My Experience with Exploding Head Syndrome and Lucid Dreaming
During this last month, I've experienced many intense and long dreams with certainly lots of meanings. It was funny because almost every day I was telling my friends one more of my dreams adventures. I decided then to study more about it and I came across some techniques of lucid dreaming. Since then every night I have been preparing myself to have a better control of my dreams, trying to keep myself on that level between conscious and unconscious mind. It's a very challenging exercise because it's so easy and natural for our body to just relax and go with the flow of the dream or just unconsciousness. It's challenging to tell your mind: "Nope, hold on, we're not going this way tonight" when you have been going there for decades every single night.
This week, on the beginning of my saga on lucid dreaming I had an interesting but quite weird experience. On a few moments of the night, I could definitely feel myself on that threshold of consciousness, between those two worlds. It happened probably twice that night for some seconds. What interrupted this moment was what I can describe as an explosion in my head which also happened twice from what I can remember.
A Bomb in My Brain
That's exactly how it felt. Like a bomb exploding on my brain for no more than 2 seconds. I could feel it more in the back of my head, a little behind my ears in both sides symmetrically. Perhaps by the impression of the noise, I could also see a flash and the sensation of feeling the blood running in my brain. I didn't feel any pain and wasn't scared. It didn't wake me up (or didn't kept me awake) but for sure it wasn't a dream, I could definitely feel it.
The other day I googled to see if this could possibly have happened to other people. For my surprise, I found a forum about lucid dreaming where people also head this experience in a variety of ways. There I found out that this experience receives the name of Exploding Head Syndrome.
Exploding Head Syndrome
It is interpreted by scientists as a sleep disorder where the person hear a strong noise, like an explosion in their heads during the moment their are falling asleep. Some people may also experience heat, strange feelings in their torso, or a feeling of electrical tinglings that ascends to the head before it happens. Some pages I research says that it can caused my stress, anxiety, fatigue but I'm not or at least wasn't going through any of those when it happened to me.
It is still a quite unknown and misterious experience by science. Several ideas have been proposed to explain it, including ear disorders and partial epileptic seizures (also never had any of those). But I found a quite compelling theory on a BBC page. A study was carried with people with the condition having their brain activity monitored overnight. The study suggested that there may be a burst of neural activity in the brain that coincides with the reported explosion. Normally, when we go to sleep our body shuts down and becomes paralysed so that we don’t act out our dreams. During this transition from wake to sleep, the brain usually turns off bit by bit. However, in exploding head syndrome, there is a hiccup in the 'reticular formation' – the part of the brain responsible for overseeing this general shut-down – which results in a delay in switching off some areas. This delay is associated with a suppression of alpha brainwaves that are normally responsible for drowsiness, and a sudden burst of neural activity in the areas of the brain responsible for processing sound. Scientists believe that the neurons are all firing at once which results in the sensation of an explosion in your head.
I think it is a plausible explanation, since after all, when exercicing lucid dreaming we are indeed trying to manipulate the way we shut down our brain and it's obviously not used to that, so some unexpected things might happen.
Calling out All the Exploding Headed on Steemit
I think it's weird to call it a syndrome since at least for me it doesn't seem like a problem neither I feel I deserve treatment. It didn't disturb my sleep, I kept sleeping after it happened, at least I don't remember waking up or having imnsonia after the incident. But it was indeed an extreme curious experience and I felt glad to see I wasn't the only one having this experience.
So if you're reading this and already went through something similiar, share your experience and knowledge about this so unknown and misterious subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150409-i-have-exploding-head-syndrome
I felt something like that when I meditated for a long time, except it was more of a buzzing sensation that was on the top-rear area of head. I also felt a feeling of intense focus and confidence, like everything I did was right and really smooth.
I was watching the youtube channel Big Think a few weeks later where they had a guy on there named Steven Kotler and he talked about this phenomena he's researching called "Flow" and he described everything I felt.
People can sometimes enter this state while doing an activity, where the brain's calculation activity goes from the pre-frontal cortex to the rear of the brain (the part that deals with the subconscious) and its almost like they gain super-powers but it's just the brain entering peak performance.
So while maybe it's not exactly what you experienced it was similar enough that it reminded me of when I had my own weird little brain trip.
Here's a link to the video in case you were interested
"The part of the brain that separates self from other is shut down so you can no longer distinguish between the two things and as a result we feel one with everything"
That's fascinating. It's incredible what our brain is capable of doing, actually what WE are capable to do with our brain. I believe that what science knows about the brain can be compare to knowing only the tiny tip of a huge iceberg. Good to see this guy diving into the misteries of our brain to seek for more plausible explanations for us. Thanks for sharing your experience, it is a little different that mine but definitely related. ;)