Mindfulness Into Sleep: InterThoughts and UnderThoughts

A Guide to Consciously Descending into Rest Using Awareness, Pauses, and Subtle Layers of Mind

Introduction

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
— Viktor Frankl

I write this article hoping that it will be used to those clients of mine who find themselves challenged to sleep at night. If this applies to you please test it out. I welcome your comments and your feedback and you are encouraged to call me if you have any questions.

What if that space, the pause between thoughts, could become not just a moment of freedom, but a doorway into restful sleep? This article explores a sleep-inducing technique discovered not in a lab, but in the quiet of the night by someone seeking repose. By systematically observing and deconstructing the layers of thinking, we can consciously transition from wakefulness into sleep, often entering directly into the dream state. This practice sits at the intersection of modern mindfulness, neuroscience, and ancient meditative wisdom.

Part 1: The Personal Discovery – From Restlessness to Conscious Descent

The technique began as a personal experiment. Like many, the author struggled with an overactive mind at bedtime. The initial steps were straightforward: relax the body, then notice thoughts. But the breakthrough came with a subtle shift, instead of just watching thoughts, the practitioner learned to pause them. This meant stepping back from the narrative to observe the associated feelings, imagery, and emotions, then gently distancing from even that awareness.

In doing so, something unexpected emerged. After the initial “pause” (dubbed the InterThought), a deeper layer of awareness surfaced, filled with calmer, more diffuse sensations, an UnderThought. This layer felt less like thinking and more like a “felt sense” of pleasure, ease, or simple presence. The final challenge was to continue the process of observation without clinging to this pleasant subtle state. Successfully navigating this led, consistently, directly into sleep and often into lucid dreams.

This personal account is not an isolated phenomenon. It is a practical, intuitive application of principles documented in psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative traditions for centuries.

Part 2: The Theoretical Framework – Mapping the Mind’s Descent

The journey from active thought to sleep involves traversing distinct layers of consciousness. Modern psychology and ancient meditation maps describe this descent.

1. The Gross/Narrative Mind: This is our default waking state, a stream of thoughts, plans, and memories tied to strong emotions and vivid imagery. It’s driven by the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), which is active during self-referential thinking and rumination.

2. The InterThought (Meta-Awareness): This is the crucial pivot. By becoming aware of a thought, we create a “gap” or pause. This is meta-awareness, the mind observing itself. Neuroscientifically, this involves a shift from the DMN to the frontoparietal salience network, which governs attention. In Tibetan Buddhism, this space is called the “natural gap” and is considered a glimpse of the mind’s true nature.

3. The UnderThought (The Substrate/Felt Sense): When we observe the InterThought itself, we descend deeper. This layer corresponds to:

• The Substrate Consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna): In Yogacara Buddhism, this “storehouse consciousness” is a repository of subtle impressions, quieter and more somatic than surface thought.

• The Felt Sense: Psychologist Eugene Gendlin’s term for a bodily, pre-verbal holistic feeling that contains meaning before it’s shaped into words or clear emotions. It’s often calm, pleasant, and diffuse.

4. The Witness & Dissolution: Beyond the UnderThought lies pure awareness, the silent witness. Letting go of even this subtle observer allows for dissolution into the hypnagogic state (the transition to sleep) and finally, unconscious sleep or conscious dreaming.

This process systematically disassembles the egoic, narrative self, signaling to the nervous system that it is safe to enter the parasympathetic-dominant state of rest.

Part 3: The Practice – A Step-by-Step Guide

Follow these steps to guide yourself consciously from wakefulness into sleep.

Phase 1: Foundation – Relaxing the Vessel

1. Get into your sleep position. Do not wait to start this process until you are frustrated.

2. Conduct a body scan. Starting at your toes, consciously invite each body part to relax and feel heavy. Spend extra time on the jaw, shoulders, and forehead. Your goal is not to force relaxation, but to offer permission to let go. This switches the nervous system from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest.

Phase 2: Observation – Noticing the Narrative

3. Let your thoughts flow. Do not try to empty your mind. Instead, allow thoughts, worries, or memories to arise naturally.

4. Catch one thought. When you notice a specific thought (e.g., “I have to remember to send that email”), you have entered the first stage of awareness. Simply note: “There is a thought about work.”

