sleep paralisis scary!

[awakeness]

i woke up at six the other morning and so i was going to try a wild. after i closed my eyes i went into sleep paralisis like 20 seconds later. my ceiling fan was on and its sound multiplied, then i heard a voice yelling at me "your not gonna die, your not gonna die. I panicked then woke up. sleep paralisis is scarier then i thought.

[Seeker]

Yeah, but since you understand what is happening to you, it's also extremely cool as well I can see how people in the past have been so freaked out by it!

[Jammy]

Dream paralysis can be very scary if not prepared or the first time experiencing it. The first time i experienced it i litararly, thought i was going to die. And to think one is going to die is a scary thing . So everytime i experienced it after that i was afraid and pulled out most of the times. I regret this today, when i think i had some great opertunities to have som WILDs. You just have to bear trough it, knowing that it happens all the time when your unaware of it, and its really as normal as eating.

[Replicon]

I have an SP question. How come some people often wake up in the middle of the night paralyzed and panic, while others like myself have never inadvertently experienced it... I mean, if a phone rings or whatever and you're jolted awake, you'd expect to be in sleep paralysis at SOME point (especially when sleeping in, so you're mostly in REM)... Does your brain re-engage your body superfast, so you don't actually notice what's happened?

[YULAW]

Thats a good question. I mean thats something I've tried to figure out for a long time. But actually I believe that everyone will experience SP at least once in their lifetime. Some people just experience it in waves. I do and I could never figure out why I was having them all the damn time. Especially when I was younger and waking myself up from a scray lucid dream then i would wake right into SP. I don't have the answer to that question but there must be some answer... Any suggestions?

[RollinStoned]

I have experienced SP more times than I can remember. When I was younger it happened to me quite frequently, and it terrified my every single time. Always involved me seeing people break into my room and stuff like that. At one point they became so frequent that I became used to them, and during one night I thought to myself "Why is everything always scary when this happens?" Since that day SP has not been frightening to me at all, and I am currently trying to utilize such experiences for dream control. No success yet though, but it does help me become lucid at times.

[Priddo]

I too used to get SP on a fairly regular basis when i was alittle younger, it it was always fairly scary to me at the time, mostly because i had no clue what it was, or why it kept on happening. I don't get it anymore, even though i wish i did, so i could use it to WILD, but if i did im sure it wouldn't worry me so much.

[Seeker]

I've only experienced sleep paralysis a few times. You make a good point about jolting awake when the phone rings though. I suspect that perhaps most of the people that experienced sleep paralysis were removed from the gene pool ages ago. This must have been a recessive trait however, because it seems to be cropping up more often now that we live in a safer environment. Caveman Ug lies sleeping in his cave. He hears a lion approach but finds he is in sleep paralysis and cannot flee. Poor caveman Ug.

[djv]

Replicon, I think your example of the phone jolting you awake may be explained in that in SP you are in a state of partial awakeness (if that's a word). In this partial awake state there is HI and HS, just like when going to sleep (maybe it happens because someone has woken up, but is quickly falling back into REM sleep) combined with a delay in your dream paryalysis system shutting off (or maybe it's just starting to kick in again). That's why you hear the voices or see things that are not really there. When you are jolted awake, you are awake. I think in SP we are not awake and paralyzed, but fooled into thinking we are awake and of course, we are paralyzed. One way we can be fooled is that if we briefly wake up the brain immediately gets input on the position of the body and remembers this and even makes us "feel" this position as we are starting to go into REM again. So, we feel our body and try to move, but we can't until we can finally force ourselves to really be awake.

[djv]

Replicon, I think your example of the phone jolting you awake may be explained in that in SP you are in a state of partial awakeness (if that's a word). In this partial awake state there is HI and HS, just like when going to sleep (maybe it happens because someone has woken up, but is quickly falling back into REM sleep) combined with a delay in your dream paryalysis system shutting off (or maybe it's just starting to kick in again). That's why you hear the voices or see things that are not really there. When you are jolted awake, you are awake. I think in SP we are not awake and paralyzed, but fooled into thinking we are awake and of course, we are paralyzed. One way we can be fooled is that if we briefly wake up the brain immediately gets input on the position of the body and remembers this and even makes us "feel" this position as we are starting to go into REM again. So, we feel our body and try to move, but we can't until we can finally force ourselves to really be awake.

[latency]

I've never had sleep paralysis before... I really want to try it, but I'm not good at WILDs, so it's hard for me to achive it.