With your eyes shut, the room around you is mostly a guess, and Sunni method shifting puts that guess to work. You lie down or sit still, picture your desired reality (DR) around you with every sense until it feels like the place you are actually lying in, and then either open your eyes or let yourself fall asleep there. Shifters say the secret is to feel that you are there, not only to see it.
Quick pick
Where Should You Start With the Sunni Method?
Tap the line that sounds most like you to jump to your match.
- Trying the Sunni method for the first time? Follow the six steps
- Can’t picture anything clearly? Feel your DR instead of seeing it
- Keep hearing your real room? Let the sounds belong to your DR
- Rather try it during the day? Use the original feel-it version
- Mixing it up with Raven or 5 Senses? See how the three differ
- Tried for weeks with no result? Change one small thing
Keep reading below What it is The steps An example Other versions Stay safe Questions
Our guide to what reality shifting is explains DR, CR (your current reality) and the other words shifters use. To see where Sunni sits among the main shifting methods, start there, and before you try any of them, read whether reality shifting is dangerous.
What Is the Sunni Method?
The Sunni method is a short visualization method built around one idea: you do not travel to your DR in your mind, you decide you are already lying in it. You rebuild your DR around your body, sense by sense, and keep at it until the picture feels more real than the room you started in.
It is one of the older named methods. Shifters say it began on Amino and is named after the shifter who first shared it, though nobody seems able to find that first post any more.
One Reddit user remembers Sunni as one of the first shifters, defending the practice on a subliminal users group on Amino back in 2017 and helping to shape ideas such as feeling being the key to shifting. We cannot check that. But the name was already in use by September 2019, when a subliminal called “sunni method” was uploaded to YouTube.
Do not mix it up with the Sunrise method, where someone from your DR flies you there. The names are close, and the methods are not.
○ Is the Sunni Method Good for Beginners?
Guides online disagree. Some call it the easiest method there is, and others say beginners should skip it because it leans so hard on visualizing.
We think both are partly right. The short version, where you simply feel yourself in your DR, is gentle enough for a first try. The full version, where you build every sound, smell and texture, takes some practice (and a little patience with yourself).
If pictures do not come easily to you, start with the feeling and leave the details for later. Our guide to shifting methods without visualization has more ways in.
How to Do the Sunni Method, Step by Step
Choose a time when nobody will knock on your door for a while, and use the bathroom first, because a full bladder is the fastest way out of any DR. Dim the lights and take a few slow breaths. Our beginner shifting tips cover the rest of the setup.
A script is optional here, but it helps to know your DR well before you start. If you have not written one yet, our shifting script template is a good place to begin.
- Get comfortable in any position. Lie on your side, on your back or sit in a soft chair. The method does not need the starfish pose.
- Close your eyes and rebuild your DR around you. Keep the pose you are in now. If you are lying on your back, imagine lying on your back in your DR bed, so your body and the picture agree.
- Fill in each sense, one at a time. What can you hear, smell and feel from where you are lying? The questions below help.
- Persuade yourself that you are really there. This is the heart of the method. You are not picturing a place you will visit later. You are noticing the place you are in right now.
- Say an affirmation or two, if you like. Many versions use them, and the earliest ones treat them as optional.
- Open your eyes when you feel sure, or let yourself fall asleep. Some shifters wait until they would be surprised to see their CR. Others let the scene carry them into sleep.
Most methods have you affirm first and picture your DR second. Sunni turns that around. The picture does the work, and the affirmations come at the end to settle it.
○ Five Senses Questions to Ask Yourself
Say your DR is a small cabin in snowy mountains. Ask yourself one question per sense, and wait for an answer before you move on.
- What can you hear? Wind against the window, the fire popping, someone moving pans in the kitchen.
- What can you smell? Wood smoke, pine, the soup that has been on the stove all afternoon.
- What can you feel? A thick wool blanket, a cold nose, warm socks on your feet.
- What can you see behind your eyelids? The orange glow of the fire through closed lids.
- What can you taste? Hot chocolate from earlier, still sweet on your tongue.
You do not need perfect answers. One clear detail per sense does more than a blurry list of twenty.
○ Affirmations for the Sunni Method
Because the Sunni method has you believe you are already there, its affirmations work best in the present tense, as if you were describing your room to a friend.
- I am lying in my DR bed right now.
- Every sound I hear belongs to my DR.
- This blanket, this pillow and this room are in my DR.
- I feel it, so I am here.
- When I open my eyes, I will see my DR.
Pick one that feels natural and keep it short. Our list of shifting affirmations has plenty more to borrow.
○ Why the Trick Can Feel So Real
Here is a small test you can run this week. Sleep with your pillow at the opposite end of the bed, and when you wake, keep your eyes closed for a moment. You will probably feel sure, just briefly, that you are lying the usual way round.
That muddled feeling has a name. The Sleep Foundation calls it sleep inertia, the grogginess and disorientation that follow waking. The Sunni method tries to create that same confusion on purpose, then tip it toward your DR.
