Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep

by Jennifer Dumpert

A consciousness and dream hacker explains how to use liminal dreaming—the dreams that come between sleep and waking—for self-actualization and consciousness expansion.

At the edges of consciousness, between waking and sleeping, there’s a swirling, free associative state of mind that is the domain of liminal dreams. Working with liminal dreams can improve sleep, mitigate anxiety and depression, help to heal trauma, and aid creativity and problem-solving.

As we sink into slumber, we pass through hypnagogia, the first of the two liminal dream states. In this transitional zone, memories, perceptions, and imaginings arise in a fast moving, hallucinatory, semi-conscious remix. On the other end of the night, as we wake, we experience hypnopompia—the hazy, pleasant, drift that is the other liminal dream state. 

Readers of Liminal Dreaming will learn step-by-step how to create a dream practice outside of REM-sleep states that they can incorporate into their lives in personally meaningful ways. Liminal dreaming practice is also far easier to learn than lucid dreaming practice, making it possible for the reader to begin working with these dreams this very night.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality, Science, Unfinished

248 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2019

About the author

I’m a San Francisco-based writer, lecturer, and consciousness hacker. My work centers on liminal dreaming, the dream states that exist between waking and sleep. As you’re falling asleep, you pass through the hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic state of hypnagogia. As you wake, you experience the soft, drifty state of hypnopompia. In these two states, which together make up liminal dreaming, you fall into the dream realm of the unconscious but you retain enough waking consciousness to know where you are, and to observe what’s happening. We all pass through a limited number of EEG states every day. Liminal dream states are among them. We all experience liminal dreaming. Learning to linger in that state is just a matter of stopping and noticing when it happens. There are a wide range of reasons for exploring liminal dreaming, including creativity, problem solving, physical and mental healing, meditation, deep relaxation, and consciousness exploration.

I also write and speak about oneirogens, anything that promotes vivid dreams, like herbs, roots, foods, practices. In 2009, I started the Oneironauticum, a worldwide slumber party in which people from around the globe would all use the same oneirogen on the same night, creating a slumber party of thousands of people from many different countries all uniting for one night in the common experience of the dream.

I speak and lead workshops at festivals, conferences, and venues worldwide, and have authored numerous pieces about various aspects of dream work. You watch video of my talks or listen to podcasts featuring me and my work at my websites urban dreamscape and liminal dreaming.

Reviews

[Michael Lyons]

LIMINAL DREAMING
Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep
by Jennifer Dumpert 2019 North Atlantic Books
Review by Michael Lyons

I found my way to this book through Jung. I keep a pretty good dream diary and had learned symbolic interpretation and was often astounded by things being shown to me by the psyche. And I wanted to take it further into Active Imagination. But my goodness those Jungians can get abstruse and recherché. I had studied Lucid Dream from the books of LaBerge of Stanford and even bought the night mask kit with LEDs that flashed when you went into REM. But alas, the hardware kept me awake. But it was an existence proof of lucid dreaming and that makes all the difference. Also I had studied self-hypnosis or autogenic training through MHMR in Austin in the 70s, meditation in the 80s and was not a stranger to yoga nidra, visualization, or the common everyday trance. When I bought this book Liminal Dreaming by Jennifer Dumpert I read it straight through on a weekend.
She is a generous writer, thorough with her explanations of research and with the intimacy of her own experiences. She coined the term liminal dreaming to refer to the transitional mental imagery when going into sleep — hypnagogia; and coming out of sleep —hypnopopia. The book explores liminality in many guises across the ages as the underlying phenomenon to explain spirituality and creativity; it covers a lot of time from Vipasana to Aristotle to Freud to consciousness hacking. One could spend years exploring some of the topics, Active Imagination, Mundis Imaginalis, Shamanism which are touched on briefly with enough focus to explain some concept related to the liminal.



