Think that's a powerful idea. It's really supported by the anthropology of sleep. In fact, some some apologists that that was Carol workman Yeah, in her article on the ecology of sleep, wrote that the Western style of sleep compared to essentially all of the other traditional cultures in the world, the western style of sleep is the, quote, lay down and die model of sleeping because it's just like, we just give up for like, I mean, in the expectation that we just lay there for what you know, like seven to nine hours. No one else sleeps like this, and our ancestors did not sleep like this. So this middle of the night consciousness right, this may point to a biological cause for the witching hour, sometimes called the devil's hour. This storytime of vulnerability and fear of the night, some penet at midnight, others somewhere between two to 4am and it's tempting to consider that unwanted sleep disturbances such as nightmares, and sleep terrors, such as you know, these are parasomnias that these are the neurological reality behind this, this concept of right of the witching hour. Of course Church authorities probably targeted those who are known to deliberately cultivate these nocturnal states of consciousness and those would be healers, Dream visionaries who were decried as witches and sorcerers. So it's time to reclaim this secret awakening time this witching hour when you strip away the cultural baggage, it's a time of profound peace and contemplation. Well known by monks, mystics and meditators. Middle of the night consciousness is useful for calling lucid dreams and for extraordinary experiences. Drawn from esoteric practices from the east and the west. The practice of falling asleep with lucidity simply involves waking up from a dream and going back to sleep with the intention to not lose self awareness. As you slip between the worlds. In Tibetan dream yoga practices awareness is maintained by visualizing a symbol or an image on a specific part of the body. In the 1930s, Russian mystic Peter Uspensky wrote detailed accounts of his lucid dreaming imagery that he experienced right after falling asleep with, quote, definite efforts. An American psych psychiatrist Nathan repour, he would pepper his process of falling asleep with inquisitive attention to achieve lucidity. This was in the 1950s Stephen LaBerge calls this general endeavor the wake back to bed method. And so yeah, and Stephen was reading the stuff in the 1970s. Stephen LaBerge went to Arsalan he was was inspired by by Tibetan dream Buddhist practitioners. He was inspired by Uspensky he writes about all this in his earlier work. So here's how to do it. Timing is everything. Wake back to bed works best the second half of the night, especially about four to six hours after falling asleep. You may have to do some experimentation to find your perfect witching hour. So notice your own natural awakenings as a guide it's important also to stay awake long enough to activate the parts of the brain that allow for metacognition to thrive. Now, I wrote in this book I wrote 30 to 45 minutes is ideal, but actually it's closer to an hour. There's been there's been some recent research that says it's really 45 minutes to an hour is really the sweet spot. If it's too short, you may fall back asleep, you might feel sluggish. If it's too long. You might not be able to get back to sleep at all. And that's the rub and it's practice is enhanced with mental exercises as described below. And so, sleep interruption this is like you know, these are the methods that probably more than anything can cultivate lucid dreaming, but they also have the most I would say, you know inherent risk, although risk is it's kind of a strong word to use. We might lose some sleep, they might disturb our partner if we sleep next to a partner. That's really it. That's it. And so if you've got some flexibility and if you try this not every single night but if you're like this is a good way to do it. You can sleep in the next day, you know, that's, you know, target your time for maximum success, right. So I'm going to describe a couple more methods and these all you probably have heard about at some point first, we'll do mild, which is the demonically Induced Lucid dreaming, also named and deployed by Stephen LaBerge when he was attempting to scientifically validate lucid dreaming in the laboratory. Now, the backstory of this is the Burj was under a lot of pressure. He had to get the most out of his lab time. So He credits the method for mild forgiving him lucid dreaming pretty much on demand. And so mild is essentially a focus derivation of wake back to bed. And the difference is, is that the method targets perspective memory. So as you're settling down to sleep, you recall the dream from which you just awoke. That's an important part that I think a lot of folks forget about that piece. Imagine you're in that dream again. And except this time, you know, I'm dreaming so you envision yourself in the scene and you remind yourself that, you know, when you're back in the dream scene, you'll know you're dreaming. Yeah, so it's important to us to basically piggyback on the dream that you just woke up from, if you can recall it, even if you can just sort of feel the vague feeling of it. Because what we're going for is continuity of consciousness here and so you're just kind of hijacking back into that. That dream and that emotional. You know, I don't know what to call it. You know, flow, really, you can do mild with an older dream, but I think that it really is most effective in this way. So with some luck and some practice, you can hold on to self awareness and remember, this is a dream as you grade back into the dream world. Again, timings key chooses practice in the second half of the night when REM dreaming sessions are longer and better yet use a natural awakening from a dream to start the process. And so most of us are appear to be over 40 in this room. So like hey, when you have to like when your bladder says it's time to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom, come back. What was your dream? Go straight in, right here's some more practices. Dream reliving. This is another powerful derivation of falling asleep with the city and this is Scott sparrows dream reliving method. In a nutshell, spirits approach towards working with lucid dreams involves a focus on emotional, unfinished business. As a springboard for greater lucidity. Many lucid dreamers know that sometimes dreams end poorly, or they have nightmarish elements that are difficult or impossible to control. Sparrow contends that when it comes to unpleasant, lucid dreams, there's no bad dreams per se. Only unfortunate responses, unfortunate responses that perpetuate the roadblock to greater self knowledge. I think that's a really key thing. lucidity comes in a flux of resistance and openness to growth. So just because we become lucid in a dream doesn't mean we're ready for anything like all of our resistance comes with us all of our egoic foibles there are here welcome home right. We still we always have a choice presented to us we can move towards the unknown or we can resist that unknown. In Sparrow who is a PhD psychologist educator, he has really mapped with his dream STAR method and in what he's done, his work is amazing. Y'all should check out sparrows work if you haven't before, for lucid dreaming and just for any kind of really dream interpretation, dream work. Is five star methods is very effective. But he looks at and he's written about chronic and maladaptive responses that people have and lucid dreams and he just kind of is just like, you know, showing just because we're lucid, that