"As legend goes, Edison would sit in a chair when he got sleepy, holding a ball bearing in his left hand. Soon, he would enter the “hypnagogic state,” a stage between wakefulness and sleep where many people claim to have visual and auditory hallucinations."
This technique should work if you can fall asleep without consciously thinking about what is in your hand. I have taken naps at 3pm now and then when I'm exhausted from studying a problem and fall asleep. Recently in a nap dream I come to a part that seemed to beg my belief even while dreaming. And I was somehow able to arise out of my dream state with conscious effort. I should note that I have been quite productive with the problem I was considering. I can't remember what the problem was. I just saw the article and thought it would be fun to share.
Edison's technique should be automatic. Maybe something like a soft object that when a few moments after it is released makes a squeak sound. Might make a fun toy for inventors looking to maximize on this dream boost effect.
One of my friends volunteered for an experiment with this a few years back and said it was pretty trippy. Not sure how the project has progressed since then though.
The hypnagogic state sucks. I used to often wake from nightmares during the night and see hundreds of spiders swarming all over my bedroom. I would stand on my bed and try to figure out how to get to the door. I injured myself a couple of times doing Bruce Lee shit trying to jump across furniture without touching the spiders. I would switch the light on and of course there are no spiders there, but my brain is so convinced by the hallucination that it has to try and reconcile the insanity and then has me looking under the bed where the spiders have surely hidden as soon as the light went on.
Then 30 seconds later my brain goes "lolol, just fucking with you, bro" and I feel really stupid.
this recently happened to me for the first time ever and it was surreal and terrifying, except in my situation is was bedbugs, not spiders. Never had it happen before until randomly a few weeks ago when i was feeling stressed about moving into a new apartment in a new city far away. Woke up sweating and was hallucinating that my room was infested. It was horrifying.
> Recently in a nap dream I come to a part that seemed to beg my belief even while dreaming. And I was somehow able to arise out of my dream state with conscious effort.
I've had a similar experience, where discrepancies in dream raised consciousness and morphed into lucid dreaming. In time I've become better at working out dreams from reality, and decided reversed to trigger it voluntarily. To bad with age I almost stopped dreaming, it was great.
It might be extremely personal, but my best trigger was imagining walking down an infinite stair above a cloudy sky right before sleeping - imagination transitioning into dreaming as it went. I would regularly misstep and fall - either the body would twitch waking me up, or I'd be falling in the empty below, the impossibility of the situation awakening consciousness in the dream. Had to be timed right tho - too early and would have just been just me imagining things. The feeling of lucid dreaming is distinct enough to tell which is which tho, so I could just attempt it over and over until it worked or I'd miss the window and just feel asleep.
> It might be extremely personal, but my best trigger was imagining walking down an infinite stair above a cloudy sky right before sleeping - imagination transitioning into dreaming as it went.
I remember doing almost this exact thing as a child! Every night I'd fall asleep thinking of descending an infinite escalator, which existed in an empty space. Sometimes I was with other people, sometimes alone, but I found that by keeping the escalator in focus, I was able to switch into what now I realize was a lucid dream, right as I was falling asleep.
I just had this happen to me tonight. I was dreaming and then I started dreaming about mom's house. The sliding door was open and there was hurricane like wind outside. I cried out mom! I could feel the wind. It felt so real! I woke up and heard the city's warning siren say severe thunderstorm warning. Apparently it was very windy outside last night as my neighbors remarked today.
>Maybe something like a soft object that when a few moments after it is released makes a squeak sound.
Could use some kind of heat or capacitive touch sensor to detect when it's no longer in contact with your hand. Or I guess the KISS version of that would just be to use some sort of physical switch to detect when the object hits the floor. I could totally see there being a market for something like this!
I spent a bit of time trying to do it with flex sensors. Strap one to your hand, make a fist, take your nap, detect when muscle tone is lost and it unbends. I ran out of interest before I got it to work but I still think it's viable. Probably smart to build the flex sensor into a glove for ease of use, and you could put the microcontroller on there too.
You could also buy one of those two-piece door sensors that sound an alarm when you separate them. Tie one to your hand (or glue it onto a special sleeping glove), and hold the other piece.
Only potential problem is that you might get a heart attack considering how loud those things can be.
https://cityftmyers.com/1871/Standing-Thomas-Edison#:~:text=....
This technique should work if you can fall asleep without consciously thinking about what is in your hand. I have taken naps at 3pm now and then when I'm exhausted from studying a problem and fall asleep. Recently in a nap dream I come to a part that seemed to beg my belief even while dreaming. And I was somehow able to arise out of my dream state with conscious effort. I should note that I have been quite productive with the problem I was considering. I can't remember what the problem was. I just saw the article and thought it would be fun to share.
Edison's technique should be automatic. Maybe something like a soft object that when a few moments after it is released makes a squeak sound. Might make a fun toy for inventors looking to maximize on this dream boost effect.