The Hour Between Dog and Wolf
Harnessing the power of hypnagogia.
THERE is a special moment that occurs every day of your life when the veil between your conscious and unconscious mind becomes thinner. A magical moment when you are able to access a bottomless fountain of creative potential. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that every day you are letting this moment slip by.
Contrary to popular belief we don’t dive into sleep immediately. Instead sleep comes in gradually, like a tide. The waters of our unconscious slowly rise, breaching the shore of our conscious mind and eventually submerging it. This tidal ebb and flow occurs in ninety-minute cycles throughout the night, and with each cycle we slowly wade through five ever-deepening stages of sleep.
The stage that receives the most hype, especially among creative types, is the final stage of the cycle, REM sleep. That’s because during REM, or rapid eye movement, we have our most vivid dreams. Lots of artists and writers have used their dreams to inspire their work—one popular example is Stephen King, who dreamed a version of his 1987 novel Misery during a transatlantic flight—but there’s just one problem with this approach: REM occurs when our conscious mind is fully submerged and at its weakest. So although our creativity is high during our REM state, the likelihood that we will remember anything from it is quite low. The water is just too deep.
What writers need instead is a shallower pool in which to wade. One where we still experience the mind-altering potential of dreams but also have enough consciousness left to remember—and, better yet, even control—the imagery behind our closed eyelids.
Lucky for us there is such a state. It occurs during the first few minutes of sleep and again when we are just waking up, and it is rife with creative potential.
Psychologists call this mental twilight “hypnagogia,” coining the term after the Greek words for “sleep” (hypnos) and “to lead” (agogo). The French have an even better term for it: l’heure entre chien et loup—the hour between dog and wolf. The literal interpretation of this phrase is the hour between day and night. But metaphorically it describes
crossover moments—such as those between wakefulness and sleep—when great transformation is possible.
It is the “between” nature of hypnagogia that makes it so distinctive. During these moments part of your mind remains on dry land while the other part—the one controlling what you see and hear and feel—is dipping its head underwater. In this sleepish state, you are neither awake nor asleep, and yet somehow you are both. If you’ve ever dozed off only to claim a short while later, “I wasn’t sleeping, I was just resting my eyes,” then you know what this feels like.
This hybrid quality is also what makes hypnagogia such a wellspring of creativity. When we are fully awake, our conscious mind is in charge. It filters our thoughts and censors our most bizarre ideas. But when we sink into slumber, our conscious mind loosens its reins, thereby allowing our unconscious mind to frolic about more freely. To think of strange ideas. To make connections between seemingly unrelated things. To solve problems in novel ways.
The result is a weird, hallucinatory state that is more akin to an LSD trip than a regular dream. People see visions of odd shapes, flashing colors, and symbolic imagery. They hear sounds, like their own name being whispered, snippets of random dialogue, or music. And they even experience physical sensations, like falling or floating. Unlike typical dreams these hypnagogic hallucinations are brief—lasting just a second or two—and their content is more fragmented and less storylike. Essentially they are microdreams.
So what causes these trippy hypnagogic experiences?
It comes down to a unique cocktail of brain activity. During hypnagogia your brain experiences both alpha waves—electrical activity typically experienced when we are awake but relaxed or meditating—and theta waves, or activity typically associated with sleep. These two types of brain waves usually don’t occur simultaneously. Hypnagogia is the one exception.
And therein lies the magic. During hypnagogia you get the best of both worlds. You experience the creatively rich visions and ideas normally found in deep sleep, but you are still aware enough to consciously process and remember the experiences.
Even better, you can control them.
ALTHOUGH most of us fail to tap the innovative potential of hypnagogia, a number of successful writers and artists have mined this creative ore to improve their craft.
For example, Mary Shelley’s idea for Frankenstein occurred to her just as she was on the cusp of sleep. In a preface to the 1831 edition of the novel, Shelley described the scene. “When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life.”
