hypnagogic/hypnopompic stuff: sleep paralysis or something else?

Hello, I'm new to this forum. Please forgive a long post, but between you, you must have a lot of experience and can maybe help to solve an old mystery for me.
I had this experience a lot for about twenty years starting suddenly at age twenty, and after that it has become much less frequent, but still happens occasionally. I suffered quite badly from sleep onset difficulties and it would usually happen after several hours of lying in bed not sleeping. Generally I feel a sort of tightness and perhaps buzzing in my head and sometimes upper body and a strong sense of movement away from my position lying in bed. Often it is sliding up the walls, sometimes moving into my partner’s side. The first time it happened to me I was convinced I had fallen out of bed, the second time it felt as if I rose a few inches above where I was lying and started to move out from the bed. I never felt it was a true OBE even supposing there to be such a thing, because there was no vision of my body and no sense of returning to it. When the sensations cease, I am aware I am just lying immobile in bed in the same position I had been in before. Usually it is a rather unpleasant experience and at first it was very frightening. After a while I learned to cope with it by repeating prayers and mantras (I was quite spiritually inclined then) and just hanging in there, aware that the apparent movement was not really happening and it would soon end.
I’ve read descriptions of sleep paralysis and recognise some features of what I've read in my experience, but mine doesn’t seem to be a classic case, as I never had the feeling of not being able to move, and while the fear and unease fit, there’s not usually the sense of a presence in the room, as far as I remember. A long time ago I read a newspaper article about temporal lobe seizures and wondered if that is what was happening to me. The worrying thing is that after the episode (I always wake up at that point) I can often feel a tingling in my head as though some abnormal electrical activity had taken place in my brain.
As I said, this happens much less frequently now, partly because I tend to sleep better nowadays, but even on bad nights it’s quite unusual. But having been thinking about it yesterday, I experienced a variant form this morning! The previous episodes were all, I think, in a hypnagogic context. This one seemed to be hypnopompic. I had woken up at my usual time in the morning. Having been reading about sleep paralysis, I though about it and began to feel my limbs very heavy but wasn’t sure if I could move them or not… anyway, I drifted off to sleep again, had a fairly normal dream in which I was moving around, then dreamed I was lying on my back in a dream setting (I was in that position in bed) and finally was aware of being in bed but at the same time drifting up supine to the ceiling. It was not unpleasant at all, and I thought ‘oh, this is a lucid dream’. Then I felt I was rocking from side to side in bed, and my left leg came out of the bed – and I woke, with all limbs still firmly in bed. I had that weird tingling feeling in my head.
It was odd to get the comparison with a lucid dream, because when I’d been talking to a friend recently I’d explained in answer to a query that these experiences were not at all like flying or floating in a lucid dream (the comparison hadn't occurred to me), because the LD experience is pleasant, and this isn’t; and these involve the dream body moving upwards from bed, while in the dreams I take off from a standing position in a dream location. But of course, in both there is the double consciousness – you are both moving and not moving.
Has anyone had experiences like these, and can anyone suggest an explanation?

It sounds a little hard to distinguish between the waking episodes and the dream episodes but either way they're quite similar and don't worry, none of this is abnormal nor some type of seizure. If this is a waking experience then it is most definitely sleep paralysis. During sleep paralysis (SP, for short) your body may feel heavy and you will often experience an inability to move though if you try to move you'll probably be able to (it's difficult to describe). Basically if you really want to move, you can. However, during SP hypnogogic hallucinations are very common and encompass all the senses though mainly sight and sound. A common form of this is a feeling of movement or vibrations, often described as floating a bit or limbs flailing despite the person being completely still. These are all hallucinations and are all completely natural, you have no reason to be afraid of them.

SP is often a scary experience when you don't know what it is and can still be a little spooky once you learn what it is but if you do choose to attempt lucid dreaming you'll be glad you have an easy time entering it/have experience with it. SP is a very common step in WILD (wake induced lucid dreaming) and from SP one can easily enter a dream without losing consciousness, becoming lucid. If you just accept all these occurrences and maintain the right balance of consciousness then a dream will likely start to form around and out of your hallucinations. You can then use this to do whatever you want.

Everything you've described is common dream phenomena especially when attempting lucid dreams. You shouldn't fear them at all and they can often be quite enjoyable just observing all the different things you brain can do. At worst it's a bad dream which you can easily combat with lucid dreaming; at best it's an excellent way to become lucid and you're lucky for having it happen to you :) (bet you weren't expecting anyone to call you lucky based on that story, huh? :cheeky:)

Well, that is sort of what I was hoping to hear, so thanks very much for the reassurance! As for using the experience for WILD, the problem is that so far I always wake up after this happens. But maybe having the confidence to know that another outcome is possible will help.