Member-only story
Why Sleep Could Be The Vehicle For Transformation
We all know sleep is really important for physical and mental renewal, but what if it was even more important than that?
When we fall to sleep, it’s not just like switching off a button, and we’re asleep. For most of us, there is a gradual letting go — a sort of transition between the everyday alert state of consciousness and the unconscious state of the dreamworld.
This trippy state where we leave one world and enter another is called the hypnogogic state, and it could have more power than we think.
Visualisation and the hypnogogic state
Indeed, a significant amount of people say that falling asleep whilst visualising and feeling a particular outcome can directly enhance successful results.
Great athletes have often recounted stories of how they use visualisation in this way.
- Michael Phelps, one of the most successful swimmers ever with a total of 23 gold medals, used the power of sleep to visualise and embody his end result. Bowman his coach, trained Phelps to watch a ‘mental recording’ of his races before he went to sleep and when he woke up. The swimmer would focus on seeing every detail of what a successful race would look like.
- Wayne Rooney, the famous footballer, talks about…
