I’m facing a similar issue and this seems like an interesting approach to resolving it. However I don’t really see visualizations when I close my eyes and I haven’t noticed them when falling asleep. Is this just something that takes more practice to notice, or only some people see them? If this only works for some people is there another similar approach to hook into the falling asleep process?
Maybe people are different in this way and my experience falling asleep doesn’t match yours and so my advice won’t be of much use to you.
The visualizations are somewhat subtle. They are, like dreams, hallucinations rather than visions of real-things-out-there. But they are also much less vivid than dreams. You may not notice some of them just because they’re pretty subdued and uninteresting and so unless you’re looking for them they won’t jump out at you. Also: you may be used to categorizing some of these images not as hallucinations happening in your visual field but as “imagination” happening elsewhere. If you’re accustomed to being able to visualize things when you imagine them in waking life, you may think about these hypnagogic hallucinations that they’re not “visualizations” but “imaginations” and you may dismiss them for that reason.
I’m facing a similar issue and this seems like an interesting approach to resolving it. However I don’t really see visualizations when I close my eyes and I haven’t noticed them when falling asleep. Is this just something that takes more practice to notice, or only some people see them? If this only works for some people is there another similar approach to hook into the falling asleep process?
Two possible answers to this:
Maybe people are different in this way and my experience falling asleep doesn’t match yours and so my advice won’t be of much use to you.
The visualizations are somewhat subtle. They are, like dreams, hallucinations rather than visions of real-things-out-there. But they are also much less vivid than dreams. You may not notice some of them just because they’re pretty subdued and uninteresting and so unless you’re looking for them they won’t jump out at you. Also: you may be used to categorizing some of these images not as hallucinations happening in your visual field but as “imagination” happening elsewhere. If you’re accustomed to being able to visualize things when you imagine them in waking life, you may think about these hypnagogic hallucinations that they’re not “visualizations” but “imaginations” and you may dismiss them for that reason.