10 ms·

Head asleep, body awake

95 points by linux2647 6y ago

TristanDaCunha 6y ago
So weird -- when did we all decide to start saying "I was laying in bed" instead of "I was lying in bed"? I have noticed this shift over the past few years. Laying has always been past tense "That day I lay in bed for hours" or transitive "I lay the books down". Chickens also could be laying in bed, if eggs are coming out of them. Lying has always been intransitive "I was lying in bed". But nowadays, "I was laying in bed" is almost all I see.
- emilfihlman 6y ago
  It's just the same thing as "would of", ie people making grammar errors.
- taejo 6y ago
  "the usage, though non-standard, is ubiquitous, and in fact has been around for over seven hundred years. Robert Burchfield, in his third edition of Fowler, writes that in the 17th and 18th centuries the two words’ alternation was not considered a mistake, even in literary text, but that nowadays it’s either taken as ‘evidence of imperfect education’ or ‘accepted in regional speech as being a deep-rooted survival from an earlier period’." https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/laying-down-the-lie-of-the-land https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/laying-down-the-lie-...
- def8cefe 6y ago
  You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence. Single quotes, not double quotes, should be used in your comment since you are not completely and directly quoting your source. You should not be capitalising the first letter of a quote when it occurs after the beginning of a sentence. These are just some of the grammatical errors you've made in two paragraphs. I've probably made some too. It's pointless to discuss these things outside academic contexts as long as the text can still be understood.
  - TristanDaCunha 6y ago
    I gratefully accept the information of your post, but I don't think it manages to make the intended point. Notice how many times you used the word "should", which was never a consideration in my post. We could talk about should. As a starting point, it would seem to me most useful to preserve meaningful distinctions which convey information, and otherwise make language as fluid and relaxed as possible. But I'm not expert.
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    > You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence. It is commonplace to put punctuation outside the quotation marks when the punctuation itself is not being quoted.
    - def8cefe 6y ago
      You're missing the point.
  - lone-commenter 6y ago
    Those are typographic eccentricities, to be pedant :) And they're not even that uncommon on the Internet and amongst tech people. (See the Jargon file[1], for example.) But I get your point: pedantry is often needless, and sometimes even lacks proper justification (see taejo's comment). But it's difficult to stop seeing errors when you see them, so I would forgive the parent for being that Hacker News guy. [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html
    - def8cefe 6y ago
      No, it's English grammar. (EDIT: Actually it's not. See, there are mistakes everywhere. It's not typographic either though.) There's nothing to forgive. My comment was instruction on being a better reader/listener. Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and you will absorb more information.
- circlefavshape 6y ago
  I've always thought it was an American thing. I've never heard a UK/Irish person say "laying" for "lying"
- collyw 6y ago
  I haven't noticed it in British English. My default reaction would be blame it on Americans screwing up the language again.
bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
Learning to astral project is worth the effort.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  How do you define the difference between astral projection and lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming has been proven in a laboratory setting.
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    They feel very different. You can exit lucid and get to astral. Just takes practice and some will.
- ryder9 6y ago
  "astral projection" has no basis in objective reality
  - motoboi 6y ago
    I'm curious about the 'objective reality' concept. Care to explain?
    - ryder9 6y ago
      The onus of explaining is on the person claiming astral projection without any proof of basis in reality, not on the person being skeptical of those claims. It's called the burden of evidence.
      - gfody 6y ago
        astral projection is just oobe and "experience" implies subjectivity w/no claim of objectivity and no corresponding onus or burden or anything
      - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
        I've done it, it's not that hard. There's plenty of books about how to do it. I'm not interested in arguing with internet idiots though, sorry.
njsubedi 6y ago
I have noticed that the senses detach when I'm sleeping with hands on my chest too. In our community, it's believed that demons possess you if you sleep with hands on chest. Probably its because of this kind of feeling. Weird, indeed.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  That's super interesting! I've been doing some meditations lately while lying in bed, and I have my hands on my chest, and it is only during these times, when I've fallen asleep while meditating, that I have noticed myself snoring. I'm going to pay more attention to that now.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  For me it's vision and hearing that seems to go; I'm aware that I'm still awake, but my mind has drifted off elsewhere and isn't processing any visual / auditory things anymore. Mostly if I'm dozing off in front of the TV.
- collyw 6y ago
  What community is that out of interest?
whatl3y 6y ago
Not exactly the same, but I've gone through sleep paralysis 4 or 5 times in the last 10 years and it remains one of the most terrifying things I've experienced. It happened upon waking up from a short nap, and always while I was on my back (I usually sleep on my stomach or side at night). The first time I went through it I had no idea what was going on and for the ~60 seconds that it lasted I went from thinking if this was really happening to whether I would be able to tell my family I loved them again. The subsequent 3 or 4 times I experienced it (after extensive research following the first episode) I repeated the thought that this was temporary and would go away soon forcefully until it in fact did after 60-90 seconds. I know this is an evolutionary defense mechanism our brain/brain stem have developed over time, but wow is it awful if you ever go through it.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Wear a sleep mask and you'll never get sleep paralysis again.
- nojs 6y ago
