Is it possible to wake up and not open your eyes?
Taping your eyes shut doesn’t count.
Perhaps this is common for other people, I just don’t recall ever doing it.
If it is not possible, do completely blind people open their eyes when they wake up?
Finally, the standard semi-related question: Is it possible to sneeze with your eyes completely open, barring some sort of odd eyelid paralysis or mechanical means? In this He states that it’s “just about impossible”. Has anyone seen any new evidence?
absolutely it’s possible. Often, the only way I’m sure I AM awake is that I decide to open my eyes to look.
In fact, now that you mention it, I rarely wake up with them open. I usually wake before dawn (I start work at 6:30AM) and I’m usually up before the alarm goes off. I imagine the later in the morning you sleep, the more likely that visual stimulation will wake you.
What time do you normally wake up?
I wake up all the time without opening my eyes. I realize that hearing my alarm radio, and just lie there listening to it for a while before I get up.
E3
Well I certainly can’t do it.
I have often thought about this, so I’m grateful it’s come up.
I’ve often thought that if I was unlucky enough to have an intruder in the house whilst I’m asleep, and they cheekily make their way into the bedroom while I’m sleeping there - it’s going to be no good at all if I wake up with a start and my eyes open.
No, it’d be far better for me to wake up with my eyes still closed, notice that there are foreign sounds in the room, very slowly open my eyes that little gap required for sight, and then work out what to do.
So, it’s interesting to hear that people do indeed wake up with eyes closed.
As always, if one person in a large group of people has a question, it’s fairly likely that someone else does too. The problem is nominating the person to ask the stupid question…**
It’s funny, that’s exactly why I asked, because of a mostly irrational ‘what if’. Mine was just being in a situation where you wanted to look like you were sleeping while listening to a conversation, or waiting for someone to leave the room before ‘waking up’.
As for wakeup time, that can’t be it. I get up eight or ten hours after I go to bed; right now it’s 11:41AM and I’m about to go to bed. This isn’t normal, but it isn’t unusual either. I sleep in a very dark room. If I’m trying to sleep during the day, I block light from coming under the door.
For the two of you who already answered in the affirmative, a possibly related question: are you lucid dreamers? I never was, which sort of annoyed me (I thought I was missing the VR of the brain). Then one night I had a lucid dream (a dream where you know you’re dreaming and can control what you do), found it less satisfying than a real dream, and haven’t done it since.
I myself did just that this morning.
Heck, I do it most every morning. I’m usually awake before the alarm goes off. I lie quietly with eyes closed, maybe roll over and drape an arm over the sleeping form of Mrs. Dave-Guy.
Alarm goes off. Just a minute or two before the traffic and weather update at 5:50 or so. After t&w update, Mrs. Dave-Guy gets up and goes downstairs to take her shower. The Dave-Guy lies in bed with eyes closed and listens to the radio, esp. the 6:00 news report.
Mrs. Dave-Guy finishes her shower and returns to the bedroom to begin getting dressed. The Dave-Guy listens to radio with eyes closed until about 6:10 or so.
I realize I’d better get my butt out of bed and then and only then do I open my eyes.
The day doesn’t officially begin until I open my eyes.
It certainly is possible to sneeze with your eyes wide open, I sometimes do it if I sneeze while driving. It takes some effort though.
I’m pretty sure I always open my eyes when I wake up. I agree that could be a bad thing in some situations, but I don’t know how you’d go about learning not to.
I have sneezed with my eyes open. It only takes a conscious effort to do so. It doesn’t pop your eyes out or kill you, so feel free to try it the next time you get a sneeze attack. (An ultra fast blink may be your greatest weakness).
Yes, I can and often do wake up with my eyes still closed. And here’s a new wrinkle for you…
If I wake up with my eyes closed and keep them closed I can visualize the most amazing things. Sort of like lucid dreaming, but more passive. But if I open my eyes and close them again, I loose this ability immediatly. My imaginative capabilities are severly reduced, back to my everyday, mundane level of imagining. Some mornings I’ll just lay there and ‘wake-dream’ for fifteen or twenty minutes before I get up. An odd experience, but enjoyable while it lasts.
I sometimes sleep with my eyes open; female friends had told me this in this past and I never believed it until a coupla years ago when one morning I had this strange feeling; the alarm just went off, my eyes were open but I had no memory of being awake or sensation of opening my eyes.
I also sleepwalk; recently I woke up to the fresh scent of noxema; I shave with noxema, felt my face and sure enough; I was freshly shaven. No one else in the house. No nicks!
That scared me. That I shaved my face whilst sleeping.
I attribute it all to stress; work, etc.