device?
Maybe a freefall tower…
You can get that falling feeling very easily on your own… it’s a bit hard to explain but for me…
I have a large fan on right next to my head while I sleep… and I listen to the fan and take medium sized breaths, and try and soley focus on the fan… then I take the first thought I have… like “R - wo” (it’ll be a repeating thought, in time with the fan, as my mind does NOT want to be silent, sadly… so it creates weird thoughts to fill up any gaps it has) and I repeat that over and over again…
then I either: change it every time a new thought enters my head … like r-wo, r-wo, devo, devo… whatever… so it kind of creates a flowing rhyming association of some kind… (it has to be natural though, if you just let go it’ll come to you)
or I stick with that one thought over and over again.
It takes me pretty deep pretty quickly, but you have to be fairly focused.
I’ve found it usually doesn’t work if you’ve woken up at 5.am and your body is being really impatient and mean to you and won’t let you get back to sleep… becuase you are too unfocused.
It defiinitely has to be a sort of “controlled” and “distant” focus.
This seems to work for a lot of people, it should for you, I think the falling asleep process is triggered by a constant and progressive stream of unconscious thought, and this most definitely promotes that, but ultimately you just need to lie in bed (during the day, night, whatever) and experiment with yourself, see what causes that state for you… and get in tune with that.
It took me forever to get this down to the point where I can at least put myself into hypnagogia for half a second within 15 minutes… and still… there is NO WAY i’ll be ASLEEP and dreaming in 15 minutes, but I can push myself to the borderline threshhold really fastly.
If I could just stay inside without jolting awake, I’d be all set.
I think I’m going faster than my body wants me to… but I’m sure I can convince it otherwise.
Give that a try though, it’s a lot more effective than a tape or a drug, as you learn what makes your mind work.
Visualizing being on a roller coaster works very well if you are close to being in the hypnagogic state but are actually focused and alert.
It’s fun too.