rese
arch

started my research by looking into dreams as a form off self-analysis. there i discovered the term of liminal dreaming and looked further into it.

as of now, i'm mostly using my own experiences as practical research, because no matter how detailed someone's descriptions are, i'll never be able to fully understand the atmosphere and visuals of someone else's subconscious.
because i'm not capable of lucid dreaming, this article intrigued me to give liminal dreaming a try.

list of practices to get used to liminal dreaming

- i tried a few of them and the ones that showed the best results in the vividness of the dream recollection were for hypnopompia (waking up slowly)
- for me these methods work best with early afternoon and evening naps

Looking into the neurological and psychical aspect of dreaming
*extracts from the article which I found insightful

- most people dream themselves doing actions or socially interacting with others
- dreaming is a form of embodied simulation because there is an activation of secondary sensorimotor and secondary visual areas of the cortex when imagining different actions or events. Dreaming is subjectively "felt" as the experienced body in action, and sometimes unfolds over a period of 15 to 30 minutes.

- we can safely say that dreaming has nothing in common with hallucinations, psychotic states, psychedelic states, other drug states
- dreams are "a remarkably faithful replica of waking life." They are largely coherent and internally plausible narrative sequences rather than the stereotypical illogical sequences of bizarre images. Content analysis indicates a strong continuity between dream content and waking life.
- content analyses of dreams collected in both sleep laboratories and college classrooms over the past 55 years suggest that most dreams are more coherent, reasonable, and focused on everyday life than traditional cultural stereotypes.

- dreams sometimes contain unusual scenarios or images, but far less often than might be expected.
- the unusual scenarios have to be seen within a context of predominantly familiar settings, a cast of mostly known characters, and an enactment of everyday activities and interests.
- as the most prolific and creative laboratory dream researcher of the 20th century, psychologist David Foulkes (1985), concluded after several decades of work, dreams are a reasonable simulation of the waking world.

- blind analyses of numerous dream diaries kept by a wide range of people for varying reasons all reveal that dream content has a striking consistency over months, years, and even decades in types of characters (e.g., parents, friends), social interactions (e.g., percentages of aggressive, friendly, and sexual interactions), and types of activities (e.g., eating, playing a sport) (Domhoff, 1996).
- this again implies a coherence and regularity to dreaming. inferences based on blind analyses of dream journals, when compared with biographical material on the dreamers, or their answers to written questions, demonstrate that dream content is often, but not always, continuous with waking thoughts and concerns (Domhoff, 2003).

- On the one hand, dreams seem to have at least some psychological meaning in that they are reasonable simulations of waking life and relate to the person's interests and concerns, although it needs to be quickly added that this does not necessarily mean that all the elements of a dream, or even all dreams, are "meaningful." On the other hand, dreaming may not have any biological purpose, such as Freud's (1900) claim about preserving sleep, if little children and some adults can sleep and live normal lives without them.

- Furthermore, most of the anecdotal examples of alleged problem solving in dreams actually involve reveries, drug-induced states, or thoughts while waking up. (relatable)

in The Passions of the Soul (Descartes, 1985; originally published 1649), Descartes asserts that ‘everything the soul perceives by means of the nerves [i.e. sensations] may also be represented to it through the fortuitous course of the spirits [i.e. in dreaming]’

dreams are colored, but that aspect is often brushed aside, unless specifically asked about it, or if it was relevant to the subject of the dream.

The visual dream experiences blind people have aren’t only of people and places they saw prior to going blind. While dreaming, they see things that have entered their life since they’ve become blind. This suggests that while we dream, our minds construct a world rather than replicating one we are familiar with, since someone with complete sight loss doesn’t truly know what something they’ve never seen visually looks like.

visual research

- Liminal spaces are those weird, atmospheric, and sometimes eerie places, that look like the gateway to another realm.
- Dreamcore is a surrealist aesthetic that uses motifs commonly associated with dreams, daydreams or nightmares, portrayed through media such as images, videos and, on occasion, music.