He has been associated with various supernatural entities. In Rus', the most widespread belief is that the brownie comes at night to strangle. He jumps on the chest and strangles the person, so that he will let go, you must mentally ask him “for better or for worse?” Also exists in different countries, their legends on this matter, that this is a witch who comes to drink the energy of a sleeping person, that this is a genie, in Basque mythology there is a special character - inguma, etc. IN modern world To all these options, one more was added, that it is aliens who conduct their experiments at night by immobilizing a person.
With sleep paralysis, consciousness is in a borderline state between sleep and wakefulness. In this state, a person can not only feel the approach or presence of a certain entity, but also see and hear it.
How to induce sleep paralysis (enter sleep paralysis)
For most people, sleep paralysis scares the hell out of them. If it happens often, then the person begins to be afraid to fall asleep at night, remembers with horror his visions and auditory hallucinations, is afraid to go to bed one day and not wake up again. But, there are people who deliberately induce sleep paralysis. This borderline state consciousness and it can be used for various kinds of experiments with your subconscious or, as some argue, for exits from the body.
The easiest way is to slowly fall asleep. Try to grasp the boundary between when the body has already “turned off” and the consciousness is still awake. To track this state, it is necessary to transfer thinking to superficial, preferably wordless, and observe auditory manifestations. As soon as you hear some extraneous sounds, rustling sounds, footsteps, it is most likely that the sleep phase has begun and the body has fallen into sleep paralysis.
In that moment of sleep, when you are not yet asleep, but are no longer awake, at that very moment Being is revealed.
There are some vital moments in your consciousness. In these moments you are closer to your center than at any other time. You change “gear” and the moment you change gear you go through neutral. This neutral position is closer to you. In the morning, when sleep is fading, disappearing, and you feel awakened, but not yet awakened, when you are just in the middle of awakening, you are at “neutral speed.” That moment when you are no longer asleep, but not yet awakened, as times in the middle. You have switched on the neutral speed. In the transition from sleep to wakefulness, your consciousness changes its entire mechanism. It jumps from one mechanism to another. There is no gap between these two mechanisms; the same thing happens in the evening when you jump back from the waking mechanism to the sleep mechanism, from the conscious to the unconscious, for one moment there is no mechanism, there is no pressure of the mechanism on you, because you have to take the leap from one mechanism to the other. If you can be aware between these two moments, if you can remember yourself between these two moments, then you will get some idea of your real self.
How to perform this technique? When you are about to fall asleep, relax. Close your eyes, curtain the room. Just close your eyes and wait. Sleep is approaching; just wait, don't do anything, just wait! Your body relaxes, your body becomes heavy: feel it. Feel it. The dream carries its own mechanism, it begins to work. Your waking consciousness disappears. Remember, because the moment will be very elusive, the moment will be tiny. If you miss, you miss. It is a very short period - one moment, a very small interval, and there will be a transition in you from wakefulness to sleep. Just wait, remaining fully aware. Keep waiting. This will take some time. This will take at least three months. Only then can you get some hint of that moment which is right in the middle. So don't rush. You can't do this right now; you won't be able to do it tonight. But you have to start, and you may have to wait a few months.
This usually happens suddenly within three months. This happens every day, but your awareness and meeting this gap cannot be planned. It happens. You just keep waiting and one day it happens. One day, suddenly, you realize that you are neither awake nor asleep - a very mysterious phenomenon. You may even become afraid because until now you have only known two states: the waking state and the dream state. But you do not know the third state of your essence, when you are neither asleep nor awake. The first time you experience this condition, you may feel scared. Don't be alarmed. Everything new, something that was not previously known, should cause some fear, because this moment, if you experience it again and again, will also give you new sensations: you will feel neither alive nor dead, nor either. neither this. This is an abyss.
These two mechanisms are like two hills; you jump from one peak to another. If you stop in the middle, you will fall into an abyss, into an abyss without a bottom: you will go on falling and falling and falling. This technique is used by the Sufis, and before they give this technique to seekers, they also give another practice, just as a safety measure. Whenever this technique is offered in the system of Sufism, another technique is given before it, which is that you close your eyes and imagine that you are falling into a deep well - dark, deep, bottomless. Just imagine falling into a deep well - falling, falling and falling, falling endlessly. There is no bottom, you cannot reach the bottom. Now this fall cannot stop. You can stop it; you can open your eyes and say “enough,” but this fall cannot stop on its own. If you continue, you will find that the well is bottomless and it gets darker and darker.
In the Sufi system this well exercise must first be practiced.
