Old Technologies: Sleep Learning

[ecosophia]

I'm having fun just now exploring one of the odd corners of early 20th century learning technology, the practice of hypnopedia or sleep learning. As with a good many of my recent adventures, this one began in a thrift shop, where I picked up an odd record from 1952. It claimed to be able to teach deep relaxation; it was made of transparent yellow vinyl and came from a company calling itself the Stanford Institute (no relation to the university); it was narrated by Franklyn MacCormack, a Midwestern radio personality of the day; it had one side meant to be played while you're awake, and the other side meant to be played while you were asleep. $2.99 didn't seem like an excessive price for such an oddity, so it came home with me. 

Research followed. I already knew that hypnopedia played a significant role as a plot engine and handwavionic technology all through 20th century science fiction, but I didn't know that it had been wildly popular in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Research back in the day suggested that it wasn't especially useful for passing on detailed factual information but it seemed to work tolerably well for changing attitudes, removing or establishing mental habits, or dealing with psychosomatic conditions -- roughly the same range of things that responds well to affirmations and other New Thought techniques. 

I also found to my great amusement that Wikipedia's entry on sleep learning was given over almost entirely to one of those saliva-flecked faux-skeptical rants about how sleep learning has been disproven once and for all by controlled double blinded experiments, and how dare you think that it might work, you peasant! 

At this point in my life, after half a century of watching science sink into decadence and corruption, and discovering over and over again just how often the term "pseudoscience" turns out to mean "works better than the crap the pharmaceutical industry wants to sell you," I treat such rants as a sign that there's something worth investigating. So of course I had to give it a fair try. 

After a week of experimentation I can say that it seems to have worked tolerably well. I've purchased three other sleep learning LPs produced by the same firm, all dirt cheap on the used-record market. My best guess at this point is that it's a convenient way to use the affirmation technique while you're dozing, and has comparable effects. No, it's nothing life-changing, but it's interesting, and it complements other techniques that I use. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Some years ago, my wife for a time had a habit of listening to political content while resting, and inevitably fell asleep listening to it. She was quite rapidly radicalized by what I started calling "propaganda naps".

It took a long time for her to sort out her own beliefs from what she absorbed during those naps. There was a sort of reflexive anger-- actually a bit like we see with TDS nowadays-- when you pushed a button that had been "programmed".

Actually I think about the people I know who are most angry about politics and they all have the habit of falling asleep with the TV on. Of course irrationally angry is exactly the state the TV wants you in.

So that's a data point in favor, I suppose.

[ecosophia]

There's another factor there, which is that television puts you into an alpha state, which is the most suggestible brain state. Combine that with dozing off, even a little, and yeah, your brain is wide open to suggestion.

[robertmathiesen]

That's mostly why I stopped watching any television back around 1985. I picked up how it was changing my ability to react critically and thoughtfully to what was being shown on the screen. (One of the better decisions I ever made.)

[ecosophia]

You were way ahead of me. I stopped a little earlier, but I didn't notice the effect on my consciousness until after I'd quit.

[mskrieger]

When I was 12, I read a short story in the SF magazine Analog in which TV was a method of mass hypnosis that prevented the population from noticing serious problems with the country. Giant smoking holes in the ground type problems (in the story, this was literal ;).)

Even though it was supposedly fiction I swore off TV and, by the time I looked back at it in my late teens, I was confounded by the idea that anyone found any of it even remotely interesting. Stepping away from that type of media really does allow you to see it for what it is.

--Ms. Krieger

[methylethyl]

There's an inverse correlation between how many hours of video content a person watches per week, and how interesting they are to talk to...

You were delivered from captivity ;)

[robertmathiesen]

That's the great advantage of having a Christian Scientist for a mother. You're taught very, very early on to pay constant attention to your thoughts, and to learn the skill of changing them at will. From there, for me, it was only a short step to being able to activate the placebo effect at will, if you are able to step away enough from your compelling awareness of the pain. (I presume the nocebo effect is equally on call, if someone were so minded. But that seems to me very very risky to play with.)

The leading idea in Christian Science is that the entire material world is a product of one's habits of thought (both individual and cultural habits), and has no independent existence whatever. Control your own thoughts sufficiently and you can shape matter and energy, time and space, to your liking.

What Mrs. Eddy seems not to have taken sufficiently into account, IMHO, was that human habits of thought are not the only habits of thought that constantly shape the material world, and that there are other, far more powerful Consciousnesses (Beings, if you like) who have much greater mastery of their own habits of thought than mere humans can ever hope to achieve in their very very short lifespans.

Change of consciousness according to will, indeed! But just Whose wills are in play here ...?

[(Anonymous)]

That makes sense. For my wife, it was podcasts, which at least didn't have the hypnotic flickering lights. That's probably why she was able to pull herself out of it. Actually, she credits your writings with that-- she calls it her antidote to propaganda. Not even the mystical side, but "Dark Age America"!

I suppose your book did the literary equivalent of slapping her in the face with the cold, wet mackerel of reality-- which will snap a body out of hypnosis for sure! (Maybe we need more JMG audiobooks.)

She also wanted me to suggest to all and sundry that Akira the Don's Meaningwave music would be a good choice to listen to for this sleep-learning business. He's got an album that is choice quotes from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations set to music, for example. One of Dune, too, a long with a bevy of motivational and new thought speakers. With meaningwave you'd get the benefits of music worming into your subconscious AND the sleep effect. I can only imagine it would be super-effective, but I can't fall asleep listening to _anything_, so I can't test it.

[methylethyl]

Once upon a time, I used a whole group of paleo diet podcasts to assemble 1-2 hours of audio content/day to basically brainwash myself to make a huge shift in my habits. It worked. Lost 35 pounds, got my blood sugars under control.

It is not good to willy-nilly let yourself be brainwashed, but it does have practical applications ;)