<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While even experience oneironauts will admit that the pathway to lucid dream is as much an art as a science, most will nonetheless concede that certain procedures may facilitate arrival at this threshold state. Sally Kitchener, who will perhaps forever be most closely associated with the afternoon doze school, most often adopts one of several characteristic postures to achieve transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first, and simplest for the beginner is the x Axis Rotated Flamingo<\/strong>. One leg is stretched along the back of the sofa, while the other is bent to cross the other at, or near to, the knee. The sole of foot may also touch the back of the sofa, or in other cases the toes may merely brush against it. The arms are gathered up towards the head and chest. One hand may cup the head or jaw, although this may cause it to become numb after longer periods of dozing, and the other hand rests over the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally actually forgets which side her heart is on, although she believes that it is less important for it to literally rest over the heart than to gesture in its general vicinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cushions are something of a matter for debate. Many practitioners who have considerable experience in sleeping, are of the opinion that cushions are an unnecessary prop and may eventually become a burden to those wishing to not be awake, however Sally herself feels that the more are quite often the merrier: two, three or more cushions are not unusual on her sofa. Indeed from time to time she will cover herself entirely in cushions so that notional entities of the aether could not see her if they were indeed more than merely notional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the dozing posture has been achieved, if you are already dozing then no further techniques are required. If you are not yet dozing, then there are several methods for achieving transition away from being awake. There are some, who have had noteworthy success in not remaining awake, who advocate the use of soft, quiet music in the background, and there are a small minority who advocate the use of harsh music at deafening volumes. Rather than music, Sally endorses the use of a 2600 semi-modular synthesizer, ARP original or copy, to generate non-repetitive tone clusters, series of blips, filtered envelope sweeps and patches of white noise and indeed silence. The most important factor being, she insists, that it is not a drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Above and beyond these aids to threshold transition, there are a number of via negativa strategies that can be usefully adopted. At the time of writing, Sally is experimenting with not imagining Heathrow Airport as a transitional motif. The technique requires one not merely to not imagine the terminal buildings, runways, gates, duty free and food court experience, one must also cease from visualising the miles of bland hotels and conference centres that surround and thereby imply Heathrow Airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One particularly bold approach is to imagine Hayes & Harlington, right at the very edge of the London A to Z. The question of where Hayes starts and Harlington ends may alone be sufficient to plunge oneself deep into blackest slumber, which may be too extreme for some purposes. Another approach might be to consider what Airrow Heathport might signify, or even Portheath Rowair, and in reaching for that absent signified non-places might proliferate into oneiric labyrinths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More simply, but perhaps less potently, one can instead just imagine Gatwick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second posture is known at The Coin Collector<\/strong>. It is often deployed in the second phase of the afternoon nap. The Flamingo posture is rotated so that the dozer is facing in the opposite direction. The knees are brought up as close to the chest as is comfortable, and the face is pressed against the back of the sofa. The arms go anywhere they can, and this is why this posture is usually considered to be more advanced: one may find oneself with arms that are too long, have too many elbows and far far too many fingers, and the problems that arise here may awaken the sleeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally’s firm belief in this regard is that the next evolution of homo sapiens will feature retractable or detachable arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the arms are however pacified or accomodated, then the face may be pushed deep into the recess between the sofa back and seat. Deep enough to find lost copper coins. Thus the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally often finds herself in The Coin Collector posture wearing a single sock. Whether the transition from The Flamingo into this posture somehow removes the sock, perhaps during the folding of the legs, or maybe dring the chaotic period while the arms are flailing around before coming to rest, but she had never yet discovered a clear reason, because she is to all extents and purposes dozing at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In related matters, temperature is a crucial matter for the afternoon oneironaut. Not too hot and not too cold, that fabled Goldilocks Zone, is a ballpark of considerable extent, and indeed the contemplation of its parameters has brought about in recent history more than one successful nap. The colder end of the spectrum is easier to resolve with a cardigan, preferably old, well-worn and not too recently cleaned; a stolen airline blanket, KLM for preference; or indeed a warm cat for company. The warmer end however can be more of a problem. There are only so many layers that one can remove before the shaving of all hairs and eventually the flaying of skin start to look like viable options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally does not advocate self-flagellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to