Whereas Shelley mined her idea from the hypnagogic state that occurs just before falling asleep, others have found inspiration in the state that occurs just before waking. Such was the case for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, E. B. White’s Stuart Little, and Stephen King’s aforementioned Misery, to name just a few.
So how can you tap into this creative gold mine?
As with many things in life, it helps to look at the masters. A number of artists and writers developed techniques for harnessing their hypnagogic states. Edgar Allen Poe, for instance, became utterly obsessed with the fanciful thoughts that arose “at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with those of the
world of dreams. I am aware of these ‘fancies’ only when I am upon the very brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I am so.” So he began to experiment with them. He claimed he had developed “the capacity of inducing or compelling it” and could spontaneously jerk himself awake before he slipped into deep sleep so as to “transfer the point itself into the realm of memory.”
Poe never detailed exactly how he accomplished this feat, but Salvador Dalí was more explicit about his hypnagogic experimentation. The surrealist painter was not content to just mine his naturally occurring hypnagogia. He wanted to manufacture it on a large scale. So he developed an ingenious technique for replicating hypnagogia over and over within a short period of time. In doing so he created what he called “sleeping without sleeping.”
So what was Dalí’s secret? He dubbed it “slumber with a key.” Imagine you are seated in a rigid armchair. Your arms are positioned on the armrests, your hands dangling over the edge. In one hand you are pinching a metal key between thumb and forefinger. Seated on the floor just underneath your hand is an upside-down plate. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and allow yourself to relax. Slowly you start to doze off. Time begins to slow. The constraints of reality relax and stretch like taffy. You see elephants with spindly legs, melting clocks, a chest of drawers embedded in a torso. Then suddenly, clang! The sound of the key falling from your hand and striking the plate. You snap your eyes open and feverishly write down everything you remember from your trippy experience. Then you retrieve the key, reset your arm, and do it all over again.
Dalí supposedly learned this ancient technique from Capuchin monks, but essentially he was inducing what modern experts call microsleep, a mini nap that lasts a mere second. It typically occurs when you are sleep-deprived and your mind is so exhausted that it shuts down for a fleeting moment (as when a late-night driver dozes off at the wheel). Dalí’s key technique allowed him to safely and repeatedly produce this experience. Scientist and inventor Thomas Edison adopted a similar technique to spark his creative genius, using a steel ball and a metal plate.
There are two clear benefits of Dalí’s technique. First, the typical person gets just two chances a day to experience hypnagogia: right as sleep comes and again upon awakening. With Dalí’s technique, you can experience five, ten, even twenty hypnagogic moments in a single day.
But even better, his technique wakes you right before your conscious mind becomes fully submerged. Every night you experience hypnagogic hallucinations, but you usually don’t recall them because they quickly get drowned under an ocean of sleep. By the time you wake up eight hours later, they are beyond your mind’s reach. So by waking himself at exactly the moment when his arm muscles relaxed and his consciousness began its deep dive, he was able, as Poe put it, to transfer that imagery to his conscious memory.
Whether you allow it to naturally occur like Mary Shelley or you induce it like Dalí, one thing is clear: If you want to access your unconscious mind, hypnagogia offers you the quickest route.
AS BOTH a psychologist and writer, I use hypnagogia every day to inject creativity into my thinking and my writing. And you can do the same. Some of the hypnagogic techniques available are quiet simple; others require a bigger commitment.
Use a “dream catcher.” It sounds simple, but the most important tool for harnessing hypnagogia (other than your brain) is a pen and paper. Keep them right by your bed so you can write down your hypnagogic experiences immediately. I always have a notepad on my nightstand for such moments (along with a book light so I don’t wake my husband when I’m scribbling). Alternatively you could use a free dream journaling app like Dream Journal Ultimate.
