The first dreams of the night

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Hello everyone

I have found that my first dreams of the night (c. 90 minutes after sleep onset) are similar and always feel profound. I don’t often remember them except during intensive spiritual practice.They usually start in blackness (or outer space maybe) and then consist of a cobalt blue cloudless sky and a line of red mountains with golden yellow below. I get the feeling of being/seeing eons. It’s usually such a strong feeling that I yell out in awe and wake myself up. I don’t really call these dreams lucid because they feel beyond the difference. It’s more like a “what was that?!” Or “it’s back!” and I wake up.

I recently read about light yoga and it is maybe something like “unfolding the lights” but I’m not sure. The colors are the same and so it is my hope that this is common enough that someone will be able to help me.

Can anyone suggest a way for me to improve? What are your early dreams like?

ladyofK

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I usually only get hypnogia after sleep onset these days and then no memory of dreaming until early morning. But for years I had night terrors almost every night, and sometimes sleep talking and sleep walking. Nowadays that has pretty much settled down. I have not experienced your kind of imagery or do you consider it could possibly be hypnogogic?

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Welcome to the Night Club! Very interesting experiences. In my experience, while listening to most people discuss their dreams, the vivid or lucid dreams usually come closer to the morning, when the REM periods are the longest. In fact, the only person I’ve ever heard have a vivid or lucid dream at the outset was a Night Clubber who gave an individual presentation, Stephn Altair. That’s different from hypnogogia as @Carolel suggested. What I would suggest is that you bring this up to Andrew Holececk at a Q&A session next week on Thursday at 4:00PM Eastern time. He loves questions like this one and might have suggestions to enhance or further explore your experiences. Sounds exciting and I’m sure we could all learn something.

PS. There is a Dream Sangha that meets on Saturdays which might be a place to share your dreams with feedback.

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I actually got an email about this topic from Chris Hammond last week.

He said that nothing is set in stone. Meaning typically 95% of lucid dreams occur in the REM phase of sleep, but there are anamolies amd exceptions to this ‘rule’. Will try to dig up that email and post ot here.

I think as @_Barry suggested bringing this to Andrews attention in the Q&A or via one of the other Zoom meetings is a great idea.

Welcome to Night Club :slightly_smiling_face:

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" Team,

Dropping you a note today about N-REM sleep.

I was inspired by a question posted in the Academy community… one of our members was wondering why she sometimes has lucid dreams immediately after going to bed, when lucid dreaming “only happens in REM sleep”.

See…

If you’ve taken any of the shadier courses out there, or been listening to some of the dodgier YouTube channels, you might well be under this common misconception.

Most places will tell you simply “lucid dreams only happen in REM sleep”.

Well, listen up, I’m here to tell you this is simply not true.

It just is not the case.

This has been studied and proven via multiple scientific studies conducted in sleep labs with EEG equipment. If you doubt this, I suggest you start with this case study paper from 2012:

Lucid dreaming during NREM sleep: Two case reports

And if you’re the type that wants to delve into the details, you can also look at these two in-depth pieces of research:

The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming

Exploring the neural correlates of dream phenomenology

But for those of you that don’t fancy digesting 3 dense journal articles with your morning coffee, allow me to summarise for you.

About 95% of lucid dreams happen during REM sleep, but 5% do occur during N-REM (mostly N1 & N2, they have not yet been observed in N3 - true deep sleep)

See, N-REM sleep itself is broken down into 3 sub-phases N1-N3.

You start in N1 (as you fall asleep) and get deeper and deeper towards N3 as you move through each ~90 minute sleep cycle.

What is really interesting, however, is this…

REM dream reports are typically longer, more bizarre, more visually vivid and more emotionally charged.

Whereas NREM dream reports contain more “thought-like” mental activity and obvious references to conscious waking-life concerns.

I hope this information is useful to you, explorers!

Remember, there are very few (if any) rules when it comes to conscious dreaming. Humanity’s understanding of the dreaming mind is crude (at best).

So set sail, unconstrained by the shackles of convention!

And fear not to chose the path less trodden!

Yours

Chris Hammond"

Hope that helps

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I also get his emails which often have good links while at times offering his courses. I haven’t taken one, have you @NightHawk999?

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No have not taken one yet. I wanted to devote my time to this site 100% first, Andrew and the members here have been very helpful. Once I exhaust the videos here, will probably sign up for his academy, which is $75, but will probably not be until next year.

I really like the emails he has sent me, and many of them were very helpful, would defintely recommned people to sign up for his mailing list.

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It might be some kind of hypnagogic state after a period of deep sleep, but it doesn’t feel like the hypnagogia I am personally familiar with.

I’m sorry you had might terrors. I’m glad they have settled

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Thank you so much for this information. I will ask this question during the Q&A.

I have dragged a few lucid dreams out of the depths of early sleep, but they are easy to forget since it’s much harder for me to get up and write in my journal during early sleep. I have always thought that people who have set a strong intention to dream will lucid dream at this time but then forget. I’m not sure since sleep is such a fluid state

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Hi Chris,

Thank you for the information and papers. I read the first one on the nrem dreams and this one seems the most likely. I haven’t finished the papers yet but I did read the first one

The floating sensation experienced in the case study is very similar to my sense of being in outer space. I have noticed it is very hard to remember these dreams unless they wake you up or you practice how to get back to the state of mind again (which is not straightforward to me).

The reason I bring up the light yoga is because the colors are very similar to the four voids/lights in the section of “comments on the four voids” in the section of “holding the light during sleep” in section 4 of the six yogas of naropa. They specifically mention the deep and cloudless firmament (very much like outer space and the floating) leading to a red stripe of dawn. Perhaps I am interpreting the red stripe as mountains. They make it seem like it’s almost universal but very difficult which is why I mention it here.

I will read the rest of the papers. Thank you.

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Hey @ladyofK

Chris Hammond was the guy who wrote me the email. He runs a different lucid dreaming website. I can not take credit for his work, (I wish I could, becuase it is very impressive.)

From what litlle I know about lucid dreaming, the deepest stage of Dream Yoga is called Sleep Yoga. In this stage you experience Nothing, no images or sounds, no feelings or sensations, just awareness of the complete darness, or sometimes, light. It sounds to me like you are experiencing the stage before Sleep Yoga, or the stage that is coming out of Sleep yoga. But I am no expert, best you Ask Andrew in one of the groups or Q&A about this, I have no doubt he will be able to help you figure out exactly what is going on.

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Sorry nighthawk! It just looked like you signed your name!

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Yes that is my bad.

Hope you keep us posted on what Andrew has to say about this. :slightly_smiling_face: