Maybe Guidepost #7 is the thing I’ve been calling exploding head syndrome, though I haven’t been diagnosed, it’s just very loud and I remember at last year not having/noticing it so I thought it was abnormal. What happens is, when I take a nap (not so much at night), I hear static filling my ears as I fall asleep. It kind of sounds like a drum filled with sand, if you were to let the sand roll around and placed that next to your ears. Or like something moving very fast like a car driving through a tunnel. I suspect it might not be the same sound each time, but I’m not sure. It’s extremely loud to the point as if it should be painful, and it’s kind of scary; yet I know that it’s not real noise and can’t hurt me, so I kind of enjoy it like it’s loud music. (Though I also futilely hope that I’ll break through the noise into some alternate universe or something.) And sometimes the sound segues into a dream; I remember one time I dreamt that I was listening to some band performing and it was very noisy like the static. I think (almost?) every time, though, after some time listening to this static or having this loud dream, I just start sliding back out of sleep or to some earlier stage, though I usually go right back to sleep. It feels like the sound comes from preexisting sounds from like my family talking or my ears ringing that get magnified by my brain or nerves.
This also seems to happen with touch; often times when I start to dream / hallucinate, I have this tickling sensation all across my torso that gets really really strong, and I try to ignore it or reinterpret it as sexual, but it seems to always wake me up eventually because it just doesn’t go away. It feels like this comes from my blanket or shirt being folded slightly uncomfortably, and the sensation getting magnified, though at the same time, I don’t think straightening out my shirt or blanket really fixes it ever.
Imagining motion seems to make me fall asleep or at least enter a kind of dizzy/dreaming stage. Some examples: when I was younger, after spending a lot of time jumping on the trampoline I’d remember the bouncing sensation when I was falling asleep, though I don’t know if I necessarily used it to fall asleep. Last summer I learned how to skate on the Rip-Stik, and imagining doing turns on it when I was falling asleep made me feel like I was falling endlessly but in a relaxing way, and I remember consciously trying to get that sensation.
The ideas in the post seem to be similar to some lucid dreaming techniques. I’m not very acquainted with that terminology / community, though I suppose one thing that seems sort of related is learning what your eyelids look like in order to catch yourself when you have a small awakening, which IIRC happens before dreams. I suppose this whole process of observing hypnagogic hallucinations is basically lucid dreaming, just with being aware of a different phenomena.
Maybe Guidepost #7 is the thing I’ve been calling exploding head syndrome, though I haven’t been diagnosed, it’s just very loud and I remember at last year not having/noticing it so I thought it was abnormal. What happens is, when I take a nap (not so much at night), I hear static filling my ears as I fall asleep. It kind of sounds like a drum filled with sand, if you were to let the sand roll around and placed that next to your ears. Or like something moving very fast like a car driving through a tunnel. I suspect it might not be the same sound each time, but I’m not sure. It’s extremely loud to the point as if it should be painful, and it’s kind of scary; yet I know that it’s not real noise and can’t hurt me, so I kind of enjoy it like it’s loud music. (Though I also futilely hope that I’ll break through the noise into some alternate universe or something.) And sometimes the sound segues into a dream; I remember one time I dreamt that I was listening to some band performing and it was very noisy like the static. I think (almost?) every time, though, after some time listening to this static or having this loud dream, I just start sliding back out of sleep or to some earlier stage, though I usually go right back to sleep. It feels like the sound comes from preexisting sounds from like my family talking or my ears ringing that get magnified by my brain or nerves.
This also seems to happen with touch; often times when I start to dream / hallucinate, I have this tickling sensation all across my torso that gets really really strong, and I try to ignore it or reinterpret it as sexual, but it seems to always wake me up eventually because it just doesn’t go away. It feels like this comes from my blanket or shirt being folded slightly uncomfortably, and the sensation getting magnified, though at the same time, I don’t think straightening out my shirt or blanket really fixes it ever.
Imagining motion seems to make me fall asleep or at least enter a kind of dizzy/dreaming stage. Some examples: when I was younger, after spending a lot of time jumping on the trampoline I’d remember the bouncing sensation when I was falling asleep, though I don’t know if I necessarily used it to fall asleep. Last summer I learned how to skate on the Rip-Stik, and imagining doing turns on it when I was falling asleep made me feel like I was falling endlessly but in a relaxing way, and I remember consciously trying to get that sensation.
The ideas in the post seem to be similar to some lucid dreaming techniques. I’m not very acquainted with that terminology / community, though I suppose one thing that seems sort of related is learning what your eyelids look like in order to catch yourself when you have a small awakening, which IIRC happens before dreams. I suppose this whole process of observing hypnagogic hallucinations is basically lucid dreaming, just with being aware of a different phenomena.