Sleep Paralysis - Have you experienced it?

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Originally Posted by dream kitten

Hmm, my friend who is an experienced lucid dreamer, and intermediate astral projector says that sometimes sleep paralyzation could be related to astral planing... he said the feeling of your spirit leaving your body is similar to that of SP. whether you want to believe that is up to you, but the main reason why I am even learning to lucid dream is in order to achieve astral planing eventually.

I have only experienced SP once and it was extremely frightening for me. I was in 10th grade, and it was a school night... I was asleep in my room... probably around 2AM when this happened. I'm a REALLY light sleeper and usually the slightest thing can cause a stir in me... so anyways, I was asleep and I suddenly wake up. Not because I heard or saw anything, but it was really strange... almost like someone asked me to come awake. It felt like something had entered my room and wanted me to become awake. I realized I was in my room and awake and tried to get out of bed when I realized I coudln't move at all... I tried to yell or say something but nothing would come out. Now, before I learned of all this, I was told this feeling was something trying to posess my body...

so of course, I started freaking out, trying to move or "snap out of it". This lasted for about a minute, when I suddenly feel pressure on my chest... like something pushing down on me. Maybe I was hallucinating or something but I saw a light smokey figure appear above my body.... no shape, but I saw a face... mainly just the eyes. it smiles at me. I start screaming with every bit of me, physically and mentally, I was so scared thinking I am about to lose my soul.... then I snap out of it, the pressure and smokey figure dissipates and I regain control of my body.

Definately a very scary experience. If it happens again though, I will try to embrace it and see if I can project myself.

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i was told that too that someone was trying to posess my body.......its scary.....My 1st SP was terrible i was napping one day and could hear the tv people talking and laughing out side...
when i went to get up my hands were numb i tried to call someone but nothing would come out of my mouth this lasted for 5-10 minutes.
then i was able to move......

another night i woke scared like a child for no reason in the middle of the night, then i felt a hand on my head i was afraid to breathe and open my eyes this was not a dream!!!!!! i knew it wasnt a human hand the fingers were soo long then i got a full body rush and felt safe again as tho the thing had left the room.......and no one could have came into the room the door was locked............

another night i was in bed and this is probably the reason i thought it was spirits because i still dunno what this was but i was sharing a room with 2 people when backpacking around australia........1 guy and another girl...the guy came into the room one night to get something while i was tryna sleep..........
i heard him say something i could not understand and it sounded like he said spirito di aspirito so i said what are you saying and he turned and said i didnt say nothing ......so he left the room closed the door and i heard the voice again saying spirito di aspirito but got louder it was in a very strange way ,and it wasnt his voice this time....then it started changing to a female voice and surrounded the room it was like it was all around me at this point i was not able for anymore i was petrified it was like surround sound you know that feeling when someone is too close to you like a stranger is in your face well thats how i felt like the sound wasnt getting any louder but was getting very close to me and it scared the life outa me.
so i sat up in the bed getting ready to leave the room and screamed leave me alone............
i left the house and went to the garden area where my friend was im not sure what happend that night but i could not enter the house for 2 hours everytime i went to go back in i felt a force and was too scared after the 2 hours passsed i felt safe to go back.....ever since ive had extreemly scary SP with ghosts and spirits in them...........
any one ever have any experiences when you know your not dreaming????? i have many more where they came from just didnt wanna write them coz i know this is too long.........

the first time i had sp i felt very tingly and numb at first i was trying a wild but eventually found out that i was vilding and soon after the numbness my mine went blank i just saw black and than i felt like i was trapped inside my body i think it feels really cool but ive had other sp where it just feels like im being sucked out of my body or pushed into my bed wich i think is a really cool feeling too.!

To Be honest, im not quite sure. I have attempted a WILD before, and felt my whole body go numb, but I'm not sure if its S.P. :?

No. Or if I have it wasn't unconfortable enough for me to notice it, as I have WILD'd before.

I've never had SP before, but I've heard that to get rid of it you just try to wriggle your toes and go from there. Or maybe getting out of it isn't a problem, I dunno. I want to experience it though, I don't think it would be that scary since I know what it is. I can imagine though if you didn't know how scary it could be, especcially if you don't know how long you're going to remain like that or why it's happening.

