The Somnambulist's Method: A Method for Quickly Coming Up With and Developing Ideas

[Sandor]

As of today, I've come up with an easy was of brainstorm I call the Somnambulist's Method.

You will need:

1. Journal, paper, or similar
2. Pen or pencil, but preferably pen, so you can't erase your ideas as easily
3. Tiredness and a place to rest

First, get out your journal and open it to a blank page, and hold your pen in your dominant hand. Then, allow yourself to begin to fall asleep. As you fall asleep, allow the random thoughts and images that appear as you drift off to come to you. However, you must fight the urge to sleep as much as possible. As you do, write down your ideas in your journal. I find this is a helpful way to develop ideas without letting myself get to hard on myself or fall prey to internal criticism.

Please post if you try this method with your results, as well as any methods coming up with ideas. If you have any similar writing methods that involve sleep or meditation, please share as well!

 

[Louanne Learning]

Thomas Edison was reported to sleep with a ball in each hand, so that as he feel asleep, the balls would fall and wake him up. In this way, he could capture his thoughts in that creative interval between wakefulness and sleep - in what is called the hypnagogic state.

Sleep researchers suggest Edison might have been on to something. A study published in 2021 in Science Advances reports that we have a brief period of creativity and insight in the semilucid state that occurs just as we begin to drift into sleep, a phase called N1, or non-rapid-eye-movement (non-REM) sleep stage 1. The findings imply that if we can harness that liminal haze between sleep and wakefulness—known as a hypnagogic state—we might recall our bright ideas more easily.

 

[Sandor]

Thomas Edison was reported to sleep with a ball in each hand, so that as he feel asleep, the balls would fall and wake him up. In this way, he could capture his thoughts in that creative interval between wakefulness and sleep - in what is called the hypnagogic state.

Sleep researchers suggest Edison might have been on to something. A study published in 2021 in Science Advances reports that we have a brief period of creativity and insight in the semilucid state that occurs just as we begin to drift into sleep, a phase called N1, or non-rapid-eye-movement (non-REM) sleep stage 1. The findings imply that if we can harness that liminal haze between sleep and wakefulness—known as a hypnagogic state—we might recall our bright ideas more easily.

Oh this is cool. I think I heard about this some years ago, but it's good information.

 

[Night Herald]

As of today, I've come up with an easy was of brainstorm I call the Somnambulist's Method.

You will need:

1. Journal, paper, or similar
2. Pen or pencil, but preferably pen, so you can't erase your ideas as easily
3. Tiredness and a place to rest

First, get out your journal and open it to a blank page, and hold your pen in your dominant hand. Then, allow yourself to begin to fall asleep. As you fall asleep, allow the random thoughts and images that appear as you drift off to come to you. However, you must fight the urge to sleep as much as possible. As you do, write down your ideas in your journal. I find this is a helpful way to develop ideas without letting myself get to hard on myself or fall prey to internal criticism.

Please post if you try this method with your results, as well as any methods coming up with ideas. If you have any similar writing methods that involve sleep or meditation, please share as well!

Cool! I used to do something similar that I termed "hypnagogic surfing", where I'd just linger in that space for quite a long time. Pretty neat place to be, and I got some killer visions out of it, some that were useful in forming stories. Nowadays when I try this I often seem to enter a different space entirely on the way there, a sort of hypnagogic antechamber that's more lucid and more distinctly visual, but with more thought activity and less free-flowing creativity. I haven't found it as useful for writing. I'm not sure if this space has a name, but it's one that tends to pop up in meditation sessions around the 10 to 20 minute mark for me. This stuff is fun!