#ThinkfullyHabit: Doze off
Do you ever feel frustrated when you doze off when you don’t want to? But, what if dozing in and out of sleep was actually a helpful state to be in? What if we gave into it a bit more often (as long as we’re in a safe space and not operating machinery!).
At the onset of sleep there’s a state we enter called ‘hypnagogia’, which we experience as being half-asleep, half-awake. Charles Dickens talked of this as a time that enables the mind to “ramble at its pleasure.”
“Hypnagogia is the shortest path for communication from our subconscious. ”
WHY?
Alternations happen in our mind in the space between wakefulness and sleep. It’s a short point of transition where our consciousness fragments slightly. It’s this transition stage that has been linked to less rigorous and less logical thoughts which become a little more untethered. Importantly, in contrast to daydreaming and late night dreaming, it is more likely to be infused with our recent memories and experiences.* Dr Valdas Noreika, lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London explains that this is why we hear of scientists making discoveries if they’ve been absorbed in what they’re working on before they doze off**. For example, the inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla reported that his hypnagogic state allowed him to visualise his inventions before he developed them.
Scientists at MIT are certainly taking the hypnagogic state seriously.*** They are developing a wearable electronic prototype device called Dormio, designed to identify the sleep onset period and stimulate people’s thoughts while in a hypnagogic state. Neuroscientist Adam Haar Horowitz from MIT explains that in this state, the mind is “trippy, loose, flexible, and divergent," and they are interested in “turning the notch up high on mind-wandering and making it immersive.” The idea is that because people can still hear and process audio sounds during the in-between hypnagogic state, they can be influenced by audio prompts played through the device while they fall asleep.
As the scientists start to take this half-awake/half-asleep state more seriously, perhaps we can also start giving ourselves permission to doze off. After all, it's during this more lucid, unconstrained time that our minds have permission to be more creative and free, which can be such an important part of letting new ideas settle into place.
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