I’ve been
experimenting recently with using hypnagogia as part of my writing process. Hypnagogia is that transitional state of consciousness
between wakefulness and falling asleep, or conversely, between sleep and
wakefulness. During this brief time the conscious mind has not yet shut down
but is relaxing its hold. For a few seconds or minutes images and thoughts
appear without conscious effort. Then sleep takes over and they are gone.
I’ve been
exploring this borderland of consciousness because there is widespread evidence
that it can be successfully used as a method for creative problem solving. For
example, while in the process of drafting this essay, after completing the
research and most of the piece, I became stuck on the problem of how it should
end. I wrote a few different ending paragraphs yesterday but none satisfied me.
Last night
when preparing to go to sleep I lay on my back in bed and thought about how to
end this essay. Since I usually sleep on my side, lying on my back allows me to
prolong the hypnagogic period. I took some deep breaths as though I were going
to meditate, but because I was tired and because it was my usual bedtime I
could feel myself drifting away from consciousness.
A voice
said, “Exchange the ending for the beginning.”
I was still
conscious enough to know this was the answer. As I lay there trying to remember
this advice, I became vaguely aware of an even more complete solution but
without consciously wanting to do so, I rolled onto my side and fell fast
asleep.
The mind
does a lot of processing behind the scenes of consciousness. Our conscious mind
does not have access to these deliberations, nor would that be useful. The
great thing about the state of hypnagogia is that it allows a question to be
poised to the unconscious and, with practice, it allows you to receive the answer
and remember it.
Creative people have long been aware of this. For example, the
artist Salvador
Dali made hypnagogia a part of his ordinary afternoon routine. He called it “slumber
with a key.” Dali sat in a comfortable armchair and thought about an artistic
problem he wanted to solve. He held a heavy metal key between the thumb and
forefinger of his left hand. He placed an upside down plate on the floor
directly under the key. The instant Dali dozed off the key slipped through his
fingers, clanged onto the plate, and woke him up. He immediately made note of
any images he experienced during his very brief nap. Dali credited this process
when asked about his ability to visualize unique images.
Anyone familiar with Dali’s art knows that he was capable of
creating some extremely novel images. Dali is not the only artist who regularly
tapped the unconscious in the creative process. William Blake described a dream in which his dead
brother advised him of a new way to engrave his illustrated songs. Igor
Stravinsky claimed a dream was the inspiration for his groundbreaking
composition Rite of Spring. Edgar Allan Poe
wrote of being inspired by the "fancies" he experienced "only
when I am on the brink of sleep.” Robert Lewis Stevenson reported that he
dreamed two key scenes of his novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge wrote that his famous poem “Kubla Khan” appeared to him in a
dream.
Inventors
and scientists have also often credited dreams as the basis for their
creations. Mathematician and theoretical physicist
Henri Poincare reported regularly having insights into the theorems suddenly
come to him while he was just falling asleep or waking. Poincare thought the
unconscious acts like a “delicate sieve,” to strain out useless ideas. Similarly
August Kekule reported he realized the molecular
structure of benzene when he dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth while
half-asleep in front of a fire. Classical scholar Herman Hilprecht
reported that he dreamed an Assyrian priest came to him and revealed the
accurate translation of the stone of Nebuchadnezzar.
Thomas Edison also regularly practiced problem solving by dozing
while sitting in a chair holding a handful of steel ball bearings that would
wake him when they dropped from his hand into a metal pie tin. Such disparate
inventions as Elias
Howe's sewing machine needle with the hole at the pointed end and J. B.
Parkinson's computer-controlled anti-aircraft gun were credited by their
inventors to ideas that originated in a dream state.
Because
there are so many reports of problem solving during sleep, Harvard sleep
psychologist Deirdre Barrett devised a study to try to discover whether the
reports have any basis in fact. Her study found that hypnagogia proved helpful
in problem solving especially if the images were critically examined
immediately after waking.
In essence
Barrett’s study used a process very much like that used by Salvador Dali or
Thomas Edison. Before going to sleep she instructed
student participants to think about problems in a homework assignment. As soon
as they woke up she had them record whatever dream images they could remember. A
majority of the participants reported they found a solution to the homework
assignment in their dreams.
Barrett believes it is the active attempt to focus on a specific
problem when falling asleep that allows for solutions and creative ideas to be formed
during hypnagogia. As a person falls asleep the area of the brain associated
with consciousness, the prefrontal cortex, becomes less active. This decrease
in prefrontal activity lowers the inhibition on sounds and images present
throughout the brain and allows new associations to form.
This
analysis is consistent with the explorations of hypnagogia by Dr. Andreas
Mavromatis. Mavromatis agrees
during hypnagogic states the usually dominant prefrontal cortex is inhibited thereby
allowing evolutionary older brain structures to function more freely. Cortical
activity is associated with logical thought and with the perception of a
well-defined external world. The older brain structures are attuned to inner experience
and to ‘pre-logical’ forms of thought using imagery, symbols and analogy. When
the logical grip of the conscious brain relaxes, the other forms of unconscious
thought function more freely. The result can be the realization of novel
solutions to problems that are not easily accessible to the conscious mind.
And so my
creative friends, why not give it a try? As John Steinbeck observed, "It is a
common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning
after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
References:
Deirdre Barrett, The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use
Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving-- and How You Can Too (Random House,
2001).
Andreas Mavromatis. Hypnagogia: the Unique State of
Consciousness Between Wakefulness and Sleep (Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1987).
Neel
V. Patel, Scienceline, 6/27/14, “Sleeping
on, and dreaming up, a solution.”
Brett and Kate McKay, The
Art of Manliness, 2/18/15, “Nap Like Salvador Dali: Get Creative Insights
on the Boundary Between Sleep and Wakefulness.”
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