This is the most detailed examination of the experience of falling asleep I’ve yet seen. Cheers!
I have only ever suffered from occasional acute insomnia, but I can confirm guideposts 2-6 from my meditation practice. Guidepost 1 is something else that happens in meditation that is sometimes called “remembering”, or (somewhat ironically) “waking up”.
I may be familiar with 6 as well, but (if we’re thinking of the same thing) my experience is mostly of bouncing off that “membrane” and becoming more fully awake. I’ve noted the experience as something like all the sounds happening at the same time and at high speeds. The effect is something like hearing an especially noisy in-window air conditioner going through all its daily cycles at once in a second, ramping down as I re-attain a fuller level of consciousness.
One thing I didn’t notice you mention is that during the falling-asleep process, sleep paralysis can be a fuzzy-bordered thing. (That’s chemical processing for you!) This can sometimes result in the whole body jerking once or twice, called Hypnagogic (or Hypnic) Jerking. My partner tells me that my body does this most nights, and I’ve been woken by it on occasion. I’d guess I’ve been around your Guidepost 5 when I’ve had that experience, and I am sometimes able to recall what body was doing in the dream that correlated with the sudden motion.
Have you experienced such body jerks? If so, what guidepost(s) do you associate with them?
When I’ve been aware of such sudden-jerks, it’s been around Guidepost 6, just as I’m about to slip into sleep, and is usually accompanied by a micro-dream in which I need to suddenly move for some reason (usually, it’s that I missed a step on a staircase or something like that; but once I remember flinging my arm out in front of me to catch a baseball coming my way).
Some of this may be as you theorize: that sleep paralysis is lagging dream-consciousness and so your body doesn’t know that it shouldn’t actually move when your dream-consciousness tells it to.
I’ve interpreted some of the instances of this as a protective mechanism: if you’re lying in a position where your tongue might block your airway or for some other reason your body decides that you’re not safely-situated for sleep, it jerks you awake to encourage you to start over in another position… sort of like an abort to the launch sequence. I don’t know whether there’s anything to this interpretation; it’s just a pet theory.
This is the most detailed examination of the experience of falling asleep I’ve yet seen. Cheers!
I have only ever suffered from occasional acute insomnia, but I can confirm guideposts 2-6 from my meditation practice. Guidepost 1 is something else that happens in meditation that is sometimes called “remembering”, or (somewhat ironically) “waking up”.
I may be familiar with 6 as well, but (if we’re thinking of the same thing) my experience is mostly of bouncing off that “membrane” and becoming more fully awake. I’ve noted the experience as something like all the sounds happening at the same time and at high speeds. The effect is something like hearing an especially noisy in-window air conditioner going through all its daily cycles at once in a second, ramping down as I re-attain a fuller level of consciousness.
One thing I didn’t notice you mention is that during the falling-asleep process, sleep paralysis can be a fuzzy-bordered thing. (That’s chemical processing for you!) This can sometimes result in the whole body jerking once or twice, called Hypnagogic (or Hypnic) Jerking. My partner tells me that my body does this most nights, and I’ve been woken by it on occasion. I’d guess I’ve been around your Guidepost 5 when I’ve had that experience, and I am sometimes able to recall what body was doing in the dream that correlated with the sudden motion.
Have you experienced such body jerks? If so, what guidepost(s) do you associate with them?
When I’ve been aware of such sudden-jerks, it’s been around Guidepost 6, just as I’m about to slip into sleep, and is usually accompanied by a micro-dream in which I need to suddenly move for some reason (usually, it’s that I missed a step on a staircase or something like that; but once I remember flinging my arm out in front of me to catch a baseball coming my way).
Some of this may be as you theorize: that sleep paralysis is lagging dream-consciousness and so your body doesn’t know that it shouldn’t actually move when your dream-consciousness tells it to.
I’ve interpreted some of the instances of this as a protective mechanism: if you’re lying in a position where your tongue might block your airway or for some other reason your body decides that you’re not safely-situated for sleep, it jerks you awake to encourage you to start over in another position… sort of like an abort to the launch sequence. I don’t know whether there’s anything to this interpretation; it’s just a pet theory.
That’s a really interesting thought. I’ll have to (try to) remember to check out my breathing next time I jerk awake!