Thread: What Sleep Paralysis Is, and Why You Don't 'Need' It to WILD

The underlying problem in the thread appears to be disagreement over what "sleep paralysis" refers to.

Some in the thread think of sleep paralysis as being just that, paralyzed while asleep. This is what happens basically every night when you fall asleep.

Others refer to sleep paralysis as being the HI, sounds, and sensations you sometimes experience on your way to sleep. There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence on the forums that these sensations are in no way required to WILD successfully.

We need clarification on the term. What exactly does "SP" refer to?

Originally Posted by Licity

The underlying problem in the thread appears to be disagreement over what "sleep paralysis" refers to.

Some in the thread think of sleep paralysis as being just that, paralyzed while asleep. This is what happens basically every night when you fall asleep.

Others refer to sleep paralysis as being the HI, sounds, and sensations you sometimes experience on your way to sleep. There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence on the forums that these sensations are in no way required to WILD successfully.

We need clarification on the term. What exactly does "SP" refer to?

Precisely LaBerge used SP as a general term to refer to REM atonia, as well as the occurrence of muscle paralysis outside of REM sleep, the strange sensations of buzzing, vibrating, etc... but sleep paralysis (the Hag Phenomenon) is the paralysis of your body when you wake up from or just before sleep... it's called isolated sleep paralysis, it's considered a disorder! So it's got quite a misleading name to begin with, seeing as you are no longer asleep when you experience it (as opposed to REM atonia). Then there are the hallucinations that your partially-dreaming mind uses to explain the sensations, etc... sort of a byproduct, if you will, but most importantly, the experience of isolated sleep paralysis is considered a disorder; clearly if we are finding ways to 'induce' this it isn't really a strict disorder, I guess hence the dropping of "isolated" and the retention of "sleep paralysis" even in the absence of sleep. But sleep paralysis, by definition, is the experience of REM atonia. So unless you are trying to move your body and you try to get out of bed and you are paralyzed, you aren't experiencing sleep paralysis. If you experience the 'derivative symptoms' (*shrug*), you still aren't actually experiencing sleep paralysis. You're experiencing some weird buzzing and shit. Even when you hallucinate that there are witches and evil shit and your body is buzzing or falling out the wazoo, you still aren't experiencing sleep paralysis, you're just buzzing and hallucinating. I guess the big problem is that these SP derived symptoms don't have a name of their own, so SP is used to cover REM atonia (normally and naturally), sleep paralysis as a disorder, sleep paralysis as an induced state by keeping your mind awake intentionally while drifting asleep and then finding that you can't move your body (which requires that you try to move your body), as well as all the hallucinations and weird perceptions you get as you fall asleep and experience REM atonia setting in early. And, most notably, the onset of REM atonia is not something that you experience unless you are trying to physically move your body and finding yourself paralyzed. So unless during a WILD attempt you decide to get out of bed and dance but find that you can't, no one is actually experiencing sleep paralysis while WILDing. The atonia related perceptions may or may not be experienced during a WILD, but if you aren't finding your body to be paralyzed, you aren't experiencing SP.

I have a paper due in like 6 hours that I haven't started, so that's that for now. I have no idea what I said, please pick it apart!

can someone give me an estimate of how long it would take for sp to come about? like.. tried counting in your sleep? then how long it takes?

.. or is it bad to count at all?

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/...rticlekey=9811

Definition of Atonia, REM sleep
Atonia, REM sleep : A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body.

The symptoms of sleep paralysis include sensations of noises, smells, levitation, paralysis, terror, and images of frightening intruders. Once considered very rare, about half of all people are now believed to experience sleep paralysis sometime during their life.

Sleep paralysis strikes as a person is moving into or out of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the deepest part of sleep. During REM sleep the body is largely disconnected from the brain leaving the body paralyzed. Sleep paralysis is the result of premature (or persistent) mind-body disconnection as one is about to enter into (or exit from) REM sleep.

Originally Posted by moonshine

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/...rticlekey=9811

You missed the most important part:

Sleep paralysis strikes as a person is moving into or out of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the deepest part of sleep. During REM sleep the body is largely disconnected from the brain leaving the body paralyzed.[this is atonia...] Sleep paralysis is the result of premature (or persistent) mind-body disconnection as one is about to enter into (or exit from) REM sleep.

Although it does say that all the hallucinations and terrors are symptoms of SP, it does say that you have find yourself unable to move- so the criteria being that you tried to move, found you couldn't, and then experienced all the other stuff, I guess. I don't like that site, just the way it starts out makes it seem illegitimate.

This one does it better, nice and clear:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-REMatonia.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87...paralysis.html

And here is a great and easy read that I found linked on that site that is informative about REM in general:

http://www.ajpe.org/legacy/pdfs/aj620216.pdf

Best part:

"Generally, REM dreams are longer, more visual, more bizarre, and not as related to actual life events. Those dreams in which Elvis is skateboarding with your mother but it's not really your mother, it's really your cat, and suddenly Elvis has turned into Bullwinkle, although he still sings very well, is probably a REM sleep dream. Or incipient mental illness."

ahahaha

Wasn't thor banging on about him the only way you can know your in sleep paralysis is by trying to move and being unable to.