Moreover the book has exercises of cognitive activities like dream incubation, and physical activities like oneirogens to test on the self and observe the result. For example, after a few months I was delighted to find in myself the stages of hypnagogia first written about by Mavromatis (pg. 50). Or I had the all-important breakthrough lucid dream from taking an oneirogen. This brought what had been forgotten since childhood into a concept, into being real again. One morning after a few months I had a lovely hypnopompic riff mixed in with memories of how I used to have lucid dreams as a child. That is a part of myself I have been trying to find my way back to for a long time and had forgotten completely that it used to be like that. What a blessing!
Brainwaves
The chapter on brain waves is a great introduction to the subject for a beginner. In addition to the major pure brain wave frequencies alpha beta delta theta she goes into exploring the mishmash of mixing brain waves: spindles and K-complex, humps and theta ripples. Alpha wave trains that are intermittent too. Also considered are humps with incomplete spindles. These are important because Hypnagogia and REM are a chaos of mixed brainwaves.
She begins to relate various states of awakening and arousal and drowsiness to brain waves in such a way that you too can begin experiencing them in your own self.
Both the liminal and the REM dream state brainwaves are mixed. Liminal dreams are kaleidoscopic and short and are just what is happening; I used to think of them as remote viewing — zooming in to scenes very fast through a scanner darkly, or like scenes on the windows of a train passing by. REM dreams on the other hand, generally have more of a narrative structure. And recognizable characters, often seeing from the first person point of view. We do not yet relate things seen in dreams to humps or trains or spindles of waves. It would seem, however that in lucid dreams some of the waves have to go up to the frequency of alpha so that there is enough consciousness to observe the observer observing. And also I would conjecture that the activity of observation, of incubation and other practices would in some way be like constructing convolution filters so that the dreamer can impose something of a sampling activity and mix it up with brain waves.
The author presents a bar graph of the frequency states on the vertical axis against the hours of the night time on the horizontal. The bars block out the stages of sleep as the sleeper moves in and out of frequency domains during the night.



I made this gestalt with the little elevators shuttling the dreamer in an out of various states of a night.
The author takes us on a tour through a night with EEG and charts. The trek of the brain descending into the stages of sleep begins by going through the liminal state of hypnagogia. A sleeper naturally flows from the relaxed state of alpha through hypnagogia and down into theta and from there deeper into delta. And then several times a night the sleeper’s brain moves to the top of the frequency range, alpha, and undergoes a micro-awakening at the end of each of the 5 major sleep cycles. Then back into dreams and slower rhythms without passing through hypnagogia each time. This is the story of the nights brain activity in a universal progression as seen from recorded brain waves. While the alpha beta theta and delta waves are coherent the waves of hypnagogia a liminal state, and REM are chaotic. The hip author uses a folksy metaphor to explain: “During hypnagogic sleep, your brainwaves jump around as they switch gears and slow down.”

