Month: February 2012

“humbleone” posts:

so to give you an update.

I am able to make your “waking up and falling asleep” practice work for me. Three nights of success.

Last night was quite challenging, due a cold cough I woke up at 1:45AM, after a cold remedy, using your practice went back to sleep. Then woke up again around 3:45AM, not wanting to disturb my wife with coughing (read fear of getting kicked out of the bedroom ). I went to another room, again using your practice was able to fall asleep and wake up around 6AM.

So to take your practice a little further, the “waking up” part. Sorry I am not clear what you are saying there. I also looked up hypnogogic states which you mentioned in your original post (‘what I call the practice of “Waking Up and Falling Asleep”, which is concerned with the role of hypnogogic states in daily life’).

The issue that I am trying to fix during the working day is information overload, processing large volumes of data. So the goal, the desired ‘state’ is to remain unemotional, unattached during the working day, while processing large volumes of data and making a dozen or so important decisions.

Qigong, meditation helps quite a bit, but not the sustained ‘state’ I am looking for, lasting hours at a time.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, I am intrigued by your comment about role of hypnogogic states during the day. All the best.

(from Tao Bums The Myth of the Eight-Hour Sleep thread)

I’ll try to clarify what I meant by “the role of hypnogogic states in daily life”.

At some point, acknowledging what I feel as consciousness occurs becomes a part of the place of occurrence of consciousness. The acknowledgement of what I feel follows from the sense of well-being in the experience of the place of occurrence of consciousness.

Equanimity in the acknowledgement of what I feel is the induction of the hypnogogic state (this just happens).

If the sense of location in awareness wakes you up and sets you about your activity, that is sudden, yet in daily life allowing for falling asleep as well as waking up is a gradual shift- that’s what I believe. I would suggest you try the same practice in the morning (sitting down, most likely!). Might take you awhile to find the same movement of awareness that you feel lying down in the early hours, the main thing is to relax and let go so that the ability to feel opens.

My own strategy is to accept that I have many memories tagged with adrenalin by the amygdala, memories of falling down physically and mentally from before I had language (I’m indebted to Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence” on that one). I’m not that good at it either, dealing with the stress of modern living and work, and yet I’ve always had faith that whatever I needed would be given, if only I were open to receive.

Thanks for the question, very helpful to me, actually.

Hi Mark, so I tried your practice last night. My ideal sleep time should be from 10PM-6AM

I woke up at 4:30 AM, after a quick drink of water. returned to bed and tried your practice.

I hope I did it correctly, I was somewhat surprized that my mind moved around quite a bit. not fast, but in slow motion the awareness would shift, from left cheek to right side of torso etc. The end result was a light sleep state, but I was glued to the bed and then woke up exactly at 6AM, feeling refreshed like I had a complete 8 hours of sleep.

If I am able to gain control over my sleep that would be very significant step for me indeed. Could you please provide some feedback if I did it correctly?

All the best, humbleone

Hi, humbleone,

Great to hear that you had some success with what I’m describing as “waking up and falling asleep”. Yes, that sounds like the practice; I’m grateful that you tried it at that hour of the morning, as in my experience that’s a very good time to see the mind moving. In my experience, it’s even possible to sleep when I’m in a lot of pain, by hanging with the mind that way- at least it was when they did my ablation, which is a heart procedure for arrhythmia done with catheters these days. My whole body felt pretty shot for a couple of days afterward, and at one point I felt sure I needed to sleep but everywhere was a difficulty as far as relaxing, yet by “following the mind” and being where I was I was able to get a few minutes- which was all I needed to turn the corner at that time.

If you do any seated or even standing meditation in the morning, you may see why I’m referring to the practice as “waking up and falling asleep”. In waking up, I am looking to relinquish my activity, and allow the place of mind to generate activity out of the stretch I find myself in. I have a description of the translations of motion in the lotus which I have updated recently, yet in the end I am convinced that everything I need to know I learn by being where I am, as I am. I just have to be open to it.

Thank you for the link to your article.

could you please elaborate on what you mean by physical sense of location in space?
so you mean this literally, i mean objects in the room etc.

If you can please give an example.

so my issue, is waking up around 3AM on most nights, then trouble falling asleep.

In my experience, the practice is the same, whether I am waking up or falling asleep: when I realize my physical sense of location in space, and realize it as it occurs from one moment to the next, then I wake up or fall asleep as appropriate.”

(from Waking up and Falling Asleep)

(“humbleone”, on Tao Bums)

Hey, humbleone, thanks for asking!

Ok, it’s a feeling, for sure- if I slip and start to fall but recover myself, the place my mind went is what I’m talking about.

Now a question I have is, is it necessary to practice something like sleeping sitting up or a martial art like judo before a person can recognize that their mind is connected with a physical sense of location? That is to say, maybe some people don’t notice that their mind moves when they start to fall, that the location of awareness moves to where it needs to be to catch the fall- maybe they would say that their mind was between their ears the whole time!

I’ve been listening to a lecture by Todd Murphy on The Sacred Body, in which he proposes that the chakras are centers of referred brain activity. The brain itself apparently has no nerves for distinguishing pain or pleasure, so that a brain tumor can grow to enormous size without pain. Likewise the heart, so that the symptoms of a heart attack are pain in the left shoulder and arm, referred pain.

When I sit, I become aware of referred sensation from the nerve exits along the spine: my ability to feel my feet, my little fingers, and my jaw are involved in some way in the activity of my posture. Again, this is allowing my attention to drop where it will, and reminding myself to include my whole body as I inhale and exhale. To what extent does my physical sense of location in space depend on my relaxed experience of referred sensation from the spine and brain?- maybe I am oversimplifying to say “my physical sense of location in space from moment to moment”, but in the end it comes down to the same thing, IMHO.