- with this bottomless dark well. It's nice and useful. If you practice this exercise and realize its beauty, its silence, then the deeper you fall into the well, the more silent you will become. The world remains somewhere far away, you feel that you are flying far, far, far away. The silence grows along with the darkness, and there, in the depths, there is no bottom. Fear takes over your mind, but you know it's just your imagination, so you can continue.
Through this exercise you become more adapted to this technique, but then when you fall into the well between wakefulness and sleep, it is no longer imaginary; this is a true fact. And here too there is no bottom, this abyss is bottomless. That is why the Buddha called this unfilled emptiness shunya. There is no end to it. Once you have known it, you also become infinite. This vision is difficult to obtain while awake. It is, of course, impossible to obtain it during sleep, because then the mechanism operates and it is difficult to disidentify oneself from this mechanism. But in the evening and in the morning other states happen - only two such states in twenty-four hours - at such moments these states come very easily, but for this you need to wait.
While we are awake we are false and we know it very well. During your waking hours you are insincere, unnatural. You smile when tears would be more natural. This falsehood continues while you are awake, it continues even during your sleep - in a different form, naturally. Your dreams are far-fetched, they are not real. It is amazing that even in a dream you are not real, not natural, even in a dream you are afraid and create images. You are so fake that you cannot even have real dreams.
These are our two false faces: one appears when we are awake, the other when we sleep. Between these two false faces there is a very small door, a gap. You can get some idea of your original face in this interval. Get an idea of the face that you had when you had not yet communicated with your mother and, therefore, with society. When you were alone with yourself; when you were not this and that; when there was no division. There was only the real; there was nothing unreal. You can glance at this face, this innocent face between these two mechanisms.
Tantra says that neither in sleep nor in wakefulness are you real. You are real only between these two states. So don't get involved with waking life, sleep or dreams. Pay attention to the gap; become aware of the gap between them. Catch a glimpse as you move from one state to another. And once you know when this gap comes, you become its master. You have the key; at any time you can open this gap and enter it. Another dimension of existence opens up: the dimension of the real.
Recently I have come to the conviction that of all the modern and non-modern “parapsychological” practices known to me, the most productive is working with the condition. No bat wings, no :-) Even Sufi whirling is, with this approach, only a means, not an end.
And one of the most interesting and practical useful states, which I “tasted” over the past six months - this is a slide between sleep and reality.
This is a state when you didn’t fall asleep very much, or didn’t wake up very much :-). In my case, for some reason it works easier when waking up than when falling into sleep. Metaphorically, this can be expressed in the image of an iceberg:
The picture is simple - let’s imagine all the knowledge available to a person as a single iceberg, of which consciousness is a small but open part; and the subconscious is large, but hidden. By fixing most of our attention on consciousness, we are in reality; fixing most of the attention on the subconscious - in a dream. The transition to a state of sliding is a fixation of attention on a narrow strip between sleep and reality.
It’s like in that song: “I couldn’t sleep enough, but in my dream I saw it.” Yes.
The advantages of being in this state:
1. Greater integrity, unity of one’s personality. “Sliding”, you get pleasure from being.
2. The ability to receive direct, most relevant information on this moment knowledge. For example, the first time I entered the "slip" I was visiting a friend. An Internet video was played in which an American man in his 30s spoke fluently about wrestling in English. I’ll say right away that my English is good, but far from excellent, especially in terms of speaking - so I didn’t really understand what he was saying. And wrestling didn’t really interest me. “Sliding”, I not only understood every word of his - without translating, with all the intonations and phraseological units, I was also imbued with his state, empathized with him. The second time in the "slip" gave me true name person nearby. Upon awakening, having told about this, I received confirmation: the man had dreamed of this name since childhood, and his mother should have called him that if his grandmother had not intervened.
I don’t use special methods to transition into sliding, but Salvador Dali used similar states. And he used the following method to enter, which he called “sleeping with a key in his hand”: he sat in a comfortable chair with armrests, put a metal key in one (relaxed!) hand - so that when he fell asleep and finally relaxed, the key fell to the floor and woke him up. Attention did not have time to sink deeply into sleep, and the artist could remember a couple of images from the dream upon awakening.
7-8 years ago I practiced this method, however, without much success - either a falling key (spoon/fork/anything metal and not very heavy) hit the floor so quietly that I did not wake up; or, when I placed a metal basin at hand, the sound was so deafening that the image of the dream could be lost due to fright. But, in any case, this practice gave a certain effect - who knows: if I had not done it then, would I now be able to transfer consciousness into a sliding state by force of will.
Try it - maybe you will succeed. But remember, the main thing is internal effort, practice is only a means.