  To add another sleep paralysis anecdote, I used to get it and it was always coupled with an extremely loud pulsating ringing kind of noise in my head which would get progressively louder and faster until the moment I woke up, when it would disappear. It only happened in the late morning or if I had a nap at an odd time. I asked several sleep doctors about it at the time and always got puzzled responses. I discovered that if I wiggled my toes, which took an enormous effort, I could pull out of it and wake up. It stopped happening several years ago on its own.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I'm reminded of the curiously named exploding head syndrome, described as a condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
    - 6y ago
crvdgc 6y ago
Mr. Robot vibe.
- unique__ 6y ago
  Mind awake, body asleep.
TomMarius 6y ago
I turn into a zombie when nearly asleep. You can help me stand up, order me to do things and I will obey with no memories of it happening. If you order me to go to another room (e.g. the bedroom, as my girlfriend does), I will be very confused next morning.
- joveian 6y ago
  You two might enjoy this short story: https://www.guernicamag.com/gay_10_1_10/ https://www.guernicamag.com/gay_10_1_10/ The term zombie comes from Haiti and there might be a partly medical process involved. Here is a link I found with a quick search (that mentions at the end that there is some criticism of this theory): https://sites.duke.edu/ginalisgh323/zombie-project/ https://sites.duke.edu/ginalisgh323/zombie-project/ But mostly I wanted to share that short story.
- S_A_P 6y ago
  Confused that you woke up in the bedroom? Do you not normally sleep there?
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    Confused how I appeared there - even though I can deduce it now. It's a very strong feeling of missing information that does not go away even after she tells me.
barbegal 6y ago
Objectively you can only hear through your cochlea. You can sense vibrations through your skin but that is very different to hearing yourself snore. My guess is that the author's ears were in such a position that it appeared to his brain that the sound was coming from above their head. Combined with knowing that snoring comes from your mouth/nose and with the author's eyes closed his brain could be tricked into thinking it was "hearing from the body".
- khyrbd 6y ago
  i hate feeling my own heartbeat or a situation when i realise that I'm actually breathing, Cause when that happens I'd attempt to maintain my breathing rate manually it's awful asf.
jl2718 6y ago
I used this state for lucid dreaming quite a bit. It’s actually the opposite: the brain is starting to dream but hasn’t forgotten where it is yet. So you can ‘get up’ slowly and walk around while your brain imagines the perceptive inputs. I can’t do this in any ‘normal life’ state, only when isolated in strange places (military deployments).
libra1 6y ago
I wonder if this may have to do with the "second brain" that scientists claim exists in the gut: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
godshatter 6y ago
I've had my body fall asleep while my mind was awake before, but not the opposite. It's a very odd sensation feeling your body snore of it's own accord, with your breathing rate slowing down, hearing sounds in the environment. This happened a couple of times while I was trying to learn how to move from the waking state into the dreaming state (WILD technique in lucid-dreaming parlance). I managed it once, but it was a lot of work for me (lots of others can do it much easier than I can).
ConsiderCrying 6y ago
It's fascinating to me how the author describes this as a wondrous and curious experience. I feel like that's something that many people, me included, would imagine in a nightmare. Being awake but not in control, cognizant of your own self and body. That's something straight out of philosophical horror stories.
satvikpendem 6y ago
Sleep paralysis is quite useful for lucid dreaming, as once you're in that state, you can transition to a lucid dream easily.
sjdegraeve 6y ago
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman recounts a similar "drifting" of the location of the ego while in a sensory deprivation tank: "I tried and after a while I got my ego to go down through my neck into the middle of my chest. When a drop of water came down and hit me on the shoulder, I felt it "up there," above where "I" was. Every time a drop came I was startled a little bit, and my ego would jump back up through the neck to the usual place." https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg
- joveian 6y ago
  Thanks, a nice read. There are commercial versions of these around in various places; we have one here in Portland, Oregon. I haven't tried it yet but it seems like a very interesting experience.
mikesabat 6y ago
I have a weird experience sometimes when waking up. It's not sleep paralysis, at least I don't think so, it feels more like a deep meditation. The only way to describe it is that I (my mind) is working at two different levels. At one I am dreaming or thinking of something and at another level I am observing the dreams of the first "I". Really hard to explain. Does anyone else have this happen or know the phenomenon?
- joveian 6y ago
  I think I've had something similar a number of times, like daydreaming while another part of me is disengaged, although in my case not really observing in any active sense just half asleep in a different way :/. I think this may be related to altered thalamus activity (less relaying) during sleep and meditation.
- seppel 6y ago
  Lucid dream?
- lowdest 6y ago
  Yes, I've had this experience while awake through meditation.
bokwoon 6y ago
> I did some things in Alaska before where I used yoga techniques to very slowly fall asleep, and I was able to stay awake while my sense of hearing and sense of touch went away I would love to be able to "sleep" while preserving consciousness. Willingly losing consciousness terrifies me. It's like death. You are physically unable to observe the moment you transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, because observing inplies consciousness. Sleeping is basically leaping into the void.
- gfody 6y ago
  lookup WILD (wake induced lucid dream) it's basically the practice of remaining conscious while falling asleep - techniques for dipping your toes in the void instead of leaping in head first
hoppla 6y ago
I’m not sure what it’s called, but I once experienced being trapped in the dream. I knew I was dreaming and had full control over my actions, but I just could not wake up. I was very young then, and remember I resorted to jumping of a high fall. That woke me up, and I was happy it was only a dream.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  Sounds like a lucid dream. I've had it a few times, last week I had one where I was really stressed about losing my backpack, and in my dream I said to myself "I don't want to be stressed about this, it's just a backpack, and I'm in a dream anyway", it was at that point where I realized I was dreaming so said to myself "so...if you don't want to be stressed about this, just wake up then", and upon waking, I was laughing at myself over how silly the experience was. It's quite fun, if you've done it once before, maybe you want to try it again?
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
  1. Did you have any hesitations before the jump? 2. How do you know you have actually woken up?

