1st time sleep paralysis (eek)

[Grayness]

In this short lucid dream I had there was a window that looked similar to my window of my bedroom, so I approached it. When I approached it I opened my real eyes and my mind woke up. The only things I could control when I woke up were my eyes. In my effort to squirm, yell, and move my limbs I also kept hallucinating that I was falling out of my bed, and kept seeing a dark figure at the foot of my bed. I kept trying to lift my head up to see the figure, but it felt as though my body weighed a million lbs, so all I could see is the top of its head. I began to panic a bit and the feeling of being clastrophobic set in after around 5 minutes of this. Thats when I remembered reading about wiggling your toes, and it worked! It felt like an electric shock was being put into my legs as I kept wiggling my toes around. After about another minute I got out of bed finally and washed my face to make sure I wasnt dreaming. Why did this happen? Why did I have my first paralysis so late in life, and does it have anything to do with the fact I have started really putting effort into lucid dreaming?

[Serkat]

Why did this happen? Why did I have my first paralysis so late in life, and does it have anything to do with the fact I have started really putting effort into lucid dreaming? Certainly that is the reason. There's probably no specific reason that you could or should point your finger at. It's just that you're experimenting with new states of dream consciousness and sooner or later things will get mixed up in your brain if you do. Which is not a bad thing at all. When I work on LDing and dream memory more and actually get LDs, I also get a lot more SP. Me getting a lot of SP is, I guess, individual for me, probably because I'm not that deep a sleeper. But the connection is definitely there. I mean... before I tried LDing I didn't have a single SP occurrence in those 17 years and since I started I probably had like 50 or more. I suggest relaxing into the state and just letting things happen. Now that you know how it feels like approximately, you'll probably find it easier to enjoy the state more from now on. The most important thing is to just remember that nothing of what's going on is real. Relax into the state, let your body fall and finally try to disassociate from and exit it to enter the dream world. SP never really lasted longer than how long I wanted it to last for me. I think it has to do with being relaxed and accepting, that means, not resisting and not trying hard to escape. Instead, work with your imagination from a relaxed state and be aware that you not feeling able to move is simply an illusion. I've made the experience that when I try to move my body, I usually create the dream body and get stuck in the dream world (which is usually my intention), instead of getting any part of my body moving. To wake up, I don't really try to move, I just stay relaxed but instead of getting deeper into the state I kind of imagine it to get higher and higher until I wake up. By working with the sleeping (dream) body, I feel, I am just reinforcing my connection with the paralysis and the REM stage by putting in effort and using these illusions that are given to me. It's pretty much like in LDs where you'll wake up if you stare at things and thereby interrupt the input/output cycle of the dream and where you'll stay in the dream by using all kinds of dream things and using your senses. Anyway, I suggest experimenting with the state. I find it highly entertaining. You can create all kinds of funny sensations in your body, move vibrations from A to B, feel like you're sinking into the ground, get shock-like things like you described, create a second body, or just fly out of your skull up up and away. In my first SP I heard like waves of an ocean and tin foil rustling in wind which was kind of relaxing and contrary to what I expected it to be like. Heard all these crazy stories about people feeling like they're dieing or stuff like that but I think it's a rather positive experience although I had some unpleasant encounters as well. Also just try ignoring your body completely. Meditation practice is helpful for this. Then just focus on your imagination and create some scenario, look around in it, imagine your hands, imagine touching things and people approaching you. This can also lead to a lucid dream with some practice, if there is still REM time available. If you can't seem to wake up, it's probably a sign that you should forget about waking up and try to enter a lucid dream to use up the remaining dream time. Sometimes though, you just get SP at the end of REM.

[Grayness]

thank you very much for the useful input! Ill try to keep that stuff in mind next time I encounter another SP.