Imagination is part of why it can work so well. A review of mental imagery research suggests that picturing something behaves like a weak form of seeing it. Neuroscientist Patrick Cavanagh put the bigger idea plainly in a Vox feature: “We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us”.
So a vivid scene with your eyes closed can feel very real. But whether you go anywhere is a different question. Wikipedia’s article on shifting is blunt that, scientifically, moving your consciousness to another reality is not possible, and that shifting is seen as a personal experience.
Our view sits between the two. The Sunni method is a skilled piece of imagination that can feel convincing and calm, and many shifters treasure what they experience with it. Just go in for the experience, not for a promise.
An Example: A Beach House by the Sea
Say you want to live in a beach house. Put on a track of waves crashing on a shore, keep the volume low, and lie down with your eyes closed.
Now believe the sound is the real ocean, just outside your window. Picture your bedroom in the beach house: the white curtains moving, the sand you forgot to shake off your feet, the salt in the air.
When it feels right, say your affirmation: I am in my bed in my beach house, listening to the waves. I am peaceful and relaxed. Then open your eyes, or let the waves rock you to sleep.
○ Using Sounds to Trick Your Mind
The beach track is the oldest trick in the Sunni book. Choose a sound that already lives in your DR and play it quietly, so your ears hand your mind some real evidence.
A fan can become the hum of a spaceship, rain can become a castle roof and birdsong can become a garden in spring. A cafe noise track works well if your DR is a busy city.
Plenty of Sunni guided meditations come with theta waves or binaural beats, sold as a way to tune your brain. Enjoy them as relaxing background, but do not expect more: a 2023 review in PLoS One looked at fourteen studies and found five that fit the brainwave idea, eight that went against it and one with mixed results. Our guide to the best subliminals for shifting shows how to listen safely.
Other Versions of the Sunni Method
Because the first post is lost, the Sunni method has drifted as it has been passed around. Here are the versions you will meet, and where each one came from.
○ The Original “Feel It” Version
The oldest write-ups are short and lean on feeling, not seeing. In one of the best known, DreamXJournal on Wattpad suggests a daytime practice, “every 30 minutes if you have the time”: sit, close your eyes and feel that you are in your DR, adding that “you don’t need to visualize”.
At bedtime, the same guide has you lie still, play a short scene from your DR, feel that you are there and repeat it until you fall asleep. Keep it to a few seconds, so it is easy to repeat.
Good scenes are small and physical. Someone from your DR ruffling your hair, washing your hands at your DR sink, or the creak of your DR stairs as you head to bed are all better than a long adventure. Keep the daytime sessions for when you are sitting somewhere safe, never when you are walking, cycling or doing anything that needs your eyes.
○ The Waking-Up Version
This one is our own suggestion, not something we found in the early guides. In the first drowsy minutes after you wake, keep your eyes closed and try the Sunni method before the day starts, while your mind is still unsure where you are.
It suits a slow morning with no alarm. If you want a version for the middle of the day instead, our guide to awake shifting methods walks through it.
○ Does the Sunni Method Use Raven’s Count?
No. Some newer guides, and some AI answers, tell you to count slowly upward with an affirmation between each number and call that Sunni. That count belongs to the Raven method, and none of the early Sunni guides we read includes it.
You can combine the two if counting calms you. Just know that you are doing Raven with a Sunni ending, which is fine, as long as you know which is which.
Sunni vs Raven vs 5 Senses
These three get confused because all three ask you to lie still and imagine. The difference is what keeps your mind busy.
With Raven, the count does the work, and your DR sits loosely in the background. The 5 Senses method starts by noticing your real room with each sense, then swaps every detail for its DR version. With Sunni, there is no count and no warm-up in your CR, just you persuading yourself that you are already there.
Our pick for a first try is Raven if your thoughts race at night, 5 Senses if you like a set routine, and Sunni if you can hold a feeling for a few minutes without needing a structure to lean on.
What You Might Feel
Sunni shifters describe all sorts of things: a heavy or floating body, flashes of color, a voice saying their name, or a sudden drop just as they drift off. Our guide to reality shifting symptoms goes through what shifters believe each one means.
Most of these happen to plenty of people on ordinary nights too. The Sleep Foundation explains that the brief images and feelings many people get while falling asleep, called hypnagogic hallucinations, are usually harmless: 86% are visual, and 25% to 44% come with a body feeling like falling or weightlessness.
That sudden drop is often a hypnic jerk, a twitch as you fall asleep that the Sleep Foundation calls common and generally harmless.
Some Sunni guides online go further and call dizziness, a racing heart or trouble breathing good signs. They are not. If you feel chest pain, struggle to breathe, faint, or your heart races and will not settle, stop, tell an adult and have a doctor check you. If it is severe, call your local emergency number straight away.