95 points by linux2647 6y ago

So weird -- when did we all decide to start saying "I was laying in bed" instead of "I was lying in bed"? I have noticed this shift over the past few years. Laying has always been past tense "That day I lay in bed for hours" or transitive "I lay the books down". Chickens also could be laying in bed, if eggs are coming out of them. Lying has always been intransitive "I was lying in bed". But nowadays, "I was laying in bed" is almost all I see.

emilfihlman 6y ago
It's just the same thing as "would of", ie people making grammar errors.
taejo 6y ago
"the usage, though non-standard, is ubiquitous, and in fact has been around for over seven hundred years. Robert Burchfield, in his third edition of Fowler, writes that in the 17th and 18th centuries the two words’ alternation was not considered a mistake, even in literary text, but that nowadays it’s either taken as ‘evidence of imperfect education’ or ‘accepted in regional speech as being a deep-rooted survival from an earlier period’." https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/laying-down-the-lie-of-the-land https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/laying-down-the-lie-...
def8cefe 6y ago
You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence. Single quotes, not double quotes, should be used in your comment since you are not completely and directly quoting your source. You should not be capitalising the first letter of a quote when it occurs after the beginning of a sentence. These are just some of the grammatical errors you've made in two paragraphs. I've probably made some too. It's pointless to discuss these things outside academic contexts as long as the text can still be understood.
- TristanDaCunha 6y ago
  I gratefully accept the information of your post, but I don't think it manages to make the intended point. Notice how many times you used the word "should", which was never a consideration in my post. We could talk about should. As a starting point, it would seem to me most useful to preserve meaningful distinctions which convey information, and otherwise make language as fluid and relaxed as possible. But I'm not expert.
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  > You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence. It is commonplace to put punctuation outside the quotation marks when the punctuation itself is not being quoted.
  - def8cefe 6y ago
    You're missing the point.
- lone-commenter 6y ago
  Those are typographic eccentricities, to be pedant :) And they're not even that uncommon on the Internet and amongst tech people. (See the Jargon file[1], for example.) But I get your point: pedantry is often needless, and sometimes even lacks proper justification (see taejo's comment). But it's difficult to stop seeing errors when you see them, so I would forgive the parent for being that Hacker News guy. [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html
  - def8cefe 6y ago
    No, it's English grammar. (EDIT: Actually it's not. See, there are mistakes everywhere. It's not typographic either though.) There's nothing to forgive. My comment was instruction on being a better reader/listener. Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and you will absorb more information.
circlefavshape 6y ago
I've always thought it was an American thing. I've never heard a UK/Irish person say "laying" for "lying"
collyw 6y ago
I haven't noticed it in British English. My default reaction would be blame it on Americans screwing up the language again.

