Float On | The Dirty Zen Way to Dream Awake

How do sea animals sleep? It’s a question that’s been keeping sleep scientists awake at night (sea pun intended)—especially for those sea creatures that have to surface for air, even when they’re snoozing.

Imagine a dolphin leisurely swimming along the California coast, half-dozing and half-dreaming until he emerges back into the water after several hours only to find himself in Antarctica wearing a tiny penguin beanie. Okay, that hasn’t happened…not to our knowledge.

But dolphins do manage to sleep while swimming—even upside down—and have to surface for air constantly. And some sea critters can apparently sleep with half of their brain while the other half is wide awake, keeping watch for predators.

It’s wild. And it just so happens that the absolute masters of this kind of beach reading are whales and dolphins.

The Art of One-Eyed-Sleep: Enter the Unihemispheric Sleep

The specific term is unihemispheric sleep. That means one hemisphere, or half, of the brain goes offline while the other half stays on 24/7 duty, complete with monitoring, navigation, and, in the case of dolphins, swimming forward…while remembering to breathe every few minutes, too.

It’s the oceanic equivalent of Dirty Zen. It’s a walking meditation with sonar. It’s a nap that’s also simultaneously a defense mechanism and a built-in evasion tactic.

A relaxation technique that’s equal parts snooze and cat and mouse game with predators. You can still dodge predators, take a breather, and nap while cruising the big blue with your fins up. Honestly? Iconic.

Into the Dream State of Consciousness

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi once asked himself,

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Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man?

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It’s a question worth contemplating every once in a while because it points toward this netherworld of consciousness—a wild and shimmering terrain somewhere in the in-between.

It’s that vanishing point where things as we know them start to soften around the edges, when watching and walking and wondering feel strangely, dreamily, the same. That place is where whales and dolphins snooze, with half of their brain happily unconscious. And we wander there too.

We visit it more often than we might think. In fact, we humans find it every time we tap into that natural flow state.

Flow State: Riding the Wave of the Alpha Brain State

Humans find this mode of consciousness every time we move into what’s known as the alpha brain state. We find it every time we’re deeply relaxed, quietly alert, and (kind of magically) also creating a space for ideas to float in sideways and surprise us.

It’s this place where we’re so engaged in an activity that time loses its linear power and starts to feel more like taffy. One part of the brain acts, and the other part drifts away into that luminous, dreamy clarity that seems to whisper directly from our wildest, most naked core.

Enter the alpha state: awake, relaxed, attentive, creative, and quietly buzzing.

And unlike dolphins and whales, we don’t have to do either sleeping or wakefulness one eye at a time. We humans can weave a way of life that steers us here at will.

The Zen of Trail Building

I call it Dirty Zen, and we can train it, learn it, and remember it.

Start with the obvious. Nature is always the way. When you step into the forest or out on the trail—or even into a little patch of green or a small room with plants—something deep inside shifts. The heart rate comes down a notch or two. The senses rise in frequency. You can start to hear yourself think again. Start to hear your own inner footsteps.

Move your body in ways that are more conversation than command. Yoga, stretching, just wandering out on a trail and following it for no reason other than to see where it goes. Use your movement to unwind your mind. Let your breath be your guide rope.

Play. And play without expectation. Paint because it feels like dancing. Cook because the chopping is mesmerizing. Garden because dirt has a lot of opinions. Let your hands get busy. Let yourself just float. Let yourself get into a creative groove simply for the creative groove of it.

Circle back on the rituals that feel like joy to you and repeat them. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. That becomes the internal tide that pulls you back into ease over and over again.

In those moments, you become part-dolphin, part daydream. Cruising your own internal sea with one half of your mind awake while the other half dissolves, the ocean, the breeze, and the serene hush of creation.

Consistency is the Key

We don’t find clarity in the grind, exactly. We find it in the pockets of softness in between the grind. In the movement, in the breath, in the play, in the curiosity, in the quiet micro-moments that suddenly open up and the world feels so much bigger than it did just a second ago.

The more we dip in and out of those states of mind and body, the more they start to stand out to us. We greet them when they arrive. We start to see them like raindrops that we recognize when they land on the ocean because we know what the ocean looks like.

They start rolling toward us like familiar waves, the kind of waves that show up over and over again because they fit the shoreline of who we are right now.And as we do them more often, these tiny moments that lead to flow, that roll into flow, flow starts to become less of a stroke of luck and more of a natural ecosystem.

If we want to roam better, we have to roam more playfully. If we want to think better, we have to stay a little wilder. If we want to rise better, we have to stop trying to bend the world into a shape we like and start surfing it instead.

Surfing like a dolphin with half your mind awake and the other half dissolving into the creative hush of ocean.

Run those trails. Get playful. Stretch like you mean it. Even explore the gaps between movement. Get creative. Be present. Put your hands in the dirt and build something—just for the building.

And when the mind gets noisy…remember to float on. Dirty Zen is a breath away from the surface, right beneath the surface, always waiting for you to wake up inside the dream.

Cheers!

Kether

Spunky Mind

"Let the waters settle and you

will see the moon and the stars

mirrored in your own being."

-Rumi