I've had SP many times. The last time was probably a year ago. It doesn't scare me anymore because I know what it is. My eyes have always been closed when it occurs and I have sometimes heard eerie voices. I don't like the way it feels, it's an uncomfortable feeling for me.

I've used it to try to AP but that's never worked for me. I now just try to relax until it passes and I go back to dreaming but it's never resulted in an LD for me either.

Sometimes when I take a nap at like 7, and wake up at 12, stay up for a little, then go back to sleep, I have sleep paralysis. I've had two before going to sleep. The second one was extremely freaky to me. It started and I said to myself "I've read that some can be scary." and sure enough, that little girl from the Ring appears in a doorway, coming closer. Luckily, it stopped.

I've had it when I was little ALOT, except it was when I woke up in the morning, absolutely dreading it. I couldnt breath, or move. Then I would move and take a BIG breath of air. I sometimes literally felt like suffocating.

~FR

SP gives me the weirdest hallucinations... the times when I reached it I go so scared/freake out that I ruined my WILD xD better luck next time? plx?


it's quite a thrill though... like a rollercoaster... you regret it when you're at it, but when it finishes, you realise it was the coolest thing xD

I have a few times. It really freaks me out. For me, I get numbing and pressure that starts at the feet and moves it's way up. I also see shadows in the corner of the room that disappear when it stops. I've never tried to have OBE with them because I was always afraid that I might have a hard time getting back into my body. Are they necessary for LDing or are there ways to LD without them?

Maaaaany times. Its not scary unless you're allowing it to be scary. Like trying to move or looking around in your room. I was scared to death before I found out what it was. All through my childhood I feared it. Now I love it instead, for inducing LDs. :) I simply do it on my side and immediately when Im in SP I imagine myself rolling downwards and falling. Otherwise my dream will just begin in my appartment. But if I fall I can end up anywhere.

Any ideas on getting rid of my fear of SP?

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Originally Posted by Skanson

I never really experienced full SP, only a numbing of my muscles while trying to WILD...until a few days ago.
I was drifiting off in math class during some emergency drill, when I relaized "oh damn, I can't move a muscle" It was both exhilirating and frightening...it took me a few minutes of full-fledge consious effort to be able to regain control of my body.

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Hm. I don't think that was SP

Never had it, and haven't been able to consciously produce it either. To me it also seems like all my reality->dream transitions work without me falling into SP first so I might never really experience it either. The only thinkg I managed to achieve is my arms and legs getting numb, but I never came further.

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Originally Posted by whisperinggirl

Any ideas on getting rid of my fear of SP?

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First of all you should make clear to yourself that SP is nathing to be scared of. It can't harm you in any way and it's only scary when you're scared. However it can be benefitial to you since if you have SP you can use it to WILD.

I think its an amazing feeling, Not nearly as good as an LD.

I do not fear sleep paralysis, and neither should anyone.

People fear it because: People fear the unknown

So know this: Everyone has SP, so there is nothing to fear...Fear is the enemy that is not worth our time.

A few times, but never of the hag-rid type. I've had one which was in between two dreams, and it manifested itself as voices from the previous dream scene echoing in a tunnel and I could briefly feel my body lying in my bed before my dream body gathered speed and I was hoisted into the midst of a dream which only lasted half a second.

Do you have to be in SP to have a WILD?

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Originally Posted by Brad7769

Do you have to be in SP to have a WILD?

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No, not at all. And yes, I get it all the time. Sometimes it's awesome and I take advantage of it, and sometimes I just want to wake up.

I have only had true sleep paralysis once, on my very first night of attempting to lucid dream. And since I had no idea what was going on, you can bet it was scary! If it happened again I wouldn't be as worried...might even enjoy it since I would know it is a sign of successfully putting myself in a place where I can lucid dream effectively. But it was very noticeable for me. Unmistakeable. I literally couldn't move. Not anything from my neck downward would budge, no matter how hard I tried. And it was like a black hole was gradually rising up from my toes towards my head, sucking me into some deep existence I felt I would be trapped in if I let the process get over my head. Only by forcing my eyes open and making my head jitter (since that was the most movement I could make at the time) did I snap out of the paralysis and escape the black hole feeling. I just about gave up lucid dreaming before I'd even really started after all that, but I'm certainly glad I didn't.

