Binaural beats and writing – Day 177
August 4th, 2010
Today I experimented with some binaural beats while writing, eliciting an eerie sense of calm and vague perceptual distortions. It was strange. I noticed the words flowing differently than what I am used to, and I saw words in ways I hadn’t seen before (I’ve been looking at the same piece pretty much all day, so it was refreshing to make a breakthrough like that), but whether all that creative writing was due to the binaural beats, the placebo effect or a combination of both, who knows. I however will not be one to question it; I take what I can and enjoy the ride.
I definitely will try it again though and see what other things I can coax out. Maybe another zine? Maybe some visual art? A short story. Heck, I’ll take a mishmash of ideas. Today I was stoked to make quite a bit of headway with Thirteen. The memoir hasn’t been doing that well as of late, so I’m happy to have invested a whole day into it, with the help of some sound or not.
I’m doing my best to learn and appreciate the little things in life, all the bits and pieces that make up my existence, especially the creative ones. It’s a slow-moving process, but I like to think I’m making progress. Today I realized this. I know lucid dreaming has helped.
Speaking of, lucid dreaming this week hasn’t been working out that well. I had one on Monday. My weekend was busy, so I understood that since it’s harder to lucid dream when you are pretty much dead to the world, but yesterday and today I’m not sure what happened. I’m guessing I completed an REM cycle instead of waking up in the middle of one via my alarm.
Tomorrow I’m going to experiment with setting my alarm earlier (at 4:45 instead of 5:30) and maybe go into a dream with some special binaural beats in my ears. Worth a shot, you know. I still wake up between 7:00 and 7:30 to start my day, so it’s not like I’m losing daylight to dreams. Some people expressed a concern with that. I believe I’m managing my time pretty well. I like my waking life a lot because while walking around lucid in a dream is fun, it’s still not the same as living.
Because of my lucid dreaming hurdles, I haven’t had a chance to try out my new tactics in questioning people inside a dreamscape.
That should be fun.
Binaural beats are great fun, eh? I haven’t listened to them in a while, but they can help with different states of being.
Keep the experimentation coming!
How did the experiment of waking up earlier work for the lucid dreaming? Any luck?
One day it worked and then the next it didn’t. I think it’s really dependent on how tired I am. I know I had a different sort of lucid dream last week after I woke up, listened to some binaural beats and then went back to sleep. I think I’m going to compile my lucid dreaming experiences in my next zine.
Here’s a tip for Lucid dreaming that I find works pretty well:
1) get up too early (e.g. 4am) so that you are very tired,
2) eat a banana or some other high energy food that is digested quickly.
3) go back to sleep but try to keep your body as motionless as possible without tensing any muscles, and try to empty your thoughts (i.e. meditate) as you drift off
Your body will need to do something with that extra energy from the banana, and if you can force it to be metabolised by the brain rather than the muscles you increase your chances of a lucid dream.