Liminal Dreaming mentions the book Hypnagogia by Mavromatis. It is a survey published in 1987 that gives a system of 4 stages of deepening descent into hypnagogia on your way to the next sleep stage presumably theta. These are: flashes of light and color; faces and nature scenes; autosymbolic phenomena; hypnagogia dreams. I began paying attention to my descent, and though I didn’t get the colors, I did get the faces. Crowds of faces standing around looking on, looking at me sometimes. They were ordinary faces not staggering beautiful nor hideous. And the buildings.
I noticed that as I paid more attention I became more conscious in hypnagogia. Usually hypnagogia comes in like a fast moving train passing through. For example this morning while lolling in the pleasures of hypnopompia I saw a scene of houses pushed off their foundations and twisted around and bunched up from a flood. I got a long perspective of many displaced houses along a street or river. I became conscious, that is I realized I had some control over what I was seeing, and zoomed into the houses for a closer look. I was able to move my perspective closer and around to see between the houses, and go between the soggy and forlorn houses and look at detail like a dreck bedecked porch or a swayed wall or a caved in roof.
Then the WOW ( I am conscious in a dream!) factor sets in and disrupts the scene.
So though I was flying over the scene and zooming in among the buildings, I do not think this was a lucid dream but a conscious dream (hypnagogia).
I do not find the term conscious dreaming per se in the book, but I think it is the essence of learning the art of liminal dreaming. For example in the Feedback Loop Exercise (LD pg. 21). In that exercise one is directed upon the natural emergence of a hypnagogic image to “ breath slowly and softly into it, allowing it to take shape, to move and shift on its own.” . . . “As you breathe out, imagine you’re animating whatever it is that you’re perceiving, like watering a plant with your attention.”
Maybe that will defeat the WOW and allow me to linger longer in the liminal dream scene.
Yoga Nidra
The chapter on Yoga Nidra is a great introduction to the subject for a beginner. “. . . the practice entails entering a liminal dream space, not actually falling asleep.” (pg. 125) The author lists a traditional 10 point structure of yoga nidra, mentioning setting a resolution, rotation of consciousness (moving awareness through the body), balancing of opposites, and visualization. Followed by what to expect from a class, and that one usually enters hypnagogia with the body scan because one uses the outer consciousness to penetrate the solidity of body, aided by entering a space of liminal dream, or hypnagogia.
The book then locates yoga nidra in the ancient Eight Limbs of yoga set out by Pantanjali in the Yoga Sutra. It is in the 5th stage Pratyahara, which is withdrawing of the senses. The words sutra here is translated as aphorisms or rules. The chapter gives a good brief history of yoga nidra. It discusses the synthesis made by Satyananda in 1973 whose famous “blue book” Yoga Nidra collected and synthesized the many ancient schools into modern yoga nidra.
Dumpert’s book Liminal Dreaming gives the text of three scripts from newer schools. Yoga Nidra Network founded by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, ( I liked the example script because if was poetic; it pursued an extended metaphor of body as sky). There is also an example of iRest school founded by Richard Miller.
One can get a sense of the different scripts by reading them, but then you have to go out to the web and find examples of them being spoken. I found the iRest to be the most profound. I felt like I was experiencing a compendium of knowledge from the ancient and modern. The Yoga Nidra Network of Uma Dinsmore-Tuli had about 47 female and 3 male recordings. I wondered why the men are not more represented in Yoga Nidra in general. There were pictures of wild women in colorful toasty warm woolies talking about yoni shakti. (And how men are good for procreation, but not much else.)
It was a fascinating chapter, covering a lot of history with insight. Dumpert admonishes the student to adapt and improvise scripts and goes into an explantation of her own practice. She boldly innovates as explained on pg 135. Her practice “ combines one of my own liminal dream exercises, the Feedback Loop, with parts of yoga nidra scripts. . . . Because my goal is to reach the liminal dream state and stay there, I changed the order of the instructions for final grounding, placing them at the beginning instead of at the end. My version finishes after rotation of consciousness, when I know I’m likely to have entered a liminal dream space.”
I did trouble myself with considerable researching to understand how she flipped the script. Her Feedback Loop exercise has the user breathing into the hypnagogic images at the start. I found this exercise to be a bold variation and challenging induction, because I have been long used to trying to break through the ever grasping ego consciousness with tried and true methods of counting down the breaths. Satyananda acknowledges that the outward consciousness is hard ground to penetrate, and I would add number and breath are like rock drill. Reliable but not subtle. I am touched by the possibilities of creative script writing. And I am deeply moved by the possibilities of finding my way to profound visualization and self knowledge in yoga nidra.
Liminal Dreaming is a very generous book carrying forth an original idea to give insight into many psychological, spiritual and esoteric phenomena. The Feedback Loop (I like the name with its nod to rock and roll music and cybernetics and information theory) is like a mini sutra of the whole book, and a shining example of a consciousness hacking exploit.
Jennifer Dumper gives podcast interviews, has website with recordings of exercises, has Soundcloud with real time recordings of things seen in hypnagogia, gives seminars, holds groups. Her storytelling is fabulous. She does these proprioceptive moves that add a whole dimension to the words; it is like we are in the dream with her looking, seeing what she is seeing. It knocked me over when she was talking about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and she was mugging the faces of the wrathful deities. I see as Jung did that becoming well acquainted with your dream life adds a soulful dimension to your world, and that is not to be missed going through here.