Prime the pump. If you want to steer your hypnagogic visions in a particular direction, give your mind some guidance. Shelley came up with Frankenstein only after her friend Lord Byron suggested a friendly competition to develop their own scary tales. She spent several days pondering story ideas before she had her breakthrough. The official term for this delayed process is incubation. First you focus your conscious attention on the idea or problem. Then relax your mind and allow your unconscious to step up and resolve it. Whenever I’m writing fiction, I follow this technique by focusing on the scene I want to write or the character I’m trying to develop as I lie in wait for sleep to arrive.
Embrace the catnap. Creative geniuses like da Vinci, Beethoven, Edison, Tesla, and Einstein frequently took twenty-minute naps, and you should too. Naps not only recharge your mind and body, but they also offer another opportunity for hypnagogia. And because you are rousing yourself before entering deep REM (which usually starts about seventy minutes in), the odds are much higher that you’ll remember your visions once you wake up.
Even better, try a vertical nap. Few are willing to go to the lengths that Dalí or Edison did. Those who want a simpler approach can try upright napping. Essentially this involves taking a nap in a rigid chair. First, pick a firm, upright chair (think office or dining room chair, not comfy recliner). Once you start to feel drowsy, close your eyes, allow yourself to relax, and take note of any visions or sensations that ensue. Once you start to slip into sleep, your neck muscles will relax, your head will roll, and you’ll nod yourself awake (just like when you doze off on an airplane or a bus). Immediately write down your experience, then repeat.
Consider going high tech. Several entrepreneurs are developing high-tech gadgets that mimic Dalí’s technique. For example, MIT student Adam Haar Horowitz developed Dormio—a glove outfitted with sensors that detect muscle tension. When wearers doze and their muscles relax, the glove activates a smartphone app that gently asks them to say what they are experiencing and then records it. When wearers start to
slip into deeper sleep, Dormio steers them back into light sleep by saying their name and “you are falling asleep.” In doing so, it is able to extend the normally short hypnagogic phase.
But wait… there’s more. Like a scene straight out of the movie Inception, Dormio can actually be used to control hypnagogic content. In a pilot test, wearers entering the hypnagogic phase were told to “remember to think of the rabbit” or “remember to think of the fork.” Sure enough, even though they didn’t always remember hearing the phrase, everyone who was told the cue word reported rabbits or forks in their visions. In the near future such tech may become as common as today’s fitness trackers.
Catch it on the flip side. When people talk about hypnagogia, they are usually referring to those moments just before falling asleep. But remember that hypnagogia also occurs right before you wake up (it is officially called hypnopompia during this later phase). The beauty of having hallucinations during the later phase is that because you are waking up, you can easily write down your idea without disrupting your sleep.
I am a huge fan of hypnopompia. I use it every morning, and my approach is pretty simple. First, ditch your standard, obnoxious-sounding alarm clock; it will completely destroy your hypnopompic state. I use an alarm clock that wakes me gradually. Mine works by slowly increasing sound over the course of ten minutes, but there are also alarms that use light. And for those who prefer their phone, there are alarm apps that gradually increase sound—like the Progressive Alarm Clock—or light, like Rise & Shine. It doesn’t matter what you use, so long as it slowly eases you into a waking state.
Second, the moment I find my consciousness seeping in, I think about the scene I want to write or the problem I want to solve. With eyes still closed I gently roll the thought over and over in my mind, allowing it to wander in whatever direction it wants. Sometimes I’ll see a scene unfold. Other times I’ll hear a character’s distinct voice speak up. And when I’m writing nonfiction pieces like this article, I’ll hear sentences emerge and restructure themselves until they are perfect.
What I never do is leap out of bed. Instead I remain in bed, eyes closed, for a good ten minutes. Then when I do get up, I immediately grab my notepad off my nightstand and record what I experienced. I’ve successfully used this technique to write three novels and countless short stories, as well as numerous nonfiction pieces and scientific articles.
Now that you know what hypnagogia is and how beneficial it can be for creativity, it’s your turn. If you’re feeling experimental, give these tips a try. Soon you’ll be unlocking your potential and transforming your writing from a mild-mannered dog to a wildly creative wolf.