SP Question

Hello!

I've been doing a bunch of reading here on Dreamviews for the past couple days, (after just seeing 'Avatar' I had stumbled across this awkward link as one of the search results while Googling the movie, hahaha :shock: :P and when I explored the site a bit more I became fascinated with lucid dreams :D... apparently I'm not the only one around here in love with that movie, lol!) and after learning about sleep paralysis yesterday I decided to see what would happen if I tried completely relaxing as much as possible and staying still as I went to bed. I figured not much would happen since it was early at night and I hadn't been through any REM cycles beforehand.

Anyway, I started counting breaths and before long I started having to swallow thanks to the saliva building up in my throat :P

I tried to do it as involuntarily as possible (if that makes sense) but eventually I had a 'drifting' feeling and I was unable to distinguish my arms and legs; like the feeling you get when you cut off circulation to a limb while sleeping and you wake up and can't feel it there at all. All I could feel were my eyes and chest as I breathed. Also, parts of me felt like they were getting warm too.. But I don't think that I was really in SP because the whole time I could hear the water trickling around in my aquarium (plus the obnoxious snoring coming from the room next to mine :P) so I was sure that I was still awake. After a while I decided to give up and wanted to see how easy it was to sit up and move around.... it happened instantly, so I figured I never made it to full SP.

Anyway, I guess my question is... about halfway through it all, my eyes just started moving around like crazy involuntarily- I wasn't trying to move them, and I figured that this must be what REM is like.. but I know REM is impossible while you're awake. So has anybody else experienced this? Is it a possible occurrence during SP?

Thanks!

I had something very similar happen to me recently. NO SP though... I was laying on my side. I had woke up after about 6 hours sleep and lay in bed thinking about what I wanted to dream of. It took me a long time, and actually I never did fall back asleep. But after a while I noticed my eyes twitching every which way really fast. I never had that happen before. I figured the same thing... it was like REM only I wasn't asleep. No dreams either. But it's possible I got too excited when I felt my eyes moving and that kept me from drifting off.

Seeing as everyone experiences SP differently, there is a good chance that what you experience was in fact SP.

Do not worry about swallowing. The focus of trying to achieve SP is to not do anything that you wouldn't do if you were asleep. But when you sleep, you swallow anyways so that you don't drown in your own saliva. So swallow as much as you want, but keep it natural.

Many people experience the numbness of the limbs during SP, so that is also another reason you could have experienced SP. When you are in SP, (Sorry if I am incorrect) you haven't fully made a transition into the dream yet. (If that isn't true, then it is because you might not have been into SP 100%. So that could explain why you could still hear external noise.

By the way, I love Avatar too :P