bfieidhbrjr 6y ago

Learning to astral project is worth the effort.

pedalpete 6y ago
How do you define the difference between astral projection and lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming has been proven in a laboratory setting.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  They feel very different. You can exit lucid and get to astral. Just takes practice and some will.
ryder9 6y ago
"astral projection" has no basis in objective reality
- motoboi 6y ago
  I'm curious about the 'objective reality' concept. Care to explain?
  - ryder9 6y ago
    The onus of explaining is on the person claiming astral projection without any proof of basis in reality, not on the person being skeptical of those claims. It's called the burden of evidence.
    - gfody 6y ago
      astral projection is just oobe and "experience" implies subjectivity w/no claim of objectivity and no corresponding onus or burden or anything
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      I've done it, it's not that hard. There's plenty of books about how to do it. I'm not interested in arguing with internet idiots though, sorry.

njsubedi 6y ago

I have noticed that the senses detach when I'm sleeping with hands on my chest too. In our community, it's believed that demons possess you if you sleep with hands on chest. Probably its because of this kind of feeling. Weird, indeed.

pedalpete 6y ago
That's super interesting! I've been doing some meditations lately while lying in bed, and I have my hands on my chest, and it is only during these times, when I've fallen asleep while meditating, that I have noticed myself snoring. I'm going to pay more attention to that now.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
For me it's vision and hearing that seems to go; I'm aware that I'm still awake, but my mind has drifted off elsewhere and isn't processing any visual / auditory things anymore. Mostly if I'm dozing off in front of the TV.
collyw 6y ago
What community is that out of interest?

whatl3y 6y ago

Not exactly the same, but I've gone through sleep paralysis 4 or 5 times in the last 10 years and it remains one of the most terrifying things I've experienced. It happened upon waking up from a short nap, and always while I was on my back (I usually sleep on my stomach or side at night). The first time I went through it I had no idea what was going on and for the ~60 seconds that it lasted I went from thinking if this was really happening to whether I would be able to tell my family I loved them again. The subsequent 3 or 4 times I experienced it (after extensive research following the first episode) I repeated the thought that this was temporary and would go away soon forcefully until it in fact did after 60-90 seconds. I know this is an evolutionary defense mechanism our brain/brain stem have developed over time, but wow is it awful if you ever go through it.

Dirlewanger 6y ago
Wear a sleep mask and you'll never get sleep paralysis again.
nojs 6y ago
To add another sleep paralysis anecdote, I used to get it and it was always coupled with an extremely loud pulsating ringing kind of noise in my head which would get progressively louder and faster until the moment I woke up, when it would disappear. It only happened in the late morning or if I had a nap at an odd time. I asked several sleep doctors about it at the time and always got puzzled responses. I discovered that if I wiggled my toes, which took an enormous effort, I could pull out of it and wake up. It stopped happening several years ago on its own.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I'm reminded of the curiously named exploding head syndrome, described as a condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
  - 6y ago

crvdgc 6y ago

Mr. Robot vibe.

unique__ 6y ago
Mind awake, body asleep.

TomMarius 6y ago

I turn into a zombie when nearly asleep. You can help me stand up, order me to do things and I will obey with no memories of it happening. If you order me to go to another room (e.g. the bedroom, as my girlfriend does), I will be very confused next morning.

joveian 6y ago
You two might enjoy this short story: https://www.guernicamag.com/gay_10_1_10/ https://www.guernicamag.com/gay_10_1_10/ The term zombie comes from Haiti and there might be a partly medical process involved. Here is a link I found with a quick search (that mentions at the end that there is some criticism of this theory): https://sites.duke.edu/ginalisgh323/zombie-project/ https://sites.duke.edu/ginalisgh323/zombie-project/ But mostly I wanted to share that short story.
S_A_P 6y ago
Confused that you woke up in the bedroom? Do you not normally sleep there?
- TomMarius 6y ago
  Confused how I appeared there - even though I can deduce it now. It's a very strong feeling of missing information that does not go away even after she tells me.

