Why and how we designed Hypnagogia-Pass
Sources
American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Prioritization Survey, 2023 (Atomik Research, 24–29 March 2023, 2,005 U.S. adults) and 2025 (5–13 June 2025, 2,007 U.S. adults).
Watson et al., Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. J Clin Sleep Med 2015;11(6):591–592.
Pankowska et al., Prevalence and Geographic Patterns of Self-Reported Short Sleep Duration Among US Adults, 2020. Preventing Chronic Disease 20:220400, 2023 (CDC, BRFSS 2020).
Zhong et al., Electronic Screen Use and Sleep Duration and Timing in Adults. JAMA Network Open, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.2493
Hjetland et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2025. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1548273
Itani et al., Short sleep duration and health outcomes: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression. Sleep Medicine 32:246–256, 2017. doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2016.08.006
Baglioni et al., Insomnia as a predictor of depression: a meta-analytic evaluation of longitudinal epidemiological studies. Journal of Affective Disorders 135:10–19, 2011.
Harvey & Payne, The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behaviour Research and Therapy 40:267–277, 2002. PubMed
Beaudoin et al., serial diverse imagining, SLEEP conference abstract, 2016.
Hypnagogia-Pass is our own method. This page explains the thinking behind it and the principles every session follows.
Where it started
Two published findings shaped the design.
People turn to screens when sleep is difficult. In a 2023 American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey of 2,005 U.S. adults, half (50%) said they watch TV when they have trouble sleeping, and 45% said they use a smartphone.
Screens are already in bed. In a 2025 American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey of 2,007 U.S. adults, half said they use a screen in bed every day.
Using a screen in bed is a habit that is hard to break or change, and research links it to poorer sleep: a 2025 study of 122,058 U.S. adults found that people who used a screen before bed every day were 33% more likely to report poor sleep quality than people who never did (Zhong et al., JAMA Network Open), and a 2025 survey of 45,202 young adults in Norway linked screen use after going to bed to 59% higher odds of insomnia symptoms and about 24 fewer minutes of sleep for each extra hour (Hjetland et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry). Less sleep matters in its own right: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults sleep seven or more hours a night (2015), and in 2020 about one in three U.S. adults (33.2%) reported sleeping less than that. A 2017 meta-analysis of 153 long-term studies with more than 5 million participants found that short sleep was associated with a higher risk of dying during follow-up (12% higher) and of developing diabetes (37% higher), obesity (38%), hypertension (17%), cardiovascular disease (16%) and coronary heart disease (26%) (Itani et al., Sleep Medicine). Trouble sleeping is also linked to mood: a meta-analysis of 21 long-term studies found that people with insomnia had about twice the odds of developing depression later (Baglioni et al., Journal of Affective Disorders, 2011). These are associations, not proof of cause. Hypnagogia-Pass accepts the habit as it is and offers a more considered way to use that screen.
So we asked ourselves a simple question. Many of us end up with a screen in bed right before sleep, and can't seem to break the habit, even though we know it isn't good for our sleep. Could there be something to watch that asks nothing of you, not even to imagine anything, keeps stimulation low, has no ads, and is made only for people who want to sleep?
The research that inspired it
Two published lines of work sit behind it.
Harvey and Payne (2002) compared two ways of handling unwanted thoughts before sleep in people with insomnia: distraction with imagery, and general distraction.
Beaudoin's serial diverse imagining (2016) is a technique in which a person pictures a series of unrelated things, one after another. It is often called the cognitive shuffle.
These two works, together with the screen habits people bring to bedtime, inspired us to create Hypnagogia-Pass.
What we changed
The original technique asks you to produce the pictures yourself. In Hypnagogia-Pass we supply them. A word appears, then a matching picture, and the viewer does not need to imagine, remember or do anything in return.
Also, producing pictures takes mental effort, even for people who can do it easily, and mental effort tends to keep the mind engaged. Taking that effort away is part of the design.
The design is kept simple on purpose. Nothing on the screen asks for more than the next word and its picture: no story to follow, no voice to listen to, no ads. The aim is to draw attention away from whatever has been occupying it, without giving it anything new to hold on to. The rhythm of word and picture is meant to echo hypnagogia itself, brief pictures passing without much plot, so that a session works as a route into that stretch rather than one more thing to follow.
The principles behind every session
1. One word, one picture. Each session is a sequence of words, each followed by a matching picture, one after another on a dark screen.
2. Every word and picture is unrelated to the one before it. With nothing to link two in a row, the mind has no story to build and can keep drifting. This idea echoes serial diverse imagining.
3. A slow breathing rhythm. Every session pairs the on-screen sequence with a rhythm of about six breaths a minute.
4. No talking, soft background sound. There is no voice to follow and nothing to answer. Soft background sound plays throughout.
5. No ads. An interruption in the middle of a session would defeat its purpose, so there are none.
6. A library, not a single video. Hypnagogia-Pass is 30 videos, more than 2,400 minutes in total, so there is always another session to start.
The name
Hypnagogia is the drifting, half-lit stretch between waking and sleep, when thoughts loosen and brief pictures can pass through the mind without much of a plot. For some people that stretch is hard to find, and hard to cross. A pass is a route through a mountain, a crossing between two places. Here the two places are being awake and being asleep. Hypnagogia-Pass is a gateway toward sleep: a route through that in-between stretch, one word and one picture at a time.
Where it stands
Hypnagogia-Pass is a method to try. It has not been tested in a clinical trial, and it is not a treatment. We expect it to suit some people and not others, for different reasons. We also hope it can be studied scientifically, in the context of the habit of using a screen in bed and of the screen as a tool for getting to sleep. If trouble sleeping lasts for weeks, or if racing thoughts come with other symptoms that worry you, please talk with a doctor.