Remote dreaming, by Ian

Ian participated from New York City.

The next morning i woke from an epic and vivid dream of traveling from pirate ship to pirate ship, through many adventures across the seas, violent, passionate, difficult, joyous, to end up on a ship, right on the verge of waking, with a deck like a european garden, and a women leaning over the railing, three women actually, the same women in three distinct phases of her life, young, mid-life, and aged, gazing out at the sea, like a maiden awaiting her sailor's return.

the young and older women peeled away from the deck eventually, hands across their brows, retreating in some kind of heartsickness, while the women in the center, remained steadfast, gazing out to sea.

Outlier in Galantamine Dreaming, by Sylvia

Oneironauticum #1: 4mg galantamine, extracted from Lycoris radiata (Red Spider Lily)

While galantamine had no noticeable effect on my dreaming this time, I can see trying it at home under normal sleeping conditions, to attempt to induce more vibrant dreams. Meanwhile, just gathering with others and focusing on dreams and dreaming was pleasurable and inspiring in itself. May my mind and body be more relaxed next time we experiment!

After rousing at 5am and ingesting the capsule, I unfortunately did not fall back asleep. The wakefulness was likely not attributable to the effects of the extract, but rather to a mind preoccupied with physical and mental mundanities. I lay in bed until 7:15am, then got up and did some journaling and a bit of reading. At 8:25am I decided to lie down again; I was back asleep by 8:45am. I woke up at 9:50am, after a short but deep round of REM sleep.

Both before the galantamine ingestion, and during the one hour I later fell asleep, the dream motifs were vaguely biographical, and not particularly vivid, lacking any sensual component other than visual data. Despite the group context and a concerted effort to incubate the dreamspace (repeating an intention as I was falling asleep) it was my normal dream fare. Because over three hours passed between ingestion of the galantamine and my second phase of sleep, and I could not discern any changes to the quality of the dream in that phase, I presume that the peak effects occurred while I was lying awake and had dissipated within the three hours. C'est la vie.

Image of L. radiata from www5.ocn.ne.jp/~koyama/

Weird Galantamine Experiences, by Jennifer

I felt the effects of Galantamine clearly. Most of my dreams involved dream group participants talking loudly, describing *their* experiences to me, and me worrying that they would wake everyone else sleeping in the space. When listening to one of these narrators, Erik, I could vaguely see his face, less clearly even than I would have seen it in the dark room. That was the only visual component of the dream. Most of my dreams involved sound and tactility.

At one point, I had the very vivid, real sensation of holding a rod (maybe six inches in diameter) in each hand. I clearly felt the weight and cold, hard, steel texture of each rod. My dream body convulsed wildly as I held the rods, though my physical body almost surely didn't move; Erik sleeps lightly and I would have woken him.

I became fully lucid, totally aware that I was dreaming, but I could neither move nor see anything. Standing at an impossible angle, my feet on the ground and my body arched over so my head dipped almost to my feet, I dangled there, moving around like a cat toy. I kept thinking that something would happen. In most lucid dreams, I am able to exert some control over the circumstances. In this case, though, I just swayed there for a long time before I decided the dream was going nowhere and actively disengaged from it.

Finally, as I laid in bed, I became aware of jazz playing in the living room. Somebody had turned on the music, even though everyone was asleep. It sounded like maybe Ella Fitzgerald. The sound of the music was very distinct, but because it was playing low, I couldn't quite make it out.

Minutes of the Inaugural Oneironauticum, by Jennifer

Dreamers Sylvia Thyssen, Erik Davis, lissa ivy tiegel, Geneva Bumb Shanti, Dean Mermell, Vibrata Chromodoris, David Shamanix, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert, met at the habitat on a stormy Saturday, January 26, between 10:00 and 11:00 for the first ever Oneironauticum.

We assembled a dream altar, and spent about 45 discussing our dream lives and our intentions with the Oneironauticum. We bedded down at 12:30, to the sound of rain pattering against the windows. At 5:00, we woke and each took 4 mg of Red Spider Lily extract, or Galantamine. By intent, we lingered long in our various beds, rising at 9:30 after nine hours of sleep. REM cycles become longer and more common the more time you spend in bed. We rose and brunched and talked about our experiences.

Some commonalities arose in our group dreaming. Almost all of us dreamed about our gathering in some manner, most of us literally dreaming of ourselves in the space where we slept. Most of us also experienced particularly vivid dreams, with heightened sense of color, sound, and sensation. Many of us felt a strong sense that the dreams were *real*. Several people experienced overlap of dream and waking memory, confusing dream memories of dream experiences with waking memories of waking experiences, thinking things were happening in waking life that were in fact dreams, overlapping dream and waking sensations. Oddly enough, two of our party dreamed of cats under water.

Welcome to the Oneironauticum

The inaugural Oneironauticum is Saturday, January 26, 2008.

Throughout 2008, the Urban Dreamscape will host monthly overnight gatherings, a series of focused slumber parties each centered around the exploration of a dream enhancement technique, including oneirogens—such as Galantamine, Calea zacatechichi, Melatonin, and silene root—Dream Practies—including Tibetan Buddhist dream practices, modern lucid dream practices, and the Toltec practice of Mitote—and the use of dream technologies such as the Nova Dreamer. In the first session, we will be exploring the effects of Galantamine, an alkaloid used to treat and modulate Alzheimer's disease that has also been found to enhance dreams and promote lucid dreaming.

The word Oneironauticum derives from the Greek oneiro, or dream, the same root as that for oneirology, the study of dreams. In the 1980s, lucid dream researcher Stephen LaBerge coined the term Oneironaut, a dream explorer, for participants in his research group. The Oneironauticum carries forward the tradition of group exploration of the universal phenomenon of dreaming.

We urge remote participation in the Oneironauticum. Join us in the dream realm on the night of the 26th! All dream participants, those who attend the Oneironauticum and those who join remotely, are welcome to post to this blog. Contact us if you’re interested.

Sweet dreams!

test post

la la la, it's a new blog.