the matter of cats, these furry animals can be either an asset or a liability to the dozer. If they can be induced to lie down, roughly at chest height, they might snuggle against an arm and with the resultant purring become at least as effective as a 2600 in facilitating sleep. Most cats also like 2600s, but they must be taught the difference between their natural enemy, string, and its close cousin, patch cables. If a cat chews patch cables, the 2600 must be moved to a position where this is no longer feasible. If this means bolting the 2600 to the ceiling, then that is what must be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One final note on cats: felines of over a certain size should not be admitted into the dozing area. Nothing negatively impacts an afternoon nap like being mauled by a lion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The progression, or perhaps rather the infolding, from this lobe of sleep into the lucid state is a delicate matter and is rather like cracking eggs. When one is cracking eggs for an omelette or scramble, the yolks will remain whole, however when one is doing the same for fried eggs, one of more yolk will burst, ruining breakfast and setting one up for a truly miserable day. Which is to say that extreme care must be taken, because blundering like the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop may bring one not into lucid dream but instead into the realm of The Fuseli: sleep paralysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not that The Fuseli is malicious or notably ill-disposed towards the dreamer, it is rather that she had much better things to do than looming on the periphery of perception being uncanny when the matter of phase transition was so badly handled. It is not only the shift from regular dream into lucid that can trigger sleep paralysis, but The Fuseli is considerably more forgiving towards the dreamer who doesn’t pull n00b errors during her day off, giving her the equivalent experience of the yolk bursting when she is trying to make fried eggs for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The light step off the top stair, as witnessed at the conclusion of LOONA’s full debut video, is a crucial manoeuvre for the would-be oneironaut to master. Some noted luminaries favour the use of French cheeses, others absinthe or Fernet Branca, and a surprising number of the older generation swear by a careful application of bicarbonate of soda. Sally herself is not a member of the bicarb school, simply because snorting the stuff from a mirror with a rolled-up tenner just looks sleazy as hell. Why would anyone do that to themselves? Seriously!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third posture is called The Dove Ungainly<\/strong>. It is a posture in which the sleepers back is against the seats of the sofa, perhaps with a slight shift to the hips. The left leg is bent so that the knee is is the air with the foot curled under the opposing thigh. The other leg sprawls out so that the foot touches or rests on the floor in front of the sofa. This is technically known as the unification of heaven and earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One arm is propped by the back of the sofa to point towards the ceiling, towards the 2600 in the case of a room where the cats really cannot be taught to leave the patch cables alone, and the other is bent so that the hand is behind the thrown back head. The apparent ungainliness of the posture is in exact contradistinction with its absolute utility for maintaining the lucid dream state for long periods of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is said that nine out of ten transitions into lucid dream are accidental, and are brought about without any form of expertise. This may be accurate, however for those who find themselves transferred to the control centre it is probably quite unimportant. The key moment of recognition leads to a consideration of potential and from here the question of experimentation arises. What to do first?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately the most common primary experiment is Kumbaya: the dreamer forces their will on all who are assembled in the dream space, and this will is made manifest through a huge rousing chorus of Kumbaya. The larger the chorus; the greater the megalomania. Sally herself has not often deployed the Kumbaya test, and not with a notably large chorus, and it didn’t continue for very long, and there certainly wasn’t an audacious key change involved. And if there was, we can’t prove a damn thing and she’ll see us in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having the power is the most potentially problematic aspect of the lucid arena. The dream is an ethically free zone, and how it is exercised is a reflection upon the dreamer. Can it be abused? In that there are no consequences for control of one’s environment in a dream, and no consequences for the dreamed community found there, the demiurgic manifestation of id is at worst gaudy and at best hilarious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are however oneironauts who upon achieving the lucid state merely observe the details of the innerscape – the movement of clocks, the lines on the palms of their hands, the artexing on the ceiling, and refrain from interference in the ostensible world. This realisation of power but control over its exercise reflecting a spiritual discipline of a higher awareness of the nature of things as they are or might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally feels that these lads are a bit up themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. While even experience oneironauts will admit that the pathway to lucid dream is as much an art as a science, most will nonetheless concede that certain procedures may facilitate arrival at this threshold state. Sally Kitchener, who will perhaps forever be most closely associated with the afternoon doze school, most often adopts one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sally-kitchener"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}