Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 4, Issue - 3, 1 September 2019 | Page 14

Depending on whether you are primarily a visual (image-oriented), auditory
(sound-oriented), or kinaesthetic (physically oriented) person your
hypnogogic experience will vary. (NLP based personality types)
Here are common ways hypnagogia is experienced:
Images – e.g. monochromatic or colourful, static or moving, flat or three-
dimensional – usually the images are fleeting but sometimes they form entire
dream-like scenes
Sounds – may be loud or quiet and involve hearing music, voices, snatches
of conversation, rain, wind, white noise, repetitive words, having one’s name
called, etc.
Repetitive actions – known as the “Tetris effect,” when a person has spent a
long time doing something repetitive (such as working, playing chess,
exercising, reading) they may find themselves doing the same thing as they
fall into the hypnagogic state
Physical sensations – tastes, scents, textures, and sensations of coldness
and heat may be experienced during hypnagogia, as well as feelings of
floating, falling, leaving one’s body or having one’s body change shape
Mental processes – at the edge of sleep thoughts begin to take a fluid and
free-associative quality in which they morph and evolve in unusual, abstract,
and innovative ways, uninfluenced by the ego
Sleep paralysis – the temporary inability to move may, in some occurrences,
accompany hypnagogia, however while this state may be alarming, it is
harmless
It is also possible (and common) to experience multiple forms of hypnagogia.
For example, you might visually enter a memory from the day that transforms
before your eyes into an array of physical sensations and sounds. The
combinations are limitless.
Spiritual Oneiromancy, Dali, and Dream Yoga
Throughout history, there, have been many writers, artists, and philosophers
who have used hypnagogia as a way of triggering new ideas, insights, and
even inventions.