Wellness Corner 42: Salvador Dalí and Hypnagogia

Hey Falcons,

Since it’s ISAS week, I thought I’d discuss meditation and art!

Salvador Dalí, the Spanish artist, painted some really psychedelic and (befittingly for his artistic movement) surreal pieces. The iconic 1931 “The Persistence of Memory” painting is one of my favorites of Dalí’s. It and most of Dalí’s other paintings came to him through a micro-nap meditation technique called “slumber with a key.” It’s scientifically proven to work!

He described it as sitting “in a bony armchair…with your head tilted back and resting. Your two hands must hang beyond the arms of the chair…Hold a heavy key between…the thumb and forefinger of your left hand. Under the key, you will previously have placed a plate upside down on the floor. The moment the key drops from your fingers…the noise of its fall will awaken you.”

Dalí was trying to achieve hypnagogia (a space between being awake and asleep where you can experience hallucinations). In the state of hypnagogia, the semi-conscious mind makes connections that might have been obstructed by the conscious mind. The melting clocks in “The Persistence of Memory” came from the image of melting camembert cheese. Dalí also credited Einstein for his “input.” Einstein was also a practitioner of micro-naps, but he did “slumber with a spoon.”

Cool, right? What do you do to access a creative space? Email me and let me know. And have fun at ISAS!

Stay well,
Eshaan