Thread: I can't move, but it's not SP I swear!

Welcome to DreamViews Amandals

I've heard many reports of some kind of "paralysis" while in a lucid, and I also felt this myself once or twice. This may be a simple incorporation of REM atonia in your dream, a rare and more complex type of occurrence when compared to events like feeling pain in your arm while you're sleeping on top of it.

What methods have you tried to solve this? Some people suggest letting yourself sink into the bed and hopefully changing the dream scene, or you can always ignore your own dream body and just float outside of it.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Welcome to DreamViews Amandals

I've heard many reports of some kind of "paralysis" while in a lucid, and I also felt this myself once or twice. This may be a simple incorporation of REM atonia in your dream, a rare and more complex type of occurrence when compared to events like feeling pain in your arm while you're sleeping on top of it.

What methods have you tried to solve this? Some people suggest letting yourself sink into the bed and hopefully changing the dream scene, or you can always ignore your own dream body and just float outside of it.

Hey thanks for the reply!

Methods I've tried:

1. Relaxing in the dream, kind of becoming passive in hopes that i'll lose my inhibition
2. Mental encouragement "I can move! I have the power!"
3. Trying to focus on moving my limbs one by one
4. Floating... which I can kind of do but only a little. Once I managed to "float" out of the door but not much happened.
5. Commands, like telling myself to move
6. willing changes in the room, in order to make it more dream-like and less false awakening-like

Is it possible this is just some sort of mental block? In the past i've had a strange love/fear relationship with the dream world.

Also I feel like maybe it would be helpful to tell the story of the dream that marked the beginning of this problem:

I awoke in my room, it was a false awakening but it was light and I could see everything in detail in my room, as it was in real life. In the lying position, I had a strange thought: what if, when I sit up, my mind can't think of how to fill in the room? So I sat up and it was quite difficult. My body felt heavy but not as bad as nowadays. As I look around the room, I notice that the spots of the room that were missing when I was lying down now are simply spaces filled with materials... like jean and other prints. It was like my mind literally patched up the room. After that, the heavy body thing turned into paralysis.

Thoughts?

Is it possible this is just some sort of mental block? In the past i've had a strange love/fear relationship with the dream world.

It's the most likely explanation, especially when you consider this:

In a dream, you possess no body, you use no senses. The visual input that you're receiving is not a sensation, it's another kind of signal. This means you don't really see or feel anything: you just receive information and your brain automatically interprets it as you would do in real life: pressure in your feet indicates soil, a breeze on your face might indicate wind, etc etc.
In this case, you just need to internalize the fact that this "physical inertia" is a mental characteristic of the dream, and has absolute zero impact on your ability to change dream content: how can you be stuck if it you don't even have a body?

A suggestion: try to disregard your state and engage with some other part of the dream. If it means loosing lucidity, it's fine: just make sure you engage your senses and use the power of expectation to make something happen...don't act intentionally, but as if you were accepting the dream and waiting for it to show something else next. I use this exercise when I'm trying new stuff or making stuff I "consider" hard: I simply treat it like an ordinary dream (in which I'm not really doing any conscious control because I don't know I'm dreaming), and act like I'm like "whatever, just....make something happen".

Thoughts?

We still don't know the exact purpose of false awakenings, but they might represent an attempt to prevent the individual to wake up before the REM stage is over. This said, it's possible that you might be slightly more awake then usual, which can exacerbate bodily sensations related to REM atonia

Not sure I can add much to Zoth's great reply, but I have a question: are all of your LDs false awakenings, and if not, can you move in these other LDs? If so, that should be a strong piece of experiential evidence (on your own part) that you have somehow unconsciously associated your bedroom (and false awakenings in general) with paralysis. Also, you could use the fact that you have just moved your arm to RC as a way to "out-logic" the dream: if you just moved your arm to RC, then surely that part of your body is free to move. It might even be enough to free your whole body.

Also, have you tried "closing your dream eyes" and waiting for a new dream scene to form? This might be another way to simply change your dream scene to something more mentally conducive to walking and moving about.

One last thing: you mention in your post that you think to yourself, "Don't be scared," which sounds like you are scared to me? Can you talk more about this "fear relationship" with your dreams?

*Moved to Dream Control

Perhaps you could try imagining a rope above you and try and pull yourself out of your dream body and like the people said above try and disregard your physical state? I also think that the suggestion of trying to form another dream scene is a good idea. You could try and ask out loud for the dream to allow you to move because often verbal commands in dreams are pretty effective.

Originally Posted by amandals

I can't move in my LDs. I have false awakenings and then I plug my nose and breathe. It's dark and my body feels like lead. It feels like sleep paralysis, but I know it's not. It doesn't go away and I can stay there and progress, but only a tiny bit. First I move my fingers, then arms, and lately I can kind of float out of my bed, but I can't sit up and walk.

I think this problem stems from a sort of disconnect between your conscious presence in the dream and the unconscious engine driving the dream (your dreaming mind). In a sense, you want to move, or change the dream, but you're not properly communicating that desire to your dreaming mind.

The first step toward improving that communication is remembering that there is no need to move anything in a dream; that none of this is real. Doing this with sincerity helps to unlock your awareness and allows it to wander better into the realms of your dreaming mind.

The next step is to forget about this dream body you're trapped inside, and focus rather on the places you wanted to visit, the dream goals you wanted to achieve. Usually just thinking about what you want to do, without any concern for the DC body you are stuck inside, is enough to reconnect you to your dreaming mind, and disconnect you from the little prison your miscommunication initially formed.