Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

It may seem unlikely, but dreams and dreamwork have helped me with recurring insomnia. How can that be, since dreams are naturally paired with sleep, and insomnia is a sleep disorder that makes it difficult to fall or stay asleep?

The answer is that even when we think we have not fallen asleep at all or slept at all, we sometimes have or do, even just a little. Sleep occurs in five stages: wake, N1, N2, N3, and REM. We spend various amounts of time in these different stages. (These days, you can buy a sleep tech device that purportedly monitors for you how long in each stage you spend, though I am not sure how accurate they are just yet.)

According to the latest science, dreaming mostly occurs during REM sleep, which is characterized by rapid eye movement and increased brain activity, along with certain physiological changes. But we can dream during non-REM sleep, too. Early on in the sleep cycle, during very light sleep, we can experience something called hypnogogia. It’s a waning state of consciousness that typically occurs between wakefulness and sleep. During this state, our brain waves change from how they are when we are awake and alert.

This article in Harvard Medicine magazine refers to the hypnogogic stage of light sleep as “creativity’s sweet spot.” I like that phrasing and would agree with it, as would many artists, inventors, and thinkers across the centuries who have claimed to use this light stage of almost-sleep to create works of art or innovative technology.

I have taken advantage of this state for creative purposes, too. Some of the images that have arisen for me during the hypnogogic stage of sleep have become paintings; others have become prompts for essays or short stories. Another interesting phenomenon for me personally is that I have become aware of hypnogogic images during more wakeful, yet still relaxed states (ie. during an acupuncture session or a meditation session) that have been later confirmed to be precognitive images. So if you’re interested in exploring precognition through dreaming, the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states (just before waking) are useful to pay more attention to. 

There is more to say about this state of brain activity and what happens there or how it can possibly be used for various types of personal or spiritual development, but today I want to share with you very briefly how hypnogogic imagery or light dreaming has helped me with insomnia. 

Over the years, I have struggled with bouts of recurring insomnia. This started when I first had children and discovered just how light of a sleeper I was, compounded by my anxiety over my baby’s sleep or lack thereof. There were times over the last 20-some years when I couldn’t get more than a couple of hours of sleep or could not fall back to sleep after a child woke up. It also was almost impossible for me to “nap when the baby naps” as all the older women in my life suggested I should. I was sleep deprived for many, many years.

Later, however, the issue became less about staying asleep or getting enough sleep, and more about falling asleep. During particularly stressful periods of life, I could lay awake for hours in the dark and believe I had not slept at all. Anyone who has ever struggled with this type of insomnia knows it’s a horrible cycle that can be difficult to get out of.

As I often write on this web site, I am not a medical doctor nor a licensed healthcare professional. These articles are for educational purposes only, in an attempt to help people who cannot get help otherwise, and to share what’s worked for me. Your doctor might have a different suggestion.

Here is one tip, though, that includes a dream-related approach that could be supportive to you if you are dealing with the feeling that you cannot fall asleep or back to sleep after having woken.

If while laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, you begin to have what seem like random images float into your awareness, or if you have a feeling or a sensation you believe “came out of nowhere,” you have likely fallen into a light stage of sleep, even if you don’t think you have. 

You may be more familiar with this phenomenon from travel. Sometimes on a plane or a bus, you may fall asleep without realizing it. You may startle awake from an external input like a loud bang or a bump on the road. Only then you realize you had fallen lightly asleep and maybe even remember a fragment of a dream. You may experience only an auditory “image,” hearing a song that isn’t playing or get a flash of an image of a face or an animal. The literature refers to this as a hypnogogic hallucination, though I don’t necessarily agree with that language.

Most of us are not aware of the subtle images or feelings that arise as we move from an alert brain state to a more relaxed brain state. But even something as common as listening to classical music can put us into a state where these unique, seemingly causeless images and feelings begin to arise to conscious awareness.

Dreamwork especially helps us become much more sensitive to the way our own individual minds work, both in waking life and in dreams. Dreamwork as a regular practice encourages our minds to slow down…sometimes so much that we are finally able to become aware of images or sensations we didn’t realize were in us or in a dream. Slowing down our dreams and working with them in this way trains us to become more attuned to our own habitual patterns of awareness, but also to “spontaneous imagery” (the kinds of images that arise in dreams or in moments of creative inspiration), as well as more subtle sensory perceptions and feelings.

Over time, we become better at distinguishing between the images we are calling up from memory or through rumination, and the images that arise on their own from our subconscious.

Now back to how that helped me with my insomnia ….

When we start to become more aware of the subtle images and perceptions that seem to arise causelessly, we can use these to our benefit to support ourselves as we try to let go into sleep. 

At some point, I began realizing that if a hypnogogic image arose, then I probably had slept; even if only for a little bit of time. As my own insomnia was worsened by my anxiety about not sleeping, knowing that I had slept — even if only for ten minutes — somehow proved to be soothing to me. I then started to soothe myself simply by noticing that I had made it to the hypnogogic stage and telling myself I could probably get there again. Maybe next time I did, I would fall into an deeper into sleep. If you are already experienced with self hypnosis or daily affirmations, you can use this as a sleep affirmation.

For me, this became a positive self-talk that countered the negative self-talk of my insomnia, such as “I haven’t slept at all,” “I’m never going to fall asleep,” or “how am I going to function tomorrow on no sleep???”

Hypnogogic imagery didn’t provide me with a guarantee for a good night sleep, but it showed me I was capable of a little more sleep than I believed I was. It disproved the catastrophic “no sleep” belief enough for me to relax and often it was a portal to more sleep.

Still to this day, if I am struggling with falling asleep, as I typically do while traveling away from home, I count on my hypnogogic imagery to prove to me that I am wrong about how much or little sleep I think I have gotten. It isn’t a cure.  I don’t want to over-promise. But it has helped me tremendously.

Now, when a hypnogogic image arises, I often gently smile. It feels like a security blanket offered to me by my subconscious. Security blankets aren’t magic tools, though, but rather a ritualistic item that prepare us for what we intend to and hope will happen. Same with the hypnogogic images. They simply support us in our intended activity of rest and sleep.

One important note is this: try to not pay so much attention to the image itself that your brain activity kicks up and you become more alert only to exit out of light sleep. This may be hard at first, as you might get excited about noticing the spontaneous images, but with a little bit of practice you will learn for yourself how to become aware without becoming alert and fully awake.

I hope this is helpful to you or someone you love.