Lately I have often heard expressions such as "lucid dream" , “controlling reality through dreams” and so on. Everyone can roughly imagine what it is. In the morning, usually coming out of a state of sleep for a split second and falling into a state of wakefulness, we hang somewhere in between))) I have repeatedly caught myself in this amazing intermediate state, when you can seem to control your dreams: by thinking out the plot, end up where you want and with whomever you want ) In a word, you become the director of your dream) But is it a dream?))) Or is it already some kind of projection onto reality??)) And can we ourselves control the immersion in this intermediate state?)
Of course!)) Anything is possible!) We only invent the impossible for ourselves so as not to do anything)))))) So one of the ways of conscious “immersion” is the practice of yoga nidra.
Yoga Nidra- This twilight state mind between wakefulness and sleep.
What bonuses??
With the help of regular practice, you can achieve previously inaccessible results in the development of human abilities - intellectual, creative, spiritual, in calming the mind, increasing vital energy, healing, recovery from illnesses, etc. With the help of yoga nidra, the body self-heals. Due to complete relaxation of the body and mind, yoga nidra rejuvenates and revives the physical, mental and emotional aspects of the personality. One hour of yoga nidra is equal to three to four hours of full-fledged deep sleep.
Who should practice?
The practice of yoga nidra is especially recommended for those people who suffer from fear, tension, obsessive thoughts and other disharmonies. It is indicated for those who want to develop greater awareness and purity of thoughts.
What's the point??
Yoga Nidra is a powerful technique of conscious relaxation that has nothing to do with falling asleep. Such relaxation cannot be compared with the so-called “rest”, when we sit comfortably in a chair, armed with a cup of coffee, a drink, a cigarette and a newspaper in front of the TV. It is more of a sensual entertainment than a relaxation (or unwinding) experience. Yoga Nidra, in turn, is a lucid dream, a special systematic method of complete physical, mental and emotional relaxation. The term "yoga nidra" consists of two words: "yoga" - union, unity (or one-pointed consciousness) and "nidra" - dream. Outwardly, from the outside, it may seem that a person practicing yoga nidra is simply falling into sleep, while in reality his consciousness continues to function, penetrating into the subconscious. This is why yoga nidra is often called psychic sleep, deep relaxation with inner awareness, when spontaneous contact with the sphere of the subconscious and unconscious. Yoga nidra leads to a state of relaxation due to the distraction of consciousness from external impressions and its immersion in the innermost depths of the psyche. If consciousness separate How from external perception, so from sleep, it is filled with power that can be used for various purposes, such as: strengthening memory, accumulating knowledge, increasing creativity, transformation of the entire personality.
How to achieve?
Yoga Nidra brings consciousness to the borderline state between sleep and wakefulness and is performed while lying on your back in a pose called shavasana yoga. Three states of consciousness are generally known: wakefulness, sleep with dreams and deep dream dreamless. Yoga Nidra allows you to achieve and remain long time in the fourth state of consciousness - intermediate - between sleep and wakefulness. This state of superconsciousness is called turiya. In yoga nidra, the body sleeps and the consciousness is awake. It allows you to release and dissolve "blocks and tensions hidden deep in the subconscious and creating obstacles for us in realizing our goals. This is achieved through several techniques - "rotation" of consciousness according to different areas bodies in a certain sequence; breathing monitoring V different parts body and reverse counting of inhalations and exhalations; evoking “bodily” memories of different sensations; visualization, built on the use of image-symbols that direct consciousness to a state of harmony and meditation. When the body is completely relaxed, the mind also becomes relaxed, and its activity is maintained by moving consciousness around the body, noticing the breath, experiencing various sensations, creating mental images.
How long?
The duration of a yoga nidra session is 30-40 minutes.(source: www.kazanyoga.info/travels/yoga_nidra/)
Painting brain activity during yoga nidra( university research in Copenhagen):www.yogin.ru/parser.php
If you can't sleep for a long time or have nightmares...
No matter what the Copenhagen studies say, we trust our own experience, the experience of our loved ones and friends. My friend, who practices like me, now takes shavasana every time before going to bed (lying on her back, arms along her body, palms up) and begins to meditate, imagining that with every breath all the cells of her body are filled with oxygen and hundreds of buds of beautiful flowers bloom in body After such meditations, she quickly falls asleep and has sweet dreams. One day, after have a hard day she fell asleep without meditating. So what do you think?? She had nightmares and woke up broken in the morning.
As far as I understood from my childhood life experience Our brain needs a mood, like a musical instrument. If he's upset. the tonality is broken, the sound is disgusting. Therefore, it is necessary to configure not only musical instruments, equipment and other equipment around you, and your brain, consciousness, body, soul)
There are still a lot of teachings on managing dreams, and no matter what we study, the main thing is to understand: why do we need this)
Sweet dreams and positive attitude!)