Phase 3: The Pause – Creating the InterThought

5. Pause the thought. This does not mean force it away. Imagine putting the thought in a bubble or on a screen. Say to yourself: “I am not this thought; I am the awareness seeing this thought.”

6. Deconstruct it. Examine the thought’s components:

   • Emotion: Is there anxiety, excitement, or irritation attached?

   • Sensation: Where do you feel it in your body? (e.g., tight chest, furrowed brow)

   • Imagery: What mental pictures are playing out?
     By dissecting the thought, you rob it of its cohesive power. It becomes a collection of passing phenomena, not “you.”

Phase 4: The Descent – Finding the UnderThought

7. Notice the space after the pause. Once the narrative thought dissolves, you’ll find yourself in a state of quiet awareness, the InterThought. This itself is a subtle object of attention.

8. Apply the same process to this awareness. Ask: “What is the feeling of being aware right now?” Do not seek a verbal answer. Feel for the UnderThought, a calm, spacious, perhaps pleasant bodily feeling. It might be a sense of weightlessness, a gentle buzz, or simple peace. This is the “felt sense” of awareness itself.

Phase 5: The Release – The Gateway to Sleep

9. Practice non-clinging. This is the most subtle and important step. The UnderThought feels pleasant. The mind wants to think, “Ah, this is nice, I have it!” That very thought is a new, subtle narrative. Your task is to observe even this pleasure with equanimity. Do not hold on. Do not fear its loss.

10. Let the observer fade. As you maintain this effortless, non-grasping attention on the UnderThought, the sense of being a separate “observer” will begin to soften. You are no longer watching relaxation; you are relaxing. This is the direct entry into the hypnagogic state. Visual imagery or dream scenes may begin to form. Allow them to pull you in. You will drift into sleep, often with conscious awareness intact, leading directly into a dream.

Part 4: Troubleshooting & Deeper Insights

• What if I get stuck on a thought? Gently remind yourself that getting stuck is just another phenomenon to observe. Use the label “stuckness” and return to the body’s sensations. The goal is not perfection, but the gentle process of returning.

• What if the UnderThought is scary or uneasy? Apply the same principle of non-clinging. Observe the unease as a passing cloud in the vast sky of awareness. Its energy will often dissipate when met with neutral attention.

• This feels like work! The paradox is effortless effort. You are using a gentle intention to release all effort. If you feel strain, you are likely trying to force a result (sleep). Shift your goal from “falling asleep” to “curiously observing the present moment, whatever it is.”

• Connection to Lucid Dreaming: This technique is a form of Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD). By maintaining awareness through the hypnagogic state, you enter the dream while knowing you are dreaming. If this interests you, once dream imagery forms, try to passively watch it without engaging until you are fully immersed in the dream scene.

Conclusion: More Than a Sleep Technique

This practice of navigating InterThoughts and UnderThoughts is more than a sleep aid. It is a training in conscious dying, a nightly rehearsal for letting go of identification with the mind’s contents. It cultivates meta-cognition and equanimity, skills that translate directly into reduced daytime anxiety and greater emotional resilience.

As you practice, you may find, as the original discoverer did, that the boundary between waking and sleeping becomes less a wall and more a permeable membrane, a space not of unconsciousness, but of a different, deeper kind of knowing.

References & Further Exploration

Psychology & Neuroscience:

• Gendlin, E.T. (1982). Focusing. Bantam. (On the “felt sense”)

• Mavromatis, A. (1987). Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness Between Wakefulness and Sleep. Routledge.

• Farb, N.A.S., et al. (2007). Attending to the present: mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

• Christoff, K., et al. (2016). Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Meditation & Contemplative Traditions:

• Wangyal Rinpoche, Tenzin (1998). The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Snow Lion Publications. (The most direct textual correlate to this practice)

• Mingyur Rinpoche, Yongey (2007). The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness. Harmony. (On the “gap” and awareness)

• Goldstein, J. (2013). Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. Sounds True. (On systematic deconstruction of experience in Vipassana)

Philosophy & Mysticism:

• James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. (On the “fringe” of consciousness)

• Frankl, V.E. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning.

• Sarma, K. (2021). The Yogacara Tradition: A Guide. (On the ālaya-vijñāna)

Article synthesized from personal experiential account, contextualized within established psychological and contemplative frameworks. The practice is offered for educational purposes; individual results may vary.

If you have questions or want to apply hypnosis to help gain better sleep please call New Hampshire Hypnosis (603)589-8033