Aphantasia Experiments: Pineal Gland Speculations, Visualization Techniques, and Dopamine Levels

Robin [00:00:00]:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Aphantasia experiments. I haven't recorded an episode in a couple of weeks, I don't think. I tend to batch them. I get into these modes of like being able to talk a lot and then I go in other modes of Not being able to talk at all. It's an interesting thing. So, I feel like I can't To say I'll post once a week because my brain just doesn't work that way. So I just post randomly. So I hope you don't mind that.

Robin [00:00:32]:

But Definitely subscribe if you haven't already so you get a notification every time I post because because it's random. And maybe one day I'll get into a flow of posting More regularly or more structurally. Okay. So in this episode, I actually have a lot to talk about, and I haven't written any notes. So this should be interesting. I actually have some stuff to talk about, Aphantasia, on this podcast. I know that a lot of my episodes lately have been more spiritual And more random, I don't talk a ton about aphantasia, but in this episode, I'm actually gonna go through a couple of things. So recently I was on the Aphantasia network website.

Robin [00:01:25]:

I go there every once in a while just to see what's new, what's happening. And someone had mentioned I think someone had mentioned on a Facebook Group actually. This is how I landed here. An Facebook group. They were like, start here with networks. They have a a spot on the website that's like start here if you just found out you have Fantasia and it goes through all this stuff. But one of the things I read on there that I found really interesting, which actually goes goes in line with, like, everything I've been learning about people's minds is that, people who do visualize, either are projectors. So they visualize Basically, in real, like, in real life.

Robin [00:02:10]:

Like, they're seeing something like a screen outside of their mind. Right? Like you're projecting think of a projector, obviously. That's a good example. That's how they're Visualizing. They're visualizing things by projecting stuff out there. Okay? The other type is, Oh, I forgot what it's called. But see, this is why I should take notes. It's basically in your mind.

Robin [00:02:38]:

Okay? So people are either projectors or they have these visions in their mind. I've heard it been I've heard it I heard. I've heard it be described, I don't know why that was hard to get out, as being something that's in the back of the mind. Okay? So it's interesting because I can't do either. So, it's hard to even really understand what the back of the mind one is, but then I think maybe that's kind of how I dream because my dreams aren't I'm not seeing it in my eyes. It's in my mind, but it feels like through my eyes. I don't know. I don't know.

Robin [00:03:22]:

It's so confusing, but it made me start thinking about The experiments I'm doing on myself. So one of the experiments, I started with was the lights, Like shining lights in my eyes and then closing my eyes and describing what I would see within my vision. And, I was able to see a blue star. I've been able to see a couple couple things. So I do think it's working. It takes a lot of focus and a lot of time. But I feel like this would be to improve, like, the projecting one because Here's the other part of this. Not I'm not talking linear linearly right now.

Robin [00:04:11]:

I I did something on TikTok or Instagram or something where you stare at Oh, no. This was on Affentasia Experiments 2. This is it. Sorry. So not Affentasia Networks, not my website. Apple Music Networks, they have this start here thing and then they go through they were talking about projectors versus, internalizers or something. And then they had a picture of an apple. You stared at the apple for 30 seconds, and then you would move your gaze to the the white space, and you should be able to see, like, an imprint of it.

Robin [00:04:49]:

And they're saying that that way of seeing the imprint way I think this is how it said, or maybe I just assumed. But basically, the imprint way would be, Like, the projecting way. So if I'm working with what I'm what I'm thinking is if I'm working with lights and I'm making objects out of the lights, I feel like I'm I am working out my ability to project, not internally visualize. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like there's 2 different practices here is what I'm trying to say. So after I did Apple thing where I stared at the Apple for a while. I started doing it it just with stuff in my house. So I was in my bedroom and I was looking at TV, which is big black TV. It wasn't on, but it's against this, like, beige very light beige wall, almost white.

