Thread: Sleep Paralysis - Have you experienced it?

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.

Originally Posted by whisperinggirl

Any ideas on getting rid of my fear of SP?

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?

Originally Posted by Brad7769

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

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!
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 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.

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

I find it incredibly intriguing after reading this entire thread, how nearly all people experience the "eyes" and seemingly dark being staring at them. I wonder why the coincidence? From what I observed, everyone had different mindsets at the time. Some not fearful, while others scared to death. Yet still... the same phenomenon. Veeeery interesting. I'm paranoid of SP! I've experienced it but only within a dream, where there was a fire in the house and I couldn't move... never mentally aware of it.

When i got my first SP i were waking up. When i realaised that i were awake but couldn't move, i knew that it was SP and not anything dangerous. I knew that my brother were in the same room, so i tried to scream but all i got was screaming inside my own head. Then i did feel pressure on my chest and just second after that i were able to move.

BTW, I didn't have any hallucinations, or at least i don't remeber having any.

The first time I ever had sleep paralysis, I was about 10 years old. I remember waking up, and not being able to open my eyes, or move, or talk. I wasn't really scared because my mom was at the door way talking to me, and I figured she knew that my silence was an agreement to what she was saying. Years later when I found out about sleep paralysis, I figured that my mom was probably never even there at all!

Since then I had only experienced it twice. They were pretty recent too. Like a month ago, and last week. It's very obvious, and not scary to me. I think it's really interesting, and the vibrations (you feel intense vibrations) are pretty jarring, but soothing at the same time.

Trying to WILD before any sleep isn't ideal. I tried that for weeks and one day after staying still for what felt like 45 minutes, I felt my body tingling. Eventually the tingling got stronger and my body felt heavier and my breathing slowed to a crawl. I could still move if I tried though so I don't know if I was 100% in it. I than heard voices and it scared the hell out of me and I moved so I cut it off.

For me it is a very interesting feeling. Pretty much all of the SP's I have gotten resulted from me not even trying at all. They just happened. What I experienced wasn't really scary or anything. I felt an inner rumbling coming from inside me and it was actually kinda peaceful and from my SP's that happen without warning, I usually take advantage of them and use them to enter a dream which I can't really move in and they only last for a few seconds. I think it's because I either enter to early or too late for me to really exert any control over the dream. Now even though I'm paralyzed, it's not a very frightening experience, but perhaps that is just me.

I have never had sleep paralysis. TBH thats kinda pissin me off. I have been trying and trying to have it. But I can't keep myself awake and have my body fall asleep. So annoying.

When I was a child, I had very unpleasant SP after half-waking from a nightmare twice. It was really terrible.
I sometimes enter SP intentionally now (for LDing) and it is quite nice . I have much more positive approach to it with LDing, so I can see nice HHs. Mainly I don't try to cry, so I am not frustrated when I can't cry anymore.

What sucks for me... even though it can be scary, I'm excited for it!

When I can feel a sleep paralysis coming on, the adrenaline starts to pump and then the paralysis fails... I wake back up...

I'll try it again to night to see if that happens.

I have! It's a lot of fun! There's tons of frightening things, but since I know it's sleep paralysis it's one of the greatest experiences in my life. I'd compare it to a full body orgasm.


I get full-body vibrations and waves. I hear LOUD classrooms of children talking, LOUD LOUD LOUD ringing in my ears, and occasionally LOUD LOUD LOUD screams and clanking noises (these are the most fun). My vision becomes strobe lights (I love this) usually. If I have my eyes open (which I have only done once, because I am trying to slip into dream, not visualize SP) I've seen cloaked figures with weapons in my room and had a female demon with an elongated mouth and sharp teeth mount me (in a rather sexual manner, but she had blue skin and was very threatening and frightening. Haha) and scream right up in my face while about to choke me. This was actually pretty damn fun, too.

It's all in how you perceive it. Some people are scared out of their minds and emotionally scarred. I consider it one of the best experiences of my life, second only to LDs.

Speaking of which, I have had near-lucid dreams where I've experienced SP in the dream. In one instance, I was upstairs in a room and kneeled (Tebowed. haha) and my vision became strobe and I got full body vibrations. I left the dream and was in SP and then slipped back in, doing the same once more.

I started to... My hands were numb and my blanket felt heavy... And if you've ever heard the song Moves Like Jagger, I heard the whistling from that... I was too afraid to open my eyes though... I only now realize now that if I did Adam Levine might have been standing before me. but knowing my luck it wouldve been something extemely creepy and scared me out of trying to LD for a while... I may try and open my eyes tonight though...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Nov. 13 (UPI) - Only 8 percent of the general population experiences sleep paralysis, but it is more frequent in students and psychiatric patients, U.S. researchers said.

Brian A. Sharpless, clinical assistant professor of psychology at Penn State, said some people who experience these episodes may regularly try to avoid going to sleep because of the unpleasant sensations they experience. But other people enjoy the sensations they feel during sleep paralysis.

"I realized that there were no real sleep paralysis prevalence rates available that were based on large and diverse samples," Sharpless said in a statement. "So I combined data from my previous study with 34 other studies in order to determine how common it was in different groups."

Sharpless and colleagues reviewed 35 published studies from the past 50 years to find lifetime sleep paralysis rates involved 36,533 people. Overall the review found that about one-fifth of these people experienced an episode at least once.

The study, published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, found 28 percent of students reported experiencing sleep paralysis, while nearly 32 percent of psychiatric patients reported experiencing at least one episode.

The witch trials in Salem, Mass., are thought possibly to involve the townspeople experiencing sleep paralysis, while in the novel "Moby Dick," the main character Ishmael experiences an episode of sleep paralysis in the form of a malevolent presence in the room.

I have, roughly, experienced sleep paralysis over 500 times in my life over the course of the past 10 or so years. I say rough estimation because I don't remember how frequently they occur in sequence any given night. I do however know that they occur far more than what is 'normal', even for chronic SP 'sufferers'. For me, they are almost always brought on by lack of sleep and almost always happen when I am falling asleep, although I have on occasion experienced SP upon waking. This has led me to consider experimenting intentional sleep deprivation, but I worry about the negative effects this would have on me during the day. I have had SP sometimes without being tired, so maybe one doesn't necessarily cause the other.

Once I realized that this could be used to initiate a lucid dream, I began to experiment with my 'episodes'. Unfortunately for me, sometimes the feeling of presences and the sense of 'evil' that I get are so overwhelming that I can do nothing else but 'will' myself out of the experience. But when I can enter, it is for a fleeting moment of astonishment. Usually this is accompanied by the sensation that I have left my body; I have left my apartment, 'flown' through the sky to my parent's house, and have smelled a flower in a way that was so realistic that the amazement brought me back to being awake. Other times I have just 'floated' around my room for a bit.

The range of my experiences with SP span from the the most horrifying (I have thought I was dying/was going to die at least 5 times), to the most sublime (I have left my body before after 'accidentally' discovering that I could do so). There is a sensation of electricity in my brain/body, sometimes with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I have, at times, considered that I was feeling my brain as it was producing electricity. The closest I could get to a metaphor is imagining 'waves' of energy coursing over your brain. Either this is immensely pleasurable or it is almost unbearably intense, but never painful. I have struggled for years to define my experiences in an easily explainable way, but there are memories of SP events that no one but a fellow 'experiencer' would be able to understand. I would love to explain more of what I know here as long this topic remains alive.

Does anyone else have advice for initiating LDs for me based on SP, or do I have to try it through some other method?