I think it’s time again to lay down my theory about sleeping positions, routines, and lucid dreaming.
I’ll start by briefly describing what a routine is, and how it exists in your brain. Let’s look at a common daily activity that you’ve done thousands of times before, like walking. Individually, walking consists of hundreds of smaller motions all functioning in a particular order. Nobody remembers how they learned to walk, but like anything else, it was a process of working out which actions were involved, and in what order. Each little movement can be broken down further into its separate muscle movements, and again further until we get right down to the series of linked neural nodes that perform that function.
The more you perform any complicated action (meaning anything that involves more than one basic movement) the stronger the link grouping those nodes becomes. This is the basis for everything we do. While initially we might need to consciously work out what individual actions are required to perform a particular complicated activity, eventually these ‘programs’ become so natural we can handle them subconsciously. We no longer need to consciously think about what action we’re up to when we walk, we just run the whole process subconsciously because the routine is so strongly linked that we’re unlikely to get it wrong.
Such can be said for everything you learn to do. Reading, typing, responding to conversation, everything. Now, to get to the point of all this. Let’s say you’re in the middle of running a common routine, like walking, when suddenly you encounter an environmental factor that prevents you from continuing. Let’s say you approach a step, which you’ll have to take into account unless you want to fall on your head. Since we’ve all walked up steps thousands of times, even this is just a subconscious addition to your program which is there to handle such an event. Without even thinking, you raise your leg higher than usual, and ascend the step - no problem, and not even a distraction to your current train of thought.
Now, imagine you encounter something that you haven’t had to deal with so many times in the past - for example, you step on something deceptively slippery, and lose your balance. Suddenly, your regular subconscious walking routine is interrupted and you find yourself having to use your conscious mind to resolve the problem. You don’t have a program ready to handle walking on something slippery, so you’re forced to assume conscious control of yourself instead of letting your subconscious handle the activity.
Important point: When something interrupts your regular subconscious routine, you’re forced to handle the situation consciously.
None of this is theory so far, it’s just how we work. Individual movements are a result of linked neural nodes, and any action is made up of an indefinite number of movements. Each time you perform a chain of these actions in the same order, the links between those actions become physically stronger, resulting in a greater chance that a neural charge will travel down the path, and ultimately you’ll be more successful performing the action each subsequent recursion. If you don’t do something for a while, these biological links degrade, and you tend to ‘forget’ how to do it.
Now, sleeping is just a routine like any other, albeit not one that you can consciously control should the need arise (you simply wake up in this case). Still, the point remains that your mind is subconsciously going about its list of linked actions that collectively define sleep, and each of its separate stages. Now, my theory is, if you interrupt this routine by adding an unusual environmental factor to its otherwise stable pattern, your mind may be forced to invoke consciousness to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say you sleep on your side every single night, and have done for the entirety of your life. While sleeping, your mind is simply used to feeling pressure on your arm, and it deals with that as merely part of the program.
What if one night you change, and decide to sleep on your back? Instantly your existing program is changed, and you can’t subconsciously assume the routine. In fact, you might even find it very hard to get to sleep in the first place, because the first few lines of ‘code’ (so to speak) specify that you can feel pressure on your arm. Your body already doesn’t feel right, and so the next part of the routine can’t yet fire. Now this example is a little extreme, because almost everyone has slept in so many different positions during their life that their mind has undoubtedly already developed routines that allow for this to happen.
At this point, I’d like to bring your attention to Sun-Eye Method 4, which includes a tip that sleeping while sitting up can increase your chance of lucidity. You might not have been able to see any credible reason for this previously, but consider what I’ve been rambling about. Sure it might not feel much different sitting up, but what about the balance sensors in your ears? All of a sudden, they’re telling your brain that you’re sitting (or standing) upright, and none of your routines currently take that into account. Your routine is expecting your balance sensors to report that you’re laying down… so, what does your mind do? Does it wake you up so you can consciously handle the situation, remove the problem, and return to regular sleep? Perhaps.
But perhaps it simply wakes up your conscious mind? Your body stays asleep, but your mind is active as a result of your subconscious finding itself unable to run any of its routines. This could be why people report success with lucid dreaming when they sleep in an unusual position, or environment.
At the risk of becoming boring, I’ll leave it at that. I hope some of it makes sense.
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Then, when I just couldn’t keep up the struggle any longer, I “gave up” and turned to the side. And,
…
right side is definently comfy.
Look: