Sleep Paralysis as an end in its own right...

So, having read lots of accounts of people's experiences of WILD etc. and having had a couple of successful WILD dives myself (most of mine end up in giving up or waking up later realising I just plain fell asleep without taking my consciousness with me!) I am aware that I've never experienced any of the various things that people talk about and sometimes call Sleep Paralysis (yeah, I know this is a shoddy description, but hey)

As well as totally loving Lucid Dreaming itself, I'm also beginning to feel that I'd quite like to experience these odd halucinations / body distortions / loud noises etc. for their own sake. I'm curious like that.

Has anyone ever discussed / discovered ways to *increase* the chance of these things?

Additionally, the thought does cross my mind that the fact I've never experienced these things, dispite many attempts at WILD, may possibly be a clue to my lack of success - I've managed to go directly from waking to lucid dreaming a couple of times, but frankly never during a deliberate WILD attempt.

Any thoughts?

SammyTheSnake

Some people experience sleep paralysis and hypnopompic/hypnagogic hallucination, others don't. And that's all there is to it basically. We don't really know why some people are prone to sleep paralysis and some people aren't, it's a mystery. What is clear is that SP is not necessary for WILDing, not at all! As for hallucinations, the reigning theory (Allen Cheyne at University of Waterloo in Canada) is that the Intruder and Incubus sometimes experienced are results of a brain's panicked reaction to sleep paralysis. It's a bit more nuanced than that, but the gist is that you awake with SP, then brain realizes it is vulnerable and produces a 'felt presence,' with lack of sensory stimuli the brain creates its own (hallucination).

Seeking out hallucinations is a tricky business, and you prob won't be able to accomplish it without somehow harming yourself (eg. methamphetamine abuse, extreme sleep deprivation etc.). That being said, I am not a hallucinator, yet I've experienced sleep paralysis with hypnopompic imagery before when I'm very stressed AND have recently been thinking about SP. So who knows :)

After this post and sins jabbering on the IRC chartroom, I had a couple of interesting experiences that sort of fit into this category that I thought if share.

In one, is drifting in and out of sleep in the last couple of hours of the night and I was aware that I could see my bedroom sideways, like I was still in a dream and had my idea if up and down defined by head at the top, feet at the bottom, but my eyes were open and seeing the real world. I didn't have the brain power to realise that at the time. It happened again a couple of nights later but even though I realised what was going on I wasn't able to reenter the dream - I just woke up.

The other experience was a dream which included experiences that I think were a reflection of my real world body I was sleeping in a sleeping bag, and in my dream I remember feeling restricted and trying to move my arms but being unable to.

Not quite the hallucination type experience some people describe, but interesting all the same :-)

SammyTheSnake

I entered an interesting state the other night where I just didn't feel like moving at all and although I could, I felt as though my body might as well be paralyzed. I started thinking about SP and believe I psyched myself into feeling some sort of panic. I don't get SP and this was my first experience... but yea I have talked to people who have it and yea the feelings are so similar.

If you want hallucinations just take some hallucinagenics in a safe place. You take an eigth of mushrooms you be seeing and hearing some awfully strange things lol. I find SP from what I have heard to be somewhat similar though in that even if you know what it is, it can still be frightening. I don't know if it's because parts of the brain have shut down/shifted or what, but yea many people know about SP but still feel fear and if you take hallucinogenics your mind is altered to a state where you aren't able to make sense of things as well.

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Originally Posted by robertcox88

If you want hallucinations just take some hallucinagenics in a safe place. You take an eigth of mushrooms you be seeing and hearing some awfully strange things lol. I find SP from what I have heard to be somewhat similar though in that even if you know what it is, it can still be frightening. I don't know if it's because parts of the brain have shut down/shifted or what, but yea many people know about SP but still feel fear and if you take hallucinogenics your mind is altered to a state where you aren't able to make sense of things as well.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by robertcox88

If you want hallucinations just take some hallucinagenics in a safe place. You take an eigth of mushrooms you be seeing and hearing some awfully strange things lol. I find SP from what I have heard to be somewhat similar though in that even if you know what it is, it can still be frightening. I don't know if it's because parts of the brain have shut down/shifted or what, but yea many people know about SP but still feel fear and if you take hallucinogenics your mind is altered to a state where you aren't able to make sense of things as well.

