Thread: Exploring Delta Sleep

Ok, now the silly question. You do need to fall asleep to experience delta, right? So you just keep your awareness and observe delta stage.

Originally Posted by gab

Ok, now the silly question. You do need to fall asleep to experience delta, right? So you just keep your awareness and observe delta stage.

Yes indeedy, Gab, you do need to fall asleep to experience delta.

Not to contradict NyxCC (because he's right; more in a sec), but delta occurs long after your body has begun its slumber. In the normal cycle, your body has already passed through two stages of sleep before you even reach delta. In those first two stages you're drifting between wake and sleep, but you have begun the process of being asleep. In other words, you're already asleep by the time delta turns up -- which makes it all that much harder to get to it, and through it, consciously.

Not so silly a question, though, given all this talk about staying awake!

A brief WILD aside: those early stages are the times you most need to do your mantra and hold your focus during WILD, because they're the times your mind is most apt to wander (because, of course, you've begun to fall asleep).


NyxCC: I too have heard that a (very) deeply meditating person can reach a state that produces delta waves, but I think you'd have to go even deeper than the state you describe.

Delta really is a state of complete conscious isolation. During the meditation you described, I think delta waves would likely start being made at the extreme end, after you've shut off your physical perception tools and set aside all input from the world (including your own body); indeed, probably just after that moment where you noted you tend to get startled.

I am confident that some yogis can, and do, do this, especially hyper-advanced practitioners of Samadhi yoga and, of course, sleep yoga. It would also be easy to prove, if you can get a meditating yogi hooked up to an EEG!

So, yes, I agree that delta waves can be produced during meditation, but it would have to be some very advanced meditating. Easier, I think, just to fall asleep with your self-awareness intact and let your body do the reality erasing for you...