Sleep Atonia question?

Last night I dreamt I was trapped in a room by a bear. After awhile I escaped and ran out of the building. He was hot on my trail. Three wolves then showed up. One wolf went after the bear and the other two after me. I stood my ground and one of them jumped at me. As he reached arm length I defensively thrust out my arm. I woke up as my arm was moving and it was because I was actually thrusting it out in bed.

So it would seem that sleep atonia failed. My body reacted to dream stimuli and I'm confused as to why. I see alot of discussion about waking up to active atonia (sp), but not the other way around.

So my questions for whoever on here knows about such things are:

Is it normal for it to dissipate so quickly? I thought, "of all the times to experience sp that would have been one."

Could this simply be an ingrained response to what was perceived as a real danger, part of the fight or flight that was initiated in the dream?

It's normal for this to happen once in a while. Not regularly, though. I believe the same stress and anxiety which causes nightmares causes the malfunction of the rem atonia.

Yea as dolphin said. Also the level of sp differs from one to another. There are people who had nothing to do with LD or some sleep experiments and yet they feel sp consciously while some get it really fast and also get out of sp really fast that they don't even know about it, even when trying to do so. Need to mention sleepwalking as well.

Sleep walking has nothing to do with rem atonia/sp because sleep walking only occurs during slow wave sleep, never rem sleep. When somebody acts out their dreams during sleep its called REM behavior disorder.

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Originally Posted by dolphin

Sleep walking has nothing to do with rem atonia/sp because sleep walking only occurs during slow wave sleep, never rem sleep. When somebody acts out their dreams during sleep its called REM behavior disorder.

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Ah thanks for enlightening, didn't know that.