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Hmm, not sure about this one. As someone who has experienced both SP and the effects of psilocybin, I didn't really notice any similarities between them. With sleep paralysis you are very much awake and things are very vividly real. These hallucinations seem like something that the brain has just created. What you see looks like reality. On hallucinogens, and mushrooms in particular, you are pretty aware that what you are seeing is not real and it certainly doesn't look real. These hallucinations are more like a distortion of reality than a made-up reality.

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Originally Posted by kevojy

Hmm, not sure about this one. As someone who has experienced both SP and the effects of psilocybin, I didn't really notice any similarities between them. With sleep paralysis you are very much awake and things are very vividly real. These hallucinations seem like something that the brain has just created. What you see looks like reality. On hallucinogens, and mushrooms in particular, you are pretty aware that what you are seeing is not real and it certainly doesn't look real. These hallucinations are more like a distortion of reality than a made-up reality.

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Yes I experience the distortions as well and agree that's a more accurate descriptions... it's a distorted view of actually reality as opposed to it fitting into reality. What I am actually more comparing is the feelings that can accompany it. For me, with psychedelics I generally experience paranoia because i feel vulnerable. I am not able to do tasks should a situation call for it. Everybody will tell you do hallucinogenics in a safe place partly for that reason... but everybody reacts to them differently. Some people have more of their wits about them... for me I generally become totally useless engulfed in a flurry of wild thoughts. That feeling of paranoia and fear is what people claim to experience with SP and even when one knows what is happening, the feelings that are present can overwhelm reason. Maybe for some people the brain is in a state where reason is distorted because those parts of the brains are shutting down. i don't feel much control if I take too much of a psychedelic and trying to stay in control is very difficult.

If that still doesn't relate to you then maybe my points are just plain invalid. But either way yea if OP wants to see things that seem vividly rreal, then hallucinogenics/psychedelics aren't the answer, but they may be if OP just wants experience some vivid distortions, then they may be the answer.

I'm not really up for anything that's illegal, or anything that has the potential to cause long term negative effects (e.g. LSD has the potential to cause flashbacks even decades later - not fun IMO) but I wouldn't rule out hallucinogenics altogether as an interesting experience. Even if I were to try them, though, the hallucinations etc. of "SP" would still be something I'd want to give a go, even if only to compare the two...

SammyTheSnake

Try doing the plank position (like you are about to do a pushup, with your palms on the ground or with your elbows on the ground and your palms together) for 4-6 consecutive minutes just before you go to bed.

This was what I did one night and I woke up from a dream in the middle of the night with the sensation of my mind being awake while my body was still sleeping and it was the most relaxing thing ever. I heard and felt the sensation of my breathing and heart beating and it was like I was just a small, dense entity resting inside my body somewhere near my heart.

When I tried to research what had happened, I learned about sleep paralysis and read, I think on webmd, that strenuous exercise before bed can contribute to sleep paralysis. Maybe it has something to do with endorphins.

I can pretty consistently experience hypnagogia, but not SP. Hypnagogia has some weird hallucinations and sounds that come with it and it's pretty easy to go SP out of hypnagogia, but you're an experienced dreamer so if it hasn't happened to you yet it probably doesn't work for you. But, for anyone else reading this post I'll leave this here since it might work for them.

When I wake up in the morning at my normal time, I force myself to go back to sleep (Have 1 hour to spare after you wake up). Make sure not to move at all, makes it easier. Then, you'll probably fall asleep a few times and wake up and then fall back a sleep within an hour- 3 or 4 times is my average. From there, you'll usually experience hypnagogia atleast one of those times and you'll be gucci. If you want SP, just use your imagination to imagine yourself stiff as a board and then just think of a bunch of scary thoughts. It works for me even though I fucking hate hypnagogia and sleep paralysis, so maybe it'll work for you. It's a neat trick for lucid dreaming in general too if you don't do the last step, drops you right into REM so you can do WILD and FILD.