I can intentionally fall asleep, even when not at all tired, by inducing a sleep-like brain state: visualize in detail, but don’t control what I’m visualizing. if I need to kickstart it, I intentionally visualize a series of things I’ve encountered recently but were unimportant background noise.
edit: also, I should mention—I did in fact find this with an EEG device. the zeo sleep manager (a 12 year old device, I got mine in 2016 or so used). woke up one day while sick, after a benadryl night (have since sworn off benadryl because phew that’s not a good chemical), and was in and out of sleep. checked my phone after each wake, noticed a dreamlike state of aimless, slightly delirious visual free association. phone said I’d been in REM. fell back asleep, woke up again. same feeling. phone said pure REM inbetween. hmm, can I make my phone think I’m still in REM by continuing to do that? daydreams deleriously while watching phone lazily, phone continues to say REM sleep for several minutes well whaddaya know, I can. and since then I’ve been able to use this trick to thoroughly clear my mind fairly quickly at will.
I can intentionally fall asleep, even when not at all tired, by inducing a sleep-like brain state: visualize in detail, but don’t control what I’m visualizing. if I need to kickstart it, I intentionally visualize a series of things I’ve encountered recently but were unimportant background noise.
edit: also, I should mention—I did in fact find this with an EEG device. the zeo sleep manager (a 12 year old device, I got mine in 2016 or so used). woke up one day while sick, after a benadryl night (have since sworn off benadryl because phew that’s not a good chemical), and was in and out of sleep. checked my phone after each wake, noticed a dreamlike state of aimless, slightly delirious visual free association. phone said I’d been in REM. fell back asleep, woke up again. same feeling. phone said pure REM inbetween. hmm, can I make my phone think I’m still in REM by continuing to do that? daydreams deleriously while watching phone lazily, phone continues to say REM sleep for several minutes well whaddaya know, I can. and since then I’ve been able to use this trick to thoroughly clear my mind fairly quickly at will.