Made with love from home. http://smlyons.users.sonic.net/m/

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to Jennifer Dumpert, hypnagogia and hypnopompia, those pseudo-lucid moments experienced on the cusp of falling asleep and waking up, respectively, “you can channel for creativity or problem solving, use as a form of metacognition to explore your thought processes, or simply play with as a form of consciousness exploration.” Her book contains exercises to make the most of liminal dreaming after explaining that this time is uniquely fertile “because different modes of thought come together …. The logical, linear, and focused part of your mind remains active to varying degrees. But you’re also dreaming, adrift among intuitive, visual, emotional thought processes and associations.”

“[T]hink of the conscious mind like the land, known and solid, and the unconscious mind like the ocean, deep and largely unknown. At the threshold area where ocean and land meet, the waves become churning and wild. That’s where people surf. Similarly, liminal dreaming is where you surf the edges of consciousness.”

Dumpert’s style - less scientific and more, um, alternative - requires an open mind, as the following characteristic passage will demonstrate:

“Many people believe that the dream world is an actual other place where we can literally meet other dreamers or visit places that exist objectively, not just subjectively in our own minds. I neither believe nor disbelieve this. I try to avoid belief as much as possible.”

And the book’s repetitive and meandering manner will frustrate those attempting a cover-to-cover read. Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to it. I just came away thinking the truly important bits could have been more fruitfully covered with a focused, shorter telling. I slept on it and landed in the same place.

(Gail Cornwall is a former lawyer and public school teacher who now works as a stay-at-home mother and freelance writer in San Francisco.)

[B. Rule · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dumpert's fundamental lesson is to focus your attention on your consciousness during hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, and to promptly document the dreams and visions that arise. She claims that liminal dreams are more likely than REM dreams to be non-narrative, synesthetic, and possibly even nondualistic/psychedelic. Pretty cool, right? I thought so too.

But this book is a pretty egregious example of "this meetingbook could have been an email." When you strip out the self-referential cytoskeleton (so! many! "as I talked about in Chapter 1"s and "which I'll cover in Chapter 4"s!), you're left with a handful of exercises that all boil down to attentional awareness, and some passing but fascinating references to dream yoga traditions and herbal oneirogen supplements. Seriously, like 30% of this (short) book is internal textual citations. It's wild.

I picked this up because of my familiarity with Dumpert's spouse's work, and honestly, I probably would have given up on it halfway through without that connection. It's not a bad book and Dumpert seems like a lovely person, but I wish she would have found a better way to structure her thoughts. Not every idea needs to be a book. I'm going to rate this VERY generously based on the topic and enthusiasm, but understand that it may be much more grating to a less indulgent reader.

[Stacy (Gotham City Librarian) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably a 2.5. Dreaming in general is a fascination of mine and I was instantly drawn in by the concept of “Liminal Dreaming” because I knew exactly what the author was talking about. It was a very quick read. A lot of it kind of felt like stalling to me; repetition of things that were already stated and long summaries of what later chapters were going to cover. It was like when you write a paper in college that isn’t long enough so you need to come up with filler. Some of the stuff on the study of dreams, the history and origins of these practices and how they have been used in medicine were very interesting. As for the actual topic of “Liminal Dreaming,” though, I don’t think I know a whole lot that I didn’t already intuitively know before.

[Jessica M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt called to read this book after feeling a calling to the place between sleep and awake. For a long time I've had little knowledge of hypnogogia and hypnopompia, and liminal dreaming, I thought it was simply a transition space. But I was wowed by every chapter of this book, shocked by the beautiful writing and amazed by how spectacular liminal dreaming really is. I'm not sure exactly why there are some negative reviews of this book, as this is quite literally one of the best books I've written and I'm now feeling at a loss, and yearning for more from Jennifer Dumpert. Jennifer includes audio recorded practices on the website along with the book making the experience vivid and whole. Every chapter is sooooo interesting, and the entire book has brought up several of my own ponderings related to liminal dreaming. If your thinking about buying this book, you need to buy it.

[Suhrob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice - I like when somebody discovers a somewhat obscure topic and digs into it.
I got somewhat interested in hypnagogia and completely accidentally some time later I found this book.

Even if this book could have fallen into a woo-woo territory, it doesn't. Dumpert is unpretentious, open minded, but not air-headed. It is just a person sharing here experince and knowledge on small, weird human experience.