Robin [00:05:45]:

So I would stare at the TV for 30 Seconds. And then I would quickly move my gaze over to the blank wall. And not right away, but after a few seconds, if I blinked a few times, I could see the outline of the television in that blank space. So it was like I stamped I was able to stamp it from from seeing it in my and then it it would last, like, 10 seconds and then it just kinda slowly fades away. So I don't know if practicing with that kind then visual activities, like visual stimuli would help with the ability to visualize, like, project visualize. I don't know. What do you think? The other part of my aphantasia thing and, I did post about this on TikTok. If you don't follow me on TikTok if you're not on TikTok, that's okay.

Robin [00:06:37]:

I just I find social media exhausting, but I feel like TikTok's the easiest one me to just pick up and talk, experiments if you don't follow me. But I did post this post about this. I recently okay. Before I even start this, I'm a firm believer in synchronicities. I don't think anything is coincidence. So and and when you start kind of believing this way, Whenever something that seems too good to be true comes together, you're like, oh, it's the universe at play. Like, everything is Destiny and every it makes everything more magical. So I just wanted to lay that out because this is how I live my life, and I try to, like, Go from one beautiful moment to the next kinda thing.

Robin [00:07:25]:

I I'm I that's what I try to do anyways. It's not always easy. Why did I mention that? I don't know. What I was going to though was synchronicity. So I had a couple synchronicities Happened in the last couple weeks. One of which was I read this study on an Aphantasia Facebook group about this research. Did I say study already? Research study thing that's going on with people to see sorry. It's people who don't have aphantasia.

Robin [00:08:00]:

So people can visualize. There's 40 men, and I may be wrong with the numbers. So Google it, please. Don't let go by my word because I'm not good at relaying information and I don't have any notes taken. There's 40 men. They split the group up into Groups of 2, so 20. 20 each. Right? 20 of the men are were getting a drug that decreased They're dopamine.

Robin [00:08:26]:

Okay? And the other 20 got a placebo. So their hypothesis Basically is that dopamine increases your visualization. So if you had a like, if you Decrease your dopamine, your visualization abilities would decrease. This is what they're I guess this is but they're they're doing it. I have no idea if there's any results of it, but it was a synchronicity for me because that same week, Literally, like, days after or days before, I sorry. I'm in a burp. That's so gross. I just chugged a grapefruit grapefruit sparkling water.

Robin [00:09:10]:

That's why. So Where was I going? Just let me take a second here. Oh, man. It's really weird when your brain just goes completely blank like that. We were talking about aphantasia. We were talking about aphantasia. I'm gonna get there. If I pause this, that would be bad.

Robin [00:09:36]:

Okay. Dopamine. I got there. I knew I'd get there. Okay. So I had started a couple days prior to reading this article, and medication that incur would increase my dopamine. Okay? So I suffer from seasonal depression, Generally, seasonal affective disorders. Seasonal affective it's called SAD.

Robin [00:10:00]:

So I live in Ontario, Canada. It gets It's really dark here in the winter, and I've been dealing with it my whole life. I I usually just power through, but the the the dark winters Or it just drains me. Like, I feel like I have no energy, and I have 4 kids and I and I'm, you know, trying to Function. And I always find during the winter months, I'm like a puddle of how I am in the summer, basically. So this year, I decided to try to be proactive, so I talked to my doctor and we, got me started on a medication that's supposed to help with that. So I'm doing some research on the medication that I started, and it's talking about how this medication increases dopamine. And I'm like, this is weird.

Robin [00:10:47]:

When I when I come across this article, I'm like, Dopamine, dopamine, ding, ding, ding. These are going together. So I wonder because since reading that article, I've been doing these Eye games. Like I was looking at the TV and then I looked over. And anytime I have something with, like, high contrast, I'll try to stare at it for a while And then move my gaze to something of the opposite contrast and see if I can, like, bring that up. So that's, like, something I've been working on, but I feel like it's really working. Like, I'm Really able to bring up the imprints a lot more, and I don't know if it's because my dopamine has increased. And I'm on a very low dose of this stuff, So I probably will have to go up a dose, and it'll be interesting to see.