Is in not equally possible to be in sleep paralysis (or REM atonia or whatever), and, by willing yourself to move, break out of it.

Numerous posters have described this. Being able to move but being sluggish and slow initially.

yes you can break out of it. what basically happens is your mind wakes your body up. Thats why it doesnt go on forever, any time you "break" out of sleep paralysis, it is because your mind "willed" it to happen through its own means.

Originally Posted by moonshine

Wasn't thor banging on about him the only way you can know your in sleep paralysis is by trying to move and being unable to.

Unless we want to hopelessly confuse the discussion, let's first distinguish between REM atonia and sleep paralysis, the former being natural and the latter being a sleep disorder.

If you are in sleep paralysis, you cannot possibly know that you have it before you have tried to move and failed. If you don't report the symptom, you don't have the disorder. It would be analogous to saying "I had a horrible headache; I didn't feel any pain at all, but I just know I had it."

If you're in REM atonia the experience is maximally internal, so you feel and control your dream body instead of your real body, hence no experience of REM atonia.

Is in not equally possible to be in sleep paralysis (or REM atonia or whatever), and, by willing yourself to move, break out of it.

Numerous posters have described this.

They haven't really described it. They have described their interpretation of an experience in which they assume they know when they are in REM atonia, when it is in fact highly unlikely that they can know this. Most likely they were not in REM at all, hence they were able to move just fine.

I've seen many people here on DV say things like: "be careful not to move, or you'll break SP." What kind of paralysis "breaks" when you try to move? None; it's a contradiction.

Being able to move but being sluggish and slow initially.

When you fall asleep there is loss of muscle tone. Yet you are fully able to move even though your movements will be sluggish. People turn and toss in their sleep all through the night, except of course when they are in REM sleep.

Originally Posted by Shift

This one does it better, nice and clear:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-REMatonia.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87...paralysis.html

Thanks for digging up these nice references, Shift.

And here is a great and easy read that I found linked on that site that is informative about REM in general:

http://www.ajpe.org/legacy/pdfs/aj620216.pdf

Best part:

"Generally, REM dreams are longer, more visual, more bizarre, and not as related to actual life events. Those dreams in which Elvis is skateboarding with your mother but it's not really your mother, it's really your cat, and suddenly Elvis has turned into Bullwinkle, although he still sings very well, is probably a REM sleep dream. Or incipient mental illness."

Yes, this is generally the case. If you read a description of a vivid, clearly recalled dream it's most likely an REM dream. But in a certain percentage of cases it will be an NREM dream. Studies disagree on how big this percentage is, but the suggested numbers are in the range 5-30%.

Originally Posted by Lionsroar

can someone give me an estimate of how long it would take for sp to come about? like.. tried counting in your sleep? then how long it takes?

.. or is it bad to count at all?

I guess I can only speak for myself here, but still - when reading the word "sleep paralyzis", the only thing I think about is not being able to move "while in bed" (I use the words "while in bed" on purpose, because I do not want to imply any specific situation or time I want to associate it with).

As to answer your question - or at least telling you about my personal experiences - it's not a specific stage that happens after some time, it just happens when your mind enters your dream, and stops when you wake up.
Try the "first grab" method - the following things have happened to me when trying it:
-) I actually moved my body, and the dream scene disappeared -> I was too awake
-) The dream scene faded while I moved my dream body, and my physical body only moved a few inches
-) As the dream scene faded away I moved around in it for a short time, and my physical body wasn't moving *at all* until the scene had faded away completely.
-) I was in a lucid dream

My guess is that it's different for everybody. Our understanding of the brain is too limited to know exactly how things work. Maybe for some people it actually is a "stage" while falling asleep, where first the mind disconnects from the physical body, and only *then* starts creating the dream scene, which then also creates the possibility of being "stuck" in this stage... Clearly not the most comfortable thing to wish for

Originally Posted by Shift

If you experience the 'derivative symptoms' (*shrug*), you still aren't actually experiencing sleep paralysis. You're experiencing some weird buzzing and shit.[/I]

I think you are on to something here, Shift. This is probably close to the source of all the confusion.

There are two kinds of sleep paralysis (in the sense of a disorder):

• Common sleep paralysis (CSP). This is the most common kind of SP. It means that you are in the awake state, you find you can't move, and you typically get scared. It lasts for a short time, and it usually occurs when waking up and rarely when falling asleep.
• Hallucinatory sleep paralysis (HSP), also known as hypnagogic sleep paralysis. This is rare and seems to be geographically episodic. The main difference between this and CSP is that it is also accompanied by hallucinations and can last for several minutes.

So maybe what happened was that some people started interpreting their perfectly normal hypnagogic hallucinations as symptoms of HSP, even though they hadn't experienced any kind of paralysis.