Why do we close our eyes when we sleep? The eyelids automatically shut during sleep, serving to prevent excessive dryness of the eyes and protect them in the absence of wakefulness. Another reason may be to avoid external stimuli and allow the body to engage in reconstruction and rest.
However, some individuals sleep with their eyes partially open. This group may not be aware that their eyes are open, and they may even experience dreams.
Some people engage in activities such as walking during sleep. Among them, there are those who perform such actions with their eyes partially open, naturally unaware that they are asleep.
If someone is prevented from closing their eyes during sleep, or if such an experiment is conducted intentionally, what happens? The human record for staying awake is 266 hours, whereas for many individuals, more than forty hours without sleep is intolerable. Generally, up to twenty-four hours can be endured with some effort, and if an individual remains awake after thirty hours, they may begin to see images or shapes that do not actually exist, with their eyes wide open. In other words, they dream with their eyes open.
Winnie Wright, the record-holder for sleep deprivation, managed to stay awake for over eleven days (exactly 266 hours). On the fourth day, she experienced a peculiar state characterized by intense mental focus accompanied by a sense of euphoria. She could feel the difference between the two hemispheres of her brain: the left side felt heavy, while the right side felt light. It was an extremely unusual yet comfortable state.
Wright's diet during the eleven days of wakefulness consisted of bananas, pineapples, avocados, carrot juice, and hard-skinned fruits (any fruit with a tough peel). She believes that our ancestors, in order to survive in nature, needed to remain vigilant even during sleep, and such a diet could significantly aid those who wish to stay awake for any reason.
These endeavors once again bring forth the perennial question of how many hours of sleep a person truly needs during the night. The answer to this question seems to be variable from individual to individual, depending on factors such as sleep quality, occupation, age, gender, and other influences.
Several techniques for lucid dreaming have been designed based on the premise of attempting to sleep with open eyes. In these methods, individuals strive to exhaust themselves physically and mentally first (through exercise and reading before sleep), and then they stretch with their eyes open. The objective is to enter the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of the sleep cycle without closing the eyes. The website "Bright Sleep" considers such techniques unrealistic and impractical, favoring instead methods designed for achieving heightened awareness during sleep. On the other hand, techniques designed to keep the eyes open during sleep are often associated with consecutive episodes of wakefulness. Lucid dreaming is a state where the dreamer believes they are awake while lying in bed and engaged in dreaming.
Refference:
Tony Wright's Wake-Up Record: Sleepless in Cornwall - DER SPIEGEL
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