When the Sunni Method Doesn’t Work
Opening your eyes in your usual room is the most common result, and it does not mean you did anything wrong. These are the problems Sunni shifters bring up most.
○ “I Keep Hearing My Real Room”
Do not fight the sounds. Give them a new owner instead. The car outside becomes a carriage in your DR street, and your little sister’s music becomes the radio in your DR kitchen.
If the noise is too strong to borrow, cover it with a DR sound of your own, played softly.
○ “I Can’t See Anything in My Head”
Then skip the pictures. The earliest Sunni guides say feeling matters more than seeing, so focus on the weight of your DR blanket or the warmth of a hand in yours.
Some people have aphantasia, which means they cannot picture things in their mind at all, and the Cleveland Clinic says experts estimate that between 2% and 4% of people have it. It is simply a difference in how a mind works, and our no-visualization methods were written with it in mind.
○ “My DR Is Almost the Same as My CR”
This comes up when your DR is your own life with a few changes. Picturing your DR bedroom then looks just like picturing your real one, so the trick has nothing to grab.
Build the scene around the one thing that is different instead. If your DR is a better version of your CR, feel the friend who now lives next door knocking, or the new confidence in your own voice.
○ “Nothing Happens After Weeks”
That is common, and the method is not broken because of it. Keep your normal sleep, choose one change, and give it a fair run before you change anything else.
A small change that suits Sunni well is to focus on one object instead of a whole room. One shifter on Reddit describes tapping a bracelet they always wear in their DR and noticing its smooth metal, the faint clink against a fingernail and its coldness.
If you are still stuck, try a different method for a while, then come back. Our guide on why you might not be able to shift has more ideas.
The Sunni Method Today: SATS and the Law of Assumption
You will not see many new posts about the Sunni method by name. Its ideas did not disappear, though. They moved into newer names.
The looped bedtime scene from the original version is close to what shifters now call SATS, a “state akin to sleep” in which you replay one tiny DR moment as you drift off. Our guide to SATS in law of assumption shifting shows how shifters use it today, and “assume you are already there” is the Sunni idea in different words.
If you came here for manifesting rather than shifting, our law of assumption formula covers Neville Goddard’s teaching on its own.
Is the Sunni Method Safe?
The Sunni method asks very little of your body, so the care it needs is mostly about sleep and about keeping the trick inside practice time.
Any comfortable position is fine. Some guides push lying flat on your back, but the NHS says back sleeping can make sleep paralysis more likely. Sleep paralysis, when you cannot move or speak for a moment as you wake or drift off, can be scary but is harmless, according to the NHS.
If it happens to you, lie on your side. The NHS suggests seeing a GP (a family doctor) if it happens often and leaves you anxious about sleep or tired all the time.
Your sleep matters more than any method. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises 8 to 10 hours a night for teenagers aged 13 to 18, so keep bedtime practice inside your normal night and skip the late alarms.
The method asks you to believe your real room is somewhere else, and that belief should end when your practice does. The NHS describes derealisation as feeling that the world is unreal, with people and things seeming “lifeless” or “foggy”. If that feeling follows you into your day, stop the method and talk to a parent, a trusted adult or a doctor.
A safe word in your script is a kind habit, and our guide on how to come back from shifting explains how shifters use one. For the full list of warning signs, read our shifting safety guide.
Then put on your waves, close your eyes and let the room become a beach house for a while.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sunni Method
Do I fall asleep or open my eyes with the Sunni method?
Either one. In the awake version, you open your eyes once you feel sure you are in your desired reality. In the bedtime version, you keep the scene going and let yourself fall asleep inside it. Pick the ending that suits the time of day you practice.
Can I do the Sunni method during the day?
Yes. The earliest guides suggest short daytime sessions where you sit, close your eyes and simply feel that you are in your desired reality, then a longer try at bedtime. Only practice during the day when you are sitting somewhere safe, never while walking, cycling or doing anything that needs your eyes.
What are some examples of how to trick your mind?
Play a sound that belongs to your desired reality, like waves for a beach house or rain on a castle roof, and tell yourself it is real. You can also give real noises a new owner, so the car outside becomes a carriage in your DR street. Holding one small object and noticing every detail of it works well too.
What is the difference between the Sunni and Raven methods?
The Raven method uses a slow count with affirmations between the numbers, usually lying in the starfish position. The Sunni method has no count at all. You build your desired reality around you with your senses and persuade yourself you are already there. Some newer guides mix the two, so check which steps you are actually following.
Can I do the Sunni method if I can’t visualize?
Yes. The earliest versions of the method say feeling matters more than seeing, so focus on touch, sound and the sense of being somewhere else. If pictures never come for you, our guide to shifting methods without visualization has more methods built for that.
Does the Sunni method actually work?
There is no scientific evidence that anyone moves to another reality, so we will not promise that you will. What the Sunni method can give you is a vivid, calming experience of your desired reality, and many shifters value it. Our guide to what reality shifting is explains what researchers have found so far.