barbegal 6y ago

Objectively you can only hear through your cochlea. You can sense vibrations through your skin but that is very different to hearing yourself snore. My guess is that the author's ears were in such a position that it appeared to his brain that the sound was coming from above their head. Combined with knowing that snoring comes from your mouth/nose and with the author's eyes closed his brain could be tricked into thinking it was "hearing from the body".

khyrbd 6y ago
i hate feeling my own heartbeat or a situation when i realise that I'm actually breathing, Cause when that happens I'd attempt to maintain my breathing rate manually it's awful asf.

jl2718 6y ago

I used this state for lucid dreaming quite a bit. It’s actually the opposite: the brain is starting to dream but hasn’t forgotten where it is yet. So you can ‘get up’ slowly and walk around while your brain imagines the perceptive inputs. I can’t do this in any ‘normal life’ state, only when isolated in strange places (military deployments).

libra1 6y ago

I wonder if this may have to do with the "second brain" that scientists claim exists in the gut: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

godshatter 6y ago

I've had my body fall asleep while my mind was awake before, but not the opposite. It's a very odd sensation feeling your body snore of it's own accord, with your breathing rate slowing down, hearing sounds in the environment. This happened a couple of times while I was trying to learn how to move from the waking state into the dreaming state (WILD technique in lucid-dreaming parlance). I managed it once, but it was a lot of work for me (lots of others can do it much easier than I can).

ConsiderCrying 6y ago

It's fascinating to me how the author describes this as a wondrous and curious experience. I feel like that's something that many people, me included, would imagine in a nightmare. Being awake but not in control, cognizant of your own self and body. That's something straight out of philosophical horror stories.

satvikpendem 6y ago

Sleep paralysis is quite useful for lucid dreaming, as once you're in that state, you can transition to a lucid dream easily.

sjdegraeve 6y ago

In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman recounts a similar "drifting" of the location of the ego while in a sensory deprivation tank: "I tried and after a while I got my ego to go down through my neck into the middle of my chest. When a drop of water came down and hit me on the shoulder, I felt it "up there," above where "I" was. Every time a drop came I was startled a little bit, and my ego would jump back up through the neck to the usual place." https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg

joveian 6y ago
Thanks, a nice read. There are commercial versions of these around in various places; we have one here in Portland, Oregon. I haven't tried it yet but it seems like a very interesting experience.

mikesabat 6y ago

I have a weird experience sometimes when waking up. It's not sleep paralysis, at least I don't think so, it feels more like a deep meditation. The only way to describe it is that I (my mind) is working at two different levels. At one I am dreaming or thinking of something and at another level I am observing the dreams of the first "I". Really hard to explain. Does anyone else have this happen or know the phenomenon?

joveian 6y ago
I think I've had something similar a number of times, like daydreaming while another part of me is disengaged, although in my case not really observing in any active sense just half asleep in a different way :/. I think this may be related to altered thalamus activity (less relaying) during sleep and meditation.
seppel 6y ago
Lucid dream?
lowdest 6y ago
Yes, I've had this experience while awake through meditation.

bokwoon 6y ago

> I did some things in Alaska before where I used yoga techniques to very slowly fall asleep, and I was able to stay awake while my sense of hearing and sense of touch went away I would love to be able to "sleep" while preserving consciousness. Willingly losing consciousness terrifies me. It's like death. You are physically unable to observe the moment you transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, because observing inplies consciousness. Sleeping is basically leaping into the void.

gfody 6y ago
lookup WILD (wake induced lucid dream) it's basically the practice of remaining conscious while falling asleep - techniques for dipping your toes in the void instead of leaping in head first

hoppla 6y ago

I’m not sure what it’s called, but I once experienced being trapped in the dream. I knew I was dreaming and had full control over my actions, but I just could not wake up. I was very young then, and remember I resorted to jumping of a high fall. That woke me up, and I was happy it was only a dream.

pedalpete 6y ago
Sounds like a lucid dream. I've had it a few times, last week I had one where I was really stressed about losing my backpack, and in my dream I said to myself "I don't want to be stressed about this, it's just a backpack, and I'm in a dream anyway", it was at that point where I realized I was dreaming so said to myself "so...if you don't want to be stressed about this, just wake up then", and upon waking, I was laughing at myself over how silly the experience was. It's quite fun, if you've done it once before, maybe you want to try it again?
ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
1. Did you have any hesitations before the jump? 2. How do you know you have actually woken up?