Robin [00:11:29]:

It's interesting it would be interesting to see. So the question I had For my listeners is then you can just email me or I have a, on my website, I have, On my experiments page, I have, like, a share your experience. You can fill that out and, like, give you your answer there. I'll just it all goes

Robin [00:11:50]:

to the same place.

Robin [00:11:53]:

What I wanna know from my aphantasia listeners is, Do you find that you have low dopamine levels? And the way you can tell this is you might have some sort of behaviors that are, like, dopamine seeking. So, like, seeking really quick fixes of, like, heightened, sensation like, feelings, emotions. For me, like, I I try to, like, not eat a ton of sugar because if I have 1 cookie, I wanna have Or I have trouble just, like, saying like, stopping because once the sugar hits my lips, I'm like,

Robin [00:12:32]:

sugar. Yes.

Robin [00:12:34]:

And I love it. And yeah. Like, I have I totally have ADHD. I'm like a squirrel. I'll go 10 different places at the same time, and I don't know if that's, like, because my dopamine is low. I don't know. It's it's a theory. It's an interesting one.

Robin [00:12:52]:

So let me know if you feel like do you have any unhealthy behaviors like, gambling, for example, doing excessive amounts of drugs, drinking. Those are all dopamine seeking behaviors. So I'm not saying that all people with aphantasia are seeking dopamine, but I'm curious If anyone else is, you know? Is it just me? My husband is, has Fantasia and He is not. So I actually I was reading something else on a Facebook board where someone was saying that their memories are mostly emotional. So when they think of a memory, they feel the emotion of the memory, and that's, like, how you remember Stuff. And I'm very much like that. I'm very emotional. And I even get emotional and this is, I think, part of, like, my more psychic abilities.

Robin [00:13:50]:

I get emotional about future events, True events, which is so weird. Like, I'll see something happening, and I'll be like, oh, that's gonna happen to my or something. And I'll get, like, emotional, like, because I feel like I'm there in the future. It's it's a weird thing. Emotions. Okay. So I saw this on the Facebook thing, and it takes me a second to get back and do it sometimes. I need some dopamine.

Robin [00:14:23]:

Maybe dopamine would help me focus. In the Facebook group, it talked about how so this person who posted was talking about How, they feel like most of their memories are are based on emotion and stuff. And I felt like half of the people were saying yes. I feel that very very much so. And I feel that way too. Like and I feel like I have a heightened awareness of other people's emotions. But my husband, who also has aphantasia, It's not like that at all. So I I honestly feel like I'm married to him because I love him, but because, we have, like, This same condition, which is so weird, it's like 3% 1 to 3% of the population has this condition.

Robin [00:15:11]:

But we're so drastically different, like, in our how we function. If you're if you'd look at, Like, tarot stereotypes, he's a king and I'm a queen. Like very female, very male. And he does not his memories are not connected to his emotions at all. Actually, he I'm pretty sure he has SCAM and, like, really bad because he cannot recall. He can't recall any of his elementary school teachers, which I can do every single one except for grade 3, and I think if that was because there was some sort of trauma in grade 3. I like, that's the only thing I can think of. But, yeah, he Can't remember anyone, even high school.

Robin [00:15:56]:

I'm like, what?

Robin [00:15:57]:

I could, like, probably name every teacher I've ever had. But I think maybe that's because I I relate my teachers to, like, experiences and emotions that I felt, I think. I think that's how how I remember stuff and maybe people with SDAM that don't have that emotional component. It's harder to actually Recall memories because you don't have that connection. I don't know. What do you think? What do you think? I don't know. Anyway, so that's my stuff About aphantasia. Another synchronicity that I had was I believe I've talked about this on the podcast several times about the pine cones and about pineal glands and And how the pineal gland is said to be rare, like your 3rd eye.

Robin [00:16:47]:

It's it's where you access your intuition. It's it's where the The 2 brain sides come together, and this pineal gland is usually Calcified on most people. I wanna say decalcified, I think because I think of the word Classified, but it's not decalcified. It's calcified. So most people's pineal glands are And so they're not functioning properly. So I wonder, are our pineal glands just It's not functioning properly or functioning differently than other people's. So I'm pondering on this, and I come across, Like, a pile of pine cones in the forest. And, like, it's pine cone season.

