My thoughts on escaping sleep paralysis and prolonging dreams
I've noticed a lot of people seem to have trouble with taking SP and making a dream out of it. For some people it happens naturally, but sometimes you have to put in the effort consciously.
When you’re in sleep paralysis, your focal point is still kind of stuck to your physical body, so when you go to move your body, you can't, because your mind hasn’t forgotten where your real body is.. yet. Translation = your mind hasn't fallen asleep completely (by disassociating from your body), but your body has (by initiating SP). A lot of people who WILD might know what usually comes after SP, you know that moment where you've imagined a scene or one pops into your head, and it's just really a thought for a bit, but in the next moment, bam, you’re there. It's almost like you just "walked right into it". Your mind just needed a new body to fill it's self into. In order to complete that last step of "getting the mind to sleep".
Suddenly the focal point is tricked into believing that this faux (dream) body that you have imagined having well in SP is your real body, your focus was grounded to it just like it was grounded to your real one. But how is that "new self" (the dream self) brought to life from the bare waste land of SP and inserted into your imagined dream scape consciously. I’m willing to bet you either experienced a sense of movement, or position change. I said that the focus is pinned to the body, but the focus knows were the body is because it was offered a sense of position. Ever been laying in bed wide awake with your eyes closed, and you "know" that you’re in your bed facing a certain way, sometimes you may have felt like you were looking at the wall, then you opened your eyes, and whoa, you weren't looking were you expected. It's easy to mess with your sense of position if you "spin" in a chair on wheels with your eyes closed, sometimes your brain will guess where your facing. It likes to make guesses based on what you expect your position to be. So, some people like to imagine a scene in SP, where they are in another position, and when they trigger their eyes to open, they will be there, hopefully with a new dream body. It also helps to imagine your body in a different position then your waking body is in. Anything that pulls that last bit of focus away from your waking body and pins it to this new dream body.
Movement gives an indication to your mind as well, as to where your body is. For me, I imagine rolling over during SP (in the case of us less visual people). Your mind senses some type of movement and goes "hmm, this is where the body is". At this point I can take over with actual movements, and not imagined ones, which is what ultimately solidifies the scene, because at this point, my focus is pretty convinced that this is my real body. The perfect way to get out of SP for me, is to feel at one with this imagined body, by imaging it moving, and in a different position. You can do this well awake, but your focal point is so strongly pinned to your physical body, that it will be difficult to get a real sense of movement and position that isn’t based on reality. Still you will understand the sense of movement a thought can bring to you. Ever been laying still close to sleeping and suddenly felt your whole body jerk for no reason, it probably scared you for a secound? It's called hypnic jerk, and it happened because for a moment, your brain thought your body was in a different position (pinned to an imagined one, most likely standing up right). And then your focus reverted back to your body laying in bed, it interpreted the movement from imagined body to real body as a fall. I hope you’re getting the idea that the base of your focus is almost magnetic in nature, and likes to attach itself to the body in general. And from there, the rest of your focus branches out to cover the world around you, whatever world that might be.
The last crucial step to escaping SP is to move your limbs like you normally would well awake, you do this when those imagined movements/positions reach their peak, no imagining it this time though. Usually once I get a decent sense of position from my imagination, I'll just start moving my legs and walk for real. Some people reach out and grab stuff (I remember tutorials on such things), so walking isn't necessarily the only way to move like this through your imagination. Remember you must have some sense of imagined body position/movement before you move for real, else your just going to revert to the physical one. It doesn't have to be perfect, it can be a ways from it. However if you don't have this imagined sense , you will end up hopelessly attempting to move your frozen legs. If you can create that sense of dream body, then good. The dream body is the grounder of your focus, and it's your anchor to the dream.
Back to dream control. Let's look at a technique like "Spinning", you spin around and you’re supposed to save your dream. But some people aren't exactly sure why it works. Basically it convinces your mind (the lens of your focus) to stay pinned to this body, through the senses we talked about earlier, position, and movement. You really want to feel that momentum well your spinning. I think the best place to look is your feet if you are spinning for stabilization, but looking at your surroundings is good because the objects in the dream move relative to your position, you’ll want to focus on that sense of relativity between the objects in your dream and you. Looking at your feet reassures your focal point that your body is were you want to be (in the dream). Unless you want to teleport, then you should close your eyes and imagine where you'll end up like you did in the spinning chair earlier. In fact I usually just look at my feet to stabilize the dream without spinning. I'm not sure how popular this technique is these days, but I think it's really useful. Especially if you’re going to look at your feet well walking forward, then you create a sense of movement and position at the same time. Some people fall backwards, because it plays around with their sense of balance, which is one of the factors of your sense of position.
