
Originally Posted by
Laurelindo
The state of being paralyzed during sleep - usually called "REM atonia" - is completely normal and in fact essential for your survival, because it stops you from acting out your dreams in waking life.
Your brain treats dreamed experiences exactly as if they happened in waking life, so if you dream about running then you will try to do the same thing in bed as well, and REM atonia stops you from doing that.
This also explains why people tend to move their eyes a lot during the REM stage;
it's the eye movements that they do during a dream at that point.
Some people sometimes wake up shortly before the paralysis has worn off, and yes, this could indeed be a very scary experience.
However, I have never heard of anyone who has felt the paralysis for longer than a couple minutes, so the best way to endure this is to remember that it is totally normal and that it will wear off in a moment.
I have also read on various Lucid Dreaming sites that you can even stop the paralysis yourself immediately by just holding your breath for a few seconds.
You could try some kind of mantra in order to maintain your focus on what you want to dream about.
In your case you could tell yourself over and over "tonight I am going to be Lynx from Chrono Cross", while you also imagine as vividly as possible what you want to do in that dream.
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