Robin [00:17:38]:

I get that. But, again, I don't believe in coincidences. Feel like, okay. I ran I ran into these pine cones, and I'm looking at them and some are, like, really closed. Some are open. Some have Pine needles coming through them. I I originally thought it was grass growing out of the pine pine cones, then, like, 3 weeks later, I Like, oh, it's pine needles. Duh.

Robin [00:17:58]:

That's how pine trees grow. So I'm thinking about pineal gland, and I come across these things. And I, like, bring a couple home to, like, examine because I'm weird like that. And I'm like, if the pineal gland is like the pine cone, like, let me examine this pine cone to see, like, How how it how we could decalcify it if it was calcified? You know? I don't know. So nothing came of that. I was just, like, interested and and was, like, staring at these pine cones for a bit. But then the next day or the day after, I went to my daughter's kindergarten Kindergarten thing, you know? You know, where you go visit the kindergarten class. So my daughter's in SK.

Robin [00:18:53]:

You go in the class. You spend an hour there. They show you all their Stuff. You get to play with some of the kids, and then they cry when you leave kinda thing. So she didn't cry this year, but she did last year. But at the school, they have these different stations. One's a movie theater. Once and honestly, that day, I'd asked for a sign and every like, there it was everywhere.

Robin [00:19:18]:

I think it was a mushroom or something. There was mushrooms everywhere. Anyways, the EA calls me and Fifi over and was like, Ophelia, do you want to show your mommy how we do experiments here. And and then she was showing us, and the experiment they had on this particular day Was about pine cones. And I was like, this is something. It's something. I don't know what it means, but I feel like everything's I did. So, the experiment was, the the kid The teacher asked, do you think if I put this in water, will it sink or float? Spoiler alert, it floats.

Robin [00:20:03]:

And then the 2nd question was, if you put it in water for half an Or would the petals close or open or stay the same? So they were open. They were really dry, this This pine cone. So, anyways, we we put the pine cone in water, and then I finished up the day care or the the visit. And I went Oh, man. I thought, well, that's weird. Like, the fact that we did an experiment with pine cones, like, as I'm just constantly thinking about pine cones and and our pineal gland, Then my daughter comes home from school, and I'm like, okay. So what happened with the pine cone? Because now I wanna know. I'm invested.

Robin [00:20:50]:

Right? And she said that the pine cone closed, so the petals closed up. But what does that mean for our pineal gland? Do we want our petals our pineal gland petals to close-up, or do we want them to open up? Like, is calcifying to is it because it's too dry? Right? I don't know. So I'm thinking about this, and then I get a flash in my head of a memory I have of I used to work for a magazine, and we had such a fun time at that job. It was so fun. But 1 week, we decided to do an Olympics at our office, but the Olympic sports were, like, really ridiculous. Like, hop on 1 foot all day kind of thing. Like, that wasn't one of them. I can't I honestly can't think of any of them except for this one particular day, which was drink as much water as humanly possible.

Robin [00:21:44]:

And in this experiment, we had been googling, can you die from overconsumption of water? Because we were it was a competition, and we were we were very competitive. So we were drinking jugs of water, and it was like the amount of water you'd have to drink to drown yourself is very, very, very a lot. Anyway, so I'm on my walk thinking about the pineal gland and thinking about, okay, it had to soak for 30 minutes for it to close. Like, how do I soak my pineal gland for 30 minutes? What if I challenge myself to drink An excessive amount of water almost to the point of drowning my brain, but not really. I don't think I'll be able to drink that much. I'll probably forget. But This is something I'm gonna challenge myself to do. Feel free to challenge yourself too and let me know if, anything comes with it.

