Yeah, I’m quite experienced with lucid dreaming, but this particular hypnogogic state is something I actually try to avoid lingering around in, because it’s very uncomfortable for me.
The process of falling asleep feels like having my mind squeezed through a narrow gap, surrounded by random proto-thoughts like fragments of words and images. I wonder if that’s just my perception of the lower frontal lobe activity they describe in the article. Once I’m out on the “other side” in a dream, I feel like my mind can stretch out and relax again.
Not to mention feeling the conscious control of your breathing slipping away. That was always a slightly freakish experience for me when I used to do lucid dreaming in my teens.
Yup, not my favourite, hah. I usually notice the lack of conscious control over breathing at the other end, when waking up in sleep paralysis—which unfortunately is triggered by lucid dreaming for me. Thankfully since I’ve had SP my whole life, I’m used to it by now and can just try to relax and wait for it to pass.
It can take months of active practice to have lucid dreaming.
The liminal state takes about five minutes to learn. The article has a story about Thomas Edison dropping balls on the floor; this works well.