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Hypnagogia (also spelled hypnogogia) are the experiences a person can go through in the hypnagogic (or hypnogogic) state, the period of falling asleep. Hypnopompia are the experiences a person can go through in the hypnopompic state, the period of waking up. The term hypnagogia often encompasses hypnopompia as well. Hypnagogic sensations collectively describe the vivid dream-like auditory, visual, or tactile sensations that can be experienced in a hypnagogic or hypnopompic state. These sensations can be accompanied by sleep paralysis, the sensation that the body is temporarily paralyzed after waking or before falling asleep. The term hypnagogic is derived from the French word hypnagogique, coined by the 19th century French psychologist Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury from the Greek words hupnos, meaning sleep, and agogos, meaning leading. Frederic William Henry Myers coined the complementary term hypnopompic, from hupnos and pompe, meaning sending away.
Hypnagogic sensations Hypnagogic sensations are vivid dream-like experiences that occur as one is falling asleep or waking up. Accompanying sleep paralysis can cause the sensations to be more frightening. The features of these sensations generally vary by individual, but some are more common to the experience than others: Most common During the hypnagogic state, an individual may appear to be fully awake, but has brain waves indicating that the individual is technically sleeping. Also, the individual may be completely aware of their state, which enables lucid dreamers to enter the dream state consciously directly from the waking state (see wake-initiated lucid dream technique). Many artists, musicians, architects, engineers, and others demanding creativity to be successful have benefited from hypnagogia, where the mind can be free and open to creative and new ideas. An experience of the hypnagogic state is not an uncommon occurrence with 30 to 40 percent of people experiencing it at least once in their lives. However, it could be a sign of a sleep disorder, such as narcolepsy and insomnia, or associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. The hypnagogic state can be accompanied by or associated with anomalous phenomena such as alien abduction, extra-sensory perception, telepathy, apparitions, or prophetic or crisis visions. This conduciveness to anomalous phenomena can be correlated with the initial increase of alpha and the later increase of theta brainwaves. The Serbian comic book artist Aleksander Zograf, catalogs his own hypnagogic visions in his series dubbed Psychonaut. See also | ||||||||
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