Using the mind machine for lighter sleep

Hi all,

I recently purchased a mind machine (Kasina), mainly for improving sleep, reducing tiredness and for meditation. It's my first experience with these devices. So far so good.. however Im still struggling on how to best use the machine before sleeping.

The problem is that I'm always sleeping far too deep and this is causing me to wake up groggy, tired, and this will drag on for most of the day. It's like I'm in a coma at night, causing me to wake up in zombie-state. Using the sleep programs on the Kasina seem to even make it a bit worse, which isn't very surprising as it probably makes the sleep even deeper.

So I'm wondering: which frequencies would be best to use If I want to experiment in training my brain to sleep a bit lighter? I think most of the sleep programs are meant to do exactly the opposite. Would 4-8hz be more helpful perhaps?

Any advice is very welcome!

Your sleep rhythms are a natural occurrence short of some malady. It is unlikely that any prior to bed session would influence them throughout the night significantly. Where the influence lies is in creating ideal states for the onset of sleep and potentially as an aid in shifting schedules. AVS machines excel at this.

I would suggest approaching it from the other angle, which is to do a Kasina session upon awakening. An 'energy' type session can facilitate faster brainwave activity which can alleviate the grogginess. A simpler stimulation session would probably be best, say Sirius 01, Sirius 02 in the KBS folder. Here are the descriptions on the Sirius sessions: http://www.mindplacesupport.com/foru...S-Session-List

Another interesting approach is to use your phone as an alarm and try one of the apps like Sleep Cycle http://www.sleepcycle.com/ . They supposedly pick a more ideal time to trigger the alarm based on your movement (assessed by the accelerometers in the device). This way you lessen the likelihood that you would be awakened in a deeper sleep stage, which can lead to the spacey, unrested feeling.

A device like the discontinued (but available on the used market) Zeo uses EEG readings to pick an ideal time to trigger an alarm, which presumably would be more accurate. I have used Zeo over many months and it gets good readings and is comfortable and easy to maintain. Also, it would give you an idea of what you are experiencing throughout the night, brain-wise, and may help you to pick better times to go to sleep, duration of sleep, etc.

Some of the newer generation of smart watches have some sleep features but I haven't tried any yet.

So, basically, allow time to use the Kasina in the morning with a short energy session. It would be best to sit upright in a chair or on the edge of the bed and practice energizing breathing routines and visualizations, including the overall plan for your day. Try it and let us know your results.

Hope this helps,
Scott

Thanks for the tips scott! Appreciated. I will try it and share the results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroasis

A device like the discontinued (but available on the used market) Zeo uses EEG readings to pick an ideal time to trigger an alarm, which presumably would be more accurate. I have used Zeo over many months and it gets good readings and is comfortable and easy to maintain. Also, it would give you an idea of what you are experiencing throughout the night, brain-wise, and may help you to pick better times to go to sleep, duration of sleep, etc.

Hope this helps,
Scott

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Scott, I am a Zeo user myself since a few years. I have both bedside unit and mobile unit. Do you use any hacks with it and 3rd party software? I know the bedside unit has some serial port connector. But I don't find details anymore how to use it and where to get programs as all this info was on the Zeo Forum pages which all got taken down when the company went out of business.
also, is there any way of replacing the sensor pads with something 3rd party? mine starts to fall apart / fail and those replacement ones are insanely overpriced on ebay.

Cheers

Matt

Hi Matt,
Luckily an intern from Zeo had a bit more community sharing spirit than the company founders. The Zeo Raw Data Library is preserved here: http://www.sleepstreamonline.com/rdl/index.html Eric Blue (whose Quantified Self projects I follow as well) mirrors the stuff and provides some other info: http://eric-blue.com/2013/06/09/life...omment-page-1/

This excellent software supports Zeo and many other sensors: http://lucidcode.com/lucidscribe/

Making a cable is easy. There are instructions on the SleepStream site but also here: http://wiredapneic.blogspot.com/2012...zeo-cable.html

An additional open source piece of software called ZeoScope is linked there.

I currently use this software for Processing to analyze Zeo data recorded on the SD card: https://code.google.com/p/zeolibrary/

I don't think that the current offerings on eBay are vastly too expensive as they last many months if well made. But I did make a sensor replacement myself based on these instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-...adband-Sensor/ With some basic sewing it wasn't too hard. Finding the snaps was the most difficult part.

The conductive fabric is pretty cool and I have had some fun experiments with it, including getting it to work with the ThoughtStream.

Anyway, the Zeo is still a useful tool, especially the bedside version. I don't have a mobile one but I think it will probably suffer the most in future Apple updates, although that is just a guess.

Scott