Thread: Sleep Paralysis

i experience it quite a lot....whenever i try WILD or take a midday nap and im woken up halfway through fallign asleep,i suffer SP...sometimes when i sleep in and continue to wake up and doze off for 30 minute periods,ill wake up with extreme SP...i used to hate it,now i just calm down and wait for my mind to wake up and make it go away.

I used to experience it all the time. Several time a week actually. It seemed to happen when I went to bed not very exhausted. I found that it happened when I was laying on my back mostly. I could never keep from panicking and that just made it worse. Every once in a while I experience it, but can never calm myself down, even after learning all this stuff on sleep and dreaming. Last time it happened I kept telling myself to calm down, but then I felt like I was underwater and couldn't breathe. I even told myself then that I was fine, but it didn't work. Kinda sucks, I just panic waaaayyyy too much.

yeah, I've had it several times when I was semi lucid

with practice and sheer will, I've learned to break out of it, or at least wake myself up

I love Sleep Paralysis. I experience it several times per week, but only when I make a conscious effort to lucid dream. I don't experience it when I don't try to become lucid. Sleep paralysis is cool because it's a meditative state and meditative states are cool per se.

I really enjoy SP to some extent- it's an interesting experience! On the other hand, it is terrifying! The worst one i've experienced is one in which there was some large, dark, animal that was coming towards me. It makes the hairs on my neck stand on end as I write about it now!

That sounds like The old hag syndrom.

I've had only one LD in which I expirienced sleep paralysis, I think.

Originally posted by DocORock
Has anyone ever experienced sleep paralysis?

Please leave your experience(s) here - as many as you wish. The more you share, the better my research will be.

I use to have it alot when I worked the graveyard shift. I remember once I worked all night and then drove200 miles to p/u my girlfriend and bring her back home from school... We went to her house and I went to sleep. I was worn out..I got the feeling that I could not breathe.. I knew my girlfriend was beside me and I was trying to move or to talk or to do anything to get her attention and wake me up.. It was like my mind was awake but my body was sound asleep and would not wake up.. I could not move and It did not feel like I could breathe. I finally was able to wake myself up... It was not a good experience

I have experienced it rarely (maybe a few times a year, although I've seen it more often lately as I've been poking around with lucid dreaming and with what happens as I fall asleep or wake up). I've never had an extremely unpleasant one that I remember. Usually, it will be upon awakening, and in most cases my eyes are already open and I don't feel unusual at all except for the fact that my body doesn't respond to attempted movements. It's never lasted more than a minute or two for me.

I don't remember when I first noticed SP, but I don't think I recognized myself as being paralyzed at first--it was more like I was tricked into thinking I was simply too tired to move.

I only remember one occasion so far where I actually had a hallucination during SP, and it was just an auditory one. It was right after a dream which I had forgotten most of immediately upon becoming conscious (I only had a vague idea of what it was about), and my mind was in a weird, confused state at first. The sound was a very loud rumbling sound that made it feel like the ground was shaking, but for some reason it wasn't as scary as it sounds like it should have been, although it made me a bit nervous. It lasted several moments and gradually went away. But I could see that it was sunny outside and no one else in the house seemed to have any reaction, so I assumed it didn't really happen and moved on.

Occasionally my eyes will be closed during SP, but not very often. I think I remember one occasion where they sort of opened on their own, and since I was still only half-awake the signals from my eyes were quite confusing until I was actually able to process them.

I've occasionally regained consciousness while still in a partially-asleep state and in paralysis. My ears will have a strange moderately soft rumbling sound, and sometimes I'll feel numb all over. I once (purposely) succeeded in entereing a lucid dream from that state by attempting to move anyway, except I had trouble moving in the lucid dream too.

Now, it's easy for me to recognize when I'm under paralysis, but there was one recent event where I was under paralysis with my eyes closed, but didn't realize I was paralyzed. Instead, I was just confused and didn't really know what was happening--I sort of thought I was still asleep and couldn't figure out why I couldn't "wake up".

I can only remember going through sleep paralysis one time and it wasn't actually that bad (relatively speaking). There were no flashing lights or sounds, I just wasn't able to move - it was pretty freaky for me, though, because I didn't know why I couldn't move. After a minute or so I fell back to sleep.

I had sleep paralysis frequently when I was in adolescence (which was overall a fertile and funky dreamy time of life for me). I still have them several times a year (some 30 years later) and although I recognize what they are and intellectually know that I will gain the ability to move shortly, I always respond with panic and achieve motion with a jerk and my heart pounding. But the worst experience I had recently was actually a false awakening in which I thought I had sleep paralysis but didn't snap out of it because I was not awake. That was fairly horrific until I figured out I was still asleep. I always have my eyes closed during sleep paralysis. Instead of waiting it out, I find myself trying really hard to move a finger or toe until I suddenly snap out of it and jerk up in bed. My panic is likely connected to the fact that I had this experience for many, many years before I knew what it was and that it was neither unusual nor something to fear. I also find that as I get older I am more likely to have one if I am taking a nap during the day or sleeping past my normal time in the morning.

Just recent;y I had the first "Real" SP ever. Usually, I classify SP as the tingle, but I had the full ' Oh shit, I can't move!" thing. I had been attacked by a fairly large cat after I had tripped on something, And I could feel it crawling up to my face as I woke up, and I couldn't move for a few seconds.

i've experienced it quite alot - it seems to be at the times when I've had a messed up sleeping pattern. It's actually really freaky. Usually when trying to break out of it (ie.move) I get pretty panicked. On one occasion it felt like there was some phantom(?) messing with me.......

Originally posted by ruawake
On one occasion it felt like there was some phantom(?) messing with me.......

'twas the hag