Thread: Sleep Paralysis

I've had the misfortune of experiencing full sleep paralysis on several occasions. The first time was when I woke up, and I saw the flashing lights of a police car were illuminating the walls of my room. What was scary was that I couldn't move or speak at all. As for the police car, it was across the road.

Unfortunately, every time I experienced sleep paralysis, I had awakened rather abruptly. The loss of motor functions wasn't that horrible, but the loss of my own voice was the most frightening.

Probably the most frustrating thing ever happened last night. At about 1:15 AM, I went to bed and started my meditation / get my body loose and my eye lids heavy. The sleep paralysis started in my hands again, but they started in both hand symmetrically at my pinkie. I was very patient because I had no reason to get a good night sleep, and I was very curious to where this may lead. Random muscles in my body began to contract and then get numb. Sometimes the numbness was annoying (almost painful); how many people have had their shoulder fall asleep or their chest?

I spent remained motionless and just thought as my body was taken over by sleep paralysis. This process seemed to take a LONG time, and the last body part to go was my face. After my body was "sleeping", it felt like my body was meshed together as one big blob. My brain could not distinguish my hand from the hip it was laying next too. My legs were touching when I fell asleep, but I could no longer feel where they were touching let alone the blanket beneath them.

To my joy, my heart rate and breathing never got uncontrollable (I was not anxious but patient rather - I just let things come to me). However weird/new things did happen: I noticed I was getting warm (probably from having two blankets, and my tongue made a swallowing motion automatically every once in a while (this startled me the first time but I learned to ignore it).

The images I got were awful and got boring after a while. The lights came in lines, but they seemed to leave just as fast as they came. I kept telling myself that I was only a few minutes away from lucidity. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I was singing songs in my head (became subconsciously done after a while). I did hear "white noise" and a dog barking constantly that I am 99% sure did not exist.

After this eternity of waiting, I started losing focus and random thoughts jumping in and out of my head. Staying focused was a lot easier said than done. I got really mad and fought my sleep paralysis (started moving all my body parts) - I felt like I had a casing all the way around my body 1mm off my skin (I was able to move or thought I moved it a negligible distance before it hit the barrier. It did not take long at all to break free, but every body part weighed 1000 pounds and was numb as hell. I did every reality check I could think of, but I passed them all. My body felt weird, and my eyes had a lot of trouble with clarity (the object I looked at was in focus, but everything around it was a blur). My body normalized and so did my vision in a few min.

To my disappointment, I looked at the clock and it read 3:34 AM. I was sleep paralyzed anywhere from an hour to two hours (closer to two). I knew it felt like an eternity lying there, but I had no real gauge of time. I also got a HUGE HEADACHE. My brain felt like it was punishing me for tricking it all this time.