Talking about woo-woo:

Turns-out Dumpert is wife of Eric Davis, whose book I bought on a whim (which I never, ever do) and then enjoyed it immensely. And whose podcast I occasionally enjoy, discovering it again... accidentally without realizing for months that it is that Eric Davis.

All this synchronicity....

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was introduced to this book at a yoga nidra retreat in British Columbia last year. The NYPL just gave access to the book via Overdrive. Overall, interesting. A mix of personal experience, history, and science. I prefer science so I would have liked more of this, although it’s a new space. The ending focusing on substances or sounds to enhance dreaming turned me off a bit but if there was more science, or grounded in research, this would have been better. Some open questions for a second book! My favorite idea or takeaway was that the transition state could be the goal, not just something to pass through. I loved this concept.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are really into dreaming and wanting to take it to the next level, this is the book to read. The author is very knowledgeable in many facets of dreaming (she does not interpret dreams) and has listed processes to try in the book if you want to give Liminal Dreaming a go. If you are not familiar with the terms Hypnagogia or Hypnopompia you can look those up. However, they are simply the terms for when you are falling into that sleep state at night, or just awaking in the morning. There is also information about sleep paralysis, Yoga Nidra, the difference between Lucid and Liminal Dreaming and the use of (or consideration of) Oneirogens.

[Lynda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has a reasonable and good understanding of the practice of Yoga. However, the author writes about Plants and Other Subtle Allies. She writes for example about treatments by shamans to aid in trances, example, LSD and other hallucinations that can promote "vivid" dreams. She promotes an herb called Calea zacatechichi and how to brew it into a tea for lucid dreaming. This chapter raised red flags for me. Rating is for her effort.

[William P Mockovak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because I learned some interesting facts about dreams and various sleep stages. The author definitely knows her subject, but I found the coverage of liminal dreaming itself to be very repetitious. I appreciate the checklists provided for practicing dream analysis, but I can't comment on their effectiveness because I haven't tried them yet.

[Mimi Berkshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a bit new wavy but I got a lot of interesting ideas out of it. The exercises have helped me improve the quality of my sleep. Tracking on a fit bit, I can tell when my sleep has improved. Very interesting.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating work

Dumpert has written a truly joyously fascinating book, which takes you on a head spinning trip into the dream world. Great perspective and a truly innovative approach to exploring our inner dreamscapes.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the idea of using dream states to connect to your creativity, or just for fun, as free hangover-free psychedelia. Lots of fun experiments to try.

[Light Bringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dream hacking.. requires practice.

[Alex Stalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about a unknown topic. You should choose the audiobook. The author reads the book herself and her voice brings ir really to life

[Jason Kron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Repetitive, but informative.

[Masha Mazi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, informative, yet highly repetitive so it can be a struggle getting through.

[Annabelle Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly not the most sophisticated or professional book I've ever read, however definitely worth the time. The concepts are fascinating and it is a fun read!

[Casey Babb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I initially found out about this book prior to its release- I buy a lot of dream-related books, and Amazon notified me that this book was available for pre-order… and I almost bought it, but decided to wait, because I was not familiar with the author. Over the next year plus, I almost bought this book several times, but ended up holding off for one reason or another. What ultimately made me wait as long as I did was a review in which the book was described as meandering, and the author’s style was described as “alternative,” versus being scientific.

Personally, it was a mistake to focus so much on one reader’s opinion, though, and I wish I had bought this book much sooner. After listening to Jennifer Dumpert talk with Charlie Morel during a talk hosted by Awake Academy, I thought that she came across as pretty down-to-earth and logical. Nothing she said sounded “woo woo,” and the same is true for her book. Dumpert retains an open mind, and does not commit to claiming reality is definitely one way or the other, and for someone working with dreams, that’s a perfectly reasonable attitude.

Highlights:

Enjoy the casual but informative style, easy-going.

Nice to have a book written by a night owl.

Would have been great to have this book as a teen, first getting into lucid dreaming- I experienced these states frequently but never actually codified them.

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I read this at an earlier time of my life I may be tempted to give it a higher rating. I think there's more to consciousness than we know, but I don't know.