ellaenchanting:

@banana-pie-gaige reminded me of an experiment I’ve been wanting to run.

Loose conjecture: I have a book of sleeping tips that suggests that people close their eyes and slowly trace the outside ridges of the United States to trick the brain into starting REM. REM, or dreaming sleep, is often a period where people can be lightly suggestible- for example, you can talk to dreaming people and sometimes influence what happens in their dreams. There’s also the eye flutter that some subjects have when they go under and the eye movements people tend to have when you ask them to imagine a visual image when hypnotized- these may or may not be REM related (or require hypnosis at all).

Hypothesis: You can trigger tranceyness by having someone close their eyes and move them around in a circular way because this mirrors REM. Mirroring REM triggers a person’s mind to start dreaming which increases suggestibility.

Why this is probably bullshit: REM eye movements often look different  than someone tracing the borders of the Unites States. People usually go through other sleep stages before getting into REM- you usually only jump in to REM when you’re sleep deprived. (My one time dreaming while hypnotized- which was awesome- was when I was up late and likely sleep deprived.) Moving eyes in a REM-ish way wouldn’t necessarily trigger REM or sleep or tranceyness or anything in particular. If this did put people to sleep or even made them dream,. this wouldn’t necessarily equal a useful hypnotic state.
But what if it did?

That would be cool, huh?

Tumblr peeps- this is what I’d you to do:

Would you kindly:

1. Set an alarm for 6 minutes.

2. Close your eyes.

3. Relax. If you know how, let yourself sink into a light trancey/meditative state.

4. Imagine you can see the USA land formation. Gently and comfortable trace around the edges, starting at the top right hand side with Maine. Don’t try and think or stop thinking- thoughts can just happen all by themselves. You can just lazily notice anything that happens.If nothing much happens, just let yourself enjoy the break.

5. Write me feedback about what, if anything, happened. It’s OK to tell me nothing really happened- that’s useful information!

I’ll tell you guys if we collectively discover something cool. :)

Also- please let me know if you have ideas or if this is a thing you solved in 3rd grade.

Tagging people who may be interested: @soundshypnotic, @brentrx, @mistermindwiper, @tennfan2, @banana-pie-gaige, @zanythoughts, @bannableoffense, @i-dontshaveforsherlock-holmes, @brin-bellway, @mr-prism, @mrs-prism, @hypnoticharlequin

Feel free to repost, anyone- I’d like to get a lot of minds on this if possible.

Not sure how you knew, but empirical kink is absolutely my thing.

“Would you kindly:”

I see what you did there.

Anyway, my results:

My mind did not wander very much: trying to remember exactly how the outline of the United States goes is a fairly occupying task. I noticed a couple minutes in that the movement of my arm was a bit jerky, as it tends to be in trance. Following up on this, somewhere around Arizona or southern California I tried ceasing to consciously move my arm to see what would happen. Sure enough, my arm continued moving up and to the left, in small jerking movements.

I continued on through the flat stretch of Canadian border, around the Great Lakes, and back to Maine. During my second lap of the East Coast, it felt at times like I was more guiding my arm than actually moving it.

At the tip of Florida, I tried ceasing my conscious movements again. Again, my arm continued up and to the left.

Before I had a chance to try pausing at a point where the next section wasn’t up and to the left, the alarm went off.

So, neat and pretty fast-onset ideomotor effect, but I didn’t get any imagery, nor did the picture of the U.S. in my mind’s eye seem any more vivid than my mind’s eye normally does (which is not that much; I’m towards the low-detail end of the spectrum).

Notes regarding confounds: I got about 8.25 – 8.5 hours of sleep last night (low end of normal for me), I was neither on any stimulants nor in withdrawal from them (I’m not caffeine-dependent; I customarily have some chocolate at this time of day, but I waited until after the experiment), I looked at the linked picture right before the experiment to refresh my memory of the outline, my brother walked in during the experiment (I tried to ignore him, but I was a little distracted worrying he would ask what I was doing and I wouldn’t have a non-embarrassing answer). (He didn’t ask, though I don’t know whether he noticed or what he thought about it if so.) I have avoided looking to see if there are other responses to this post because I didn’t want to contaminate my answers. (I’ll read them afterward, assuming there are any.)

P.S. Okay, so the consensus of the other respondants seems to be that the verb “trace” does not indicate moving one’s hand? Am I the only one who interpreted it that way? Well, this is awkward.

(I hope I’ve given you some interesting data, even if I may have misunderstood the provided protocol.)

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Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #for science! #TMI #now it’s time for that chocolate #(perhaps it will soothe the awkward)

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