Dream paralysis

[littleriot]

Recently in my dreams I reach a point where my body seems to stutter between functioning and not. I could be walking and suddenly my limbs are impossibly heavy, as if drawn back by a magnet, and eventually paralyzed between bursts of movement. This isn't at the beginning or ends of dreams, like sleep paralysis, and only once or twice have I actually woke up. I never become lucid, and I seem to think that I'm only falling asleep or into paralysis inside the dream. Sometimes it passes and I promptly move on doing whatever. There are no similarities between the dreams?

Am I really going into that sort of state or am I dreaming of it like I could dream of any other sensation. Am I near waking?

Once when I woke I had moved in real life. I mean, I had been dreaming the duvet kept falling over my face and I was trying to pull it away before I couldn't move but as the ability to actually move my arms became more distant it kept falling on my face. I finally got it off only to wake and find my duvet over my face.

Anybody else experienced this? I was thinking it could be something happening as I near consciousness, with my own movements in the dream starting to become real movements like when people talk in their sleep.

[eight bits]

You might want to googlebing dream incorporation. It is an accepted phenomenon that dreams will sometimes "work into the plot" features of the dreamer's current real-life physical situation, like heat, cold, dry, ..., or mobility impaired.

An ordinary feature of REM sleep, where a lot of dreaming gets done, is a near-paralysis of the larger voluntary muscles. There are a lot of ways the dreamer could become aware of that, starting with REM sleep is very close to being awake. Maybe you try to "act out something" from your dream, or try to get more comfortable, and you can't do it.

So, maybe that gets worked into the story. Anyway, physical performance difficulties are a very frequent feature of dream reports.

[littlemonster92]

I have experienced similar things since starting Uni, which I blame on my crazy sleeping pattern.

I have really vivid dreams that seem real, yet I know I am dreaming (if that makes sense). In these dreams I am awake but it is physically impossible to move, and no matter how hard I try it's too much of an effort and struggle. It makes me feel exhausted and my whole body feels heavy, like it's still asleep. Sometimes in these dreams I also try and talk but nothing happens. Every time I awake from one of these dreams I feel sick and have no energy throughout the day.

They seem so real they can really scare me. The worst one was when I fell asleep in the afternoon in my room, just after I had been on my laptop. In my dream I was asleep in the exact same spot, with my laptop at the bottom of my bed and I could hear a specific tv programme coming from the lounge. In the dream I heard one of my friends asking another to get the money I owed off me (I did infact owe money that day). Then my friend knocked at my door and let herself in. She tried to put me in bed properly but when she picked me up, I fell forward on to the floor and couldn't move no matter how hard I tried. She started crying and my flatmate came to the door and told her to phone the ambulance. It was so real, everything was in so much detail including the clothes my friends were wearing, the room and when I woke up the tv programme I could hear playing in my dream was actually playing in real life. It was so real, I have never experienced anything like it and I had to run to my friends room to ask her if it happened!

This was the first dream I had where my body felt paralysed and since then they have become more frequent. They can be very traumatic and like I said before, when I awake from these dreams I feel completely exhausted.

[Mr Walker]

As 8 bits pointed out, and as i mentioned in a very similar thread, paralysis is a natural protective response of dreaming. It prevents us fromm hurting ourselves through movements But because of the connected nature of conscious and subconscious thougths, different people have differnt responses.

I ahve never had sleep paralysis but i have had trouble making my body respond in a dream On the other hand, when young i sleep walked occasionally, which is the opposite of being paralysed. I could easily have been killed, and once i walked into my teenage cousins bedroom while staying at her place. Her parents were a bit upset.

But, anyway. My response would be to try and develop lucidity in dreams. Once you are aware you are dreaming you can tur that paralysis into anything. I overcame it, and now can not just fly but run like the flash. All my activities in dreams, and they can be quite energetic, require no sense of physical energy at all, and very little mental energy because i am always aware of the non corporeal nature of my dream persona. SO i awake fromm a night of intensive dremaing refreshed and alert.

I remember however as a young child several dreams where i could only move in slow motion.