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I managed to wake up without moving this morning and experience the REM atonia or sleep paralysis but I had to use the toilet so I broke it. More recently however, after an afternoon nap, I held this state for what seems like around 30 minutes desperately trying to get back to sleep. I calmed my mind, focused on my breathing, arms and legs feeling numb and heavy, and it just never came to be.
How do you get back to sleep after waking up in this fashion?
Hey, it's hard to say with an afternoon nap. How long did you nap for during the afternoon before you woke back up? There's a possibility your body wasn't ready to go back to sleep if you're afternoon nap was lengthy enough.
I've read that relaxation exercises like the 61-point relaxation and progressive relaxation as written about in Stephen Laberge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming can help get you closer to falling asleep. It potentially could help in these kinds of situations to shift your focus in the right way to be able to fall back to sleep. I use these two methods frequently each morning when I use WBTB after 4.5 or 6 hours of sleep, and they seem to help me.
Unfortunately with sleep, trying too hard can sometimes result in not being able to fall asleep. Maybe set up the right conditions to be able to relax and let your body do its thing without thinking or trying too hard. Andrew Holecek writes in his book Dream Yoga Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep (which a good portion of is about lucid dreaming) that "You can't will yourself to sleep. The effort keeps you awake, and the harder you try the more you stay awake." I feel like that has happened to me before where I've really wanted to fall asleep and can't because of my strong desire to drift away.
Also, coordinating with your REM cycles and learning how long yours usually last can be helpful too.