Robin [00:22:38]:

And the other side to that is, like, fasting. Perhaps fasting would help with the pineal gland. Right? I know a lot of people who do intermittent fasting or any sort of fasting usually say that If if they go for a day or 2, the hunger kinda dissipates, but there's this, like, extreme focus that comes in. And I wonder if you I've never fasted without drinking water. But Maybe if you fasted without drinking water. And I don't I'm not, like, saying do this because I don't want you to dehydrate yourself. But That's the other that's the flip side to it. Like, maybe we need to, like, dry out.

Robin [00:23:20]:

Maybe we're maybe we're oversaturating our pineal gland already. I don't think that's the case, though. I feel like It's probably dry. I feel like it needs to be saturated. Either way, I don't know. I feel like it I just, You know, I just feel like things are connected, and I don't know how. But I'm gonna just keep trying to follow these little little pings and little nuggets that are kinda laid in front of me. If you have any ideas or thoughts about any of the things I talked about today, Please let me know.

Robin [00:23:52]:

My email address is rofocreative@gmail.com. And, again, if you go to my website, aphantasiaexperiments.com, There is at the top or you can go athindijiaexperiments.com/experiments. On that page, there's some experiments that I'm It's all free. I'm just really trying to, like, gather information and learn as much as I can about aphantasia, but about everything. Like, I'm so fascinated about All sort of out of body experiences, near death experiences, dreams, prophetic dreams, consciousness in general, just like all of this stuff, Glitch in the matrix stories. Anything you got, I I'd love to hear from you, and I'd love to to get your opinion on any of the things I talked about Today about, the pineal gland, if you have any theories about how to get that functioning. I I also think it's like There's a combination of things. I it's never just one thing.

Robin [00:24:45]:

So like for example, my meditation that I did where I shine the lights in my eyes, If I were to just lay there and think about the things that I could see in my vision, I don't think it would be as impactful as if As when I speak out loud, there's something and I've said this before. There's something that happens when you actually speak the words that are in your mind. It makes a connection, I think, with both sides of the brain or something. I have no brain scans to prove this, but There's something with the visuals. If you add if you add speaking, it helps connect in a way. I don't know, And I don't know how to prove this, but, just I feel like why am I saying this? I don't know. I feel like, it's gonna be a combination of things to get, like people with that fantasia to visualize. Like, maybe it's an increase in dopamine.

Robin [00:25:47]:

Maybe it's you need to, like, speak out loud things before they appear. Maybe you need to smell something. Like, maybe there's a combination of things that we need to do, like sounds. Like, I do a lot of hemisync, binaural beats, Joe Dispenza type, different types of meditations, and they all, like, do different things to my brain. I feel like I've been able to do and this is more of a back of the mind aphantasia like visualization, not aphantasia visualization. It's like When I get into a really deep meditation, I have sometimes it's very rare. I get like, almost like sacred geometry. It looks like fractals in my mind.

Robin [00:26:33]:

It's very faint, But it comes in like, woah. And as soon as I, like, really notice it, it goes away. Yeah. I don't know where I was gonna go with that, but I think that's gonna be it for today. I feel like I talked about a few different things about aphantasia. Please email me or submit, your story Whatever you wanna send to me on on my website, I just have a a page up there that says it's under experiments. It says Share your story, and, I would love to hear from anyone about anything that I talked about today or on any of my podcast episodes. I I've said this before, but my background is in publishing, and I think that there's a book, here.

Robin [00:27:23]:

I don't know if it's just about aphantasia or if it's just about learning about the mind in general and how Unique and different, we all are. But I think it starts with collecting stories. So Send me your stories. Send me your experiences. Send me your brain whatever your brain does. I wanna hear from you. Thank you. And also follow me on TikTok if you don't have it.

Robin [00:27:50]:

Appendija experiments. And if you don't wanna get TikTok, don't do it. There's too many too many things that we have to follow these days. Too many social media stuff. But that is all I'm on right now. Maybe eventually I'll get Instagram. We'll see. Anyways, have a great day.

Robin [00:28:08]:

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and please subscribe and rate and review. I feel like everyone says that that helps. So I'm gonna say it, and, you're gonna do it because you are amazing. And, I appreciate you. Thanks.