Liminal dreaming by Jennifer Dumpert

There’s a swirling, kaleidoscopic, free-associative experience on the edge of your mind. You’ll find it in the space right between awake and asleep, where your meandering consciousness mixes memory and thought with visionary imagery. I call this experience liminal dreaming. “Liminal” refers to the spaces in between things, the transitional condition of thresholds or boundaries. There are two dream states that, together, make up liminal dreaming: hypnagogia and hypnopompia.

"Liminal Dreaming" is a book about hypnagogia and hypnopompia. For people who are new to this phenomenon, it's a very motivating book on how to get started. The book starts off with a few of the author's own experiences and a history of sleep before diving into the subject.
Throughout the book, you'll find several exercises:

Feedback loop
The vanishing point
The morning linger
The Dali/Edison method
Voice-activated recorder method
Liminal dream dialogue
Dream cruising
Public napping Active imagination
Wake-induced sleep paralysis
Dream incubation
WILD (Wake-induced lucid dream)

Scientifically, hypnagogia is not new, and I'm not really sure why the writer, Jennifer Dumpert, decided to use the term "liminal." Maybe because she sees the benefits of hypnagogia where a lot of scientists still don't, like:

Consciousness exploration
Healing
Creativity and problem-solving
Helps with sleep issues

But this book is not just about hypnagogia. Dumpert also discusses the history of sleep, sleep cycles and chronotypes, lucid dreaming, oneirogens, and yoga nidra. The last one contains three examples of a session, so you can create your own. These are rather short chapters, though, so if you wish to deep dive into these subjects, I would suggest reading other books too.

I think this book is a must-have for anyone new to dreamwork. For a lot of people, lucid dreaming is hard, and it can be very demotivating when results don't appear quickly. Some people are fast learners, while others have to wait months or even years before getting their first results. With hypnagogia, you don't need to be that patient. Once you know the process, it's pretty easy to get results fast. From there, the step to lucid dreaming is much smoother.

Lastly, I want to end this review with a quote by Dumpert, which sums up the experience:

"Dreams do not require belief to bring about extraordinary experience."

★★★★☆

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