The real trick is not whether or not your body is paralyzed; it's whether or not your mind is paralyzed. If you are scared stiff from SP, it won't do you any good. But if you keep a clear head about it, it can be a great ride :)

Sleep Paralysis was scary for me at first, but now it's just intriguing and sometimes fun. It's just another crazy part of this crazy brain us humans have.

Oh yes, I remember my first sleep paralysis experience. I have Isolated Sleep Paralysis because I think I experience it almost every other day without trying. I usually wake up in it. I can tell you one thing. Its the best way to experience an lucid dream. Especially when you don't even have to try to experience the hardest part of a WILD.
Anyway, I have been having SP since I was about 6. I didn't learn what they were till I was about 13. The next day I learnt about lucid dreaming. Pretty awesome if you ask me! :D
I've learned to get past the scary part of SP though. Its all in the head so I command my mind to stop creating these things and they suddenly disappear.

I have had SP many many times since I was young. Yes it can be very frightening, especially if you don't know what it is when it happens, which is what happened to me the first time. All I remember from the first time is that I heard really loud crazy scary devil music and had enormous pressure on my chest. I eventually learned what it was and when it happened tried to ignore it or shake myself out of it. I even had many false awakenings into LDs, before I even knew what they were! To think of all the times I could have had awesome LDs but was just too scared to realize. After learning about LD, every time I have had SP, it is a guarantee for me to LD :D I actually just woke up from nap of SP and LD. My first consciously initiated WILD!

I had some episodes before I learned what SP or LDing was and the nature of these ones were different than the episodes I intentionally induced upon discovering more about LDing.

These were very scary; the worst one involved me being paralyzed on my side and feeling someone walking on the bed right behind me. They knelt down right behind me and their face (which I couldn't see, since I couldn't move) was right up on my neck; I could feel their breath and then heard the words "you're going to die now". I then felt the most excruciating pain I'd ever felt in my life as a knife dug slowly into the side of my neck, slowly running towards the back. I felt blood dripping and I tried to scream but something weird happened; I could hear myself screaming very loudly but it was high-pitched and almost fake-sounding; I really only managed to produce a very low whisper.

I kid you not, I couldn't sleep for days after that.

Now, I get the sensation of someone lying on the bed beside me, touching my back or neck, and sometimes vibrations... Not quite as scary as before, even though it's still unnerving. :P

I never experienced any of the hallucinations but the Sleep paralysis feels extremely alien, its like someone puts you on a table and scans you rapidly and you feel the scans going up and down and this lasts for like 10 to 20 seconds your heart rate also goes up and (what i see) a white light just appears as if something bright was shown upon you. Then you falsely wake up in your bed.

What i feel when SP kicks in is like the whole world is vibrating because of the GIANT bass of a rock consert.
I can almost feel that i can see myself through another persons eyes or something as i lay still.
Scary the first time it happened to me, but now it's like having a friend come over to your house

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Originally Posted by G0MPgomp

You have... You need it to dream..


You do not sleap walk.. Nor, sleep talk..

Guess why? ;)

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The weird thing is... I have had two very distinct experiences where I was able to manage a scream from an actual dream (HILARIOUS, as I was sleeping with someone else in the room and, both times, scared them to death) :laugh:

The first, I was in an argument with someone with a group of people, who were telling me I had to SCREAM to get the anger out of me. We counted down and I screamed the highest scream I could, woke myself, the other person in the room, and the people in the room beside us (was on vacation in a hotel, LOL) :lol:

The next one, I was in a dream where I was (again) upset with someone (geez, I have suppressed issues I guess)... This person, by the way, was IN THE SAME ROOM.... and I woke them AND myself up from screaming horrible angry things. I was in a dream at the exact same time.

I read that you don't always need to be in REM to dream but that that is when it is most likely?