Sleep Paralysis:

[Skim Milky]

any thoughts on sleep paralysis and a possible spiritual or supernatural connection? now im not just chalking it up to that because science doesnt understand it yet. well, im not trying to.

the PURE TERROR of the events is very troubling.

heres a link if your unfamiliar with this phenomenon.

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa112000a.htm

[eight bits]

Sorry, I didn't catch the "science doesn't understand it yet" part.

It seems reasonable that when animals lose voluntary consciousness, that the voluntary musculature ought to be disabled, lest we "act out" our dreams.

Neurological mechanisms are complex, and will occasionally misfire.

So, someone regains consciousness before control of the musculature returns. The person is in fact temporarily paralyzed. That ought to get his or her attention.

Moreover, that regained consciousness may be hypnopompic (the sort of 'twilight consciousness' which is neither quite awake nor quite asleep). Hmm, am inherently disturbing situation, and an impaired level of consciousness with which to handle it.

Of course, the same things could happen going from wakefulness to sleep.

What part of this do you suppose that "science" doesn't understand?

Edited September 8, 2007 by eight bits

[Skim Milky]

well first thing they have no "cure", no definitive "cause", and only suggestions, namely good sleeping habits, to help avoid the episodes.

[The Skeptic Eric Raven]

well first thing they have no "cure", no definitive "cause", and only suggestions, namely good sleeping habits, to help avoid the episodes.

Doesn't mean you jump to a conclusion that it is paranormal.

[northwest]

What you are talking about are night terrors...

I have a case of sleep paralysis, and I don't have hallucinations at all. I used to have them as a little kid, but I don't remember any of that anymore (my parents toled me).

So, you can have sleep paralysis and not have terrors

While it certainly feels like some kind of mystical experience (sometimes you feel that something is present, but I would say I am ever really afraid, more like fighting or troubled by something), I don't think it is anything paranormal.

Though , I'm pretty sure many real cases of presence and encounters have been misdiagnosed as

forms of sleep paralysis.

[IzzyGone]

It doesnt have to be either a muscle/brain thing or a 'presence' thing.. We can't really know. All you know from the small post that I can determine is this:

1. It scares you.

2. It doesn't kill you.

So I think the cure is to get over the 'scared' and realize that you don't die from it.

Then it matters not what about science or presence, you're good either way.

And the part about 'science' that seems to be possibly misunderstood in my opinion is this...

"Sorry, I didn't catch the "science doesn't understand it yet" part."

"Neurological mechanisms are complex, and will occasionally misfire..."

Now, do our body system misfire or do we make mistakes in science and change our minds when we find out better?

Could be either way I'd say.

We didn't think Nature could be more then the machines we make yet Danny Tammet IS alive and IS all this....

Which science currently 'cant really explainz'...

[IzzyGone]

I'll add that perhaps you should take a breath, look at that 'terror' and see what exactly is so 'terrifying' about it. Might be that its only happened to you twice in your lifetime that you've posted here (seems anyway). Eventually, we get used to things. Play with it... let your heart feel the scared a bit and see what that really is. Might just be 'unfamiliar' and that might just be all it is?

[northwest]

Well if the fear comes neurologically instead of a reaction to some kind of idea or concept (like fear of death), then it can not be stopped.

Now this is oversimplification of how brain works, but suppose someone injects a chemical combination into your synapses that causes fear, then you can't think your way out of it, he just pushed your fear button, and that's it, you experience fear.

Perhaps brain does such a thing in night terror attacks, it just goes into "fear" mode, and that's the end of story.

There are many brain functions which we can not control with decision. Our brain is full of "buttons" which can be pressed

to do certain things. I'm pretty sure, someone could convert me to a hardcore atheist and UFO-skeptic with a combination of

injections and light patters or something like that.

[eight bits]

Hi, 1StormSignals.

We have a crossed connection. You quote from my post, which replied to the OP question:

any thoughts on sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis is exactly a "muscle/brain" thing. Some people have said that they find the experience of regaining consciousness while retaining sleep paralysis frightening. I can believe it.

In subsequent discussion, northwest opened the floor to the related subject of "night terrors," rightly distinguishing that from sleep paralysis.

My comments concerned only sleep paralysis.

[Lt_Ripley]

sleep terrors are common especially with kids. I've had them on and off most of my life and they always get worse under stress, which marks it as physical. There may not be a cure yet but nor is there on for the common cold either but we don't educatedly attribute that to the paranormal.

the same with 'sleep paralysis'. All of us go into a sort of paralysis in sleep to keep ourselves safe , sometimes however we can wake during these cycles and in doing so experience some very disturbing sensations and sights.

same with sleep terrors. you can be both 'awake' and dreaming still. I'll be awake and speaking to my partner as I'm looking for the giant spiders only to slowly wake up and realize it was a night terror. Sometimes I don't wake up , sometimes I wake up in another room . but stress definitely plays a role. nor are we aware we are under stress sometimes.

and anyone can have either or both.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Lt_Ripley

[northwest]

It's good that you have mentioned stress, because I tend to have sleep paralysis and other anomalies when I lay down stressed.

But I must say that all kinds of strange things can happen to a mind that has these tendencies, and

there is not a specific list of symptoms, though some are more common than others.

It's just enough to say that a mind enters a state in which it gets extremely "confused", both regarding motorical and

perceptive/consciousness functions, and out of that can come a wide variety of effects.

It's not as simple as waking up paralyzed and being scared of it.

Specially considering that people who tend to have one of these manifestations, can have other similar sleep disorders too, so

there is not a very clear line between these things.

[Lt_Ripley]

It's good that you have mentioned stress, because I tend to have sleep paralysis and other anomalies when I lay down stressed.

But I must say that all kinds of strange things can happen to a mind that has these tendencies, and

there is not a specific list of symptoms, though some are more common than others.

It's just enough to say that a mind enters a state in which it gets extremely "confused", both regarding motorical and

perceptive/consciousness functions, and out of that can come a wide variety of effects.

It's not as simple as waking up paralyzed and being scared of it.

Specially considering that people who tend to have one of these manifestations, can have other similar sleep disorders too, so

there is not a very clear line between these things.

of course strange things happen not to a mind but in the mind. think of dreaming. a dream can feel so real that when you awake you can wonder if you had actually experienced it.

sometimes in sleep paralysis one isn't totally awake ( rarely is) and wondering 'hey I can't move' but usually coming out of rem sleep . To remain calm and try to remember that this is a 'natural occurrence' compared to aliens ect ........... helps keep anxiety down .

and people who do have one sleep disorder alot of times have others. They may not have a 'cure' but on eeg's these things are registered. Just like epilepsy. I myself because of a medication , woke up during the end of a small epileptic seizure. The tremors scared me. Because it didn't feel like I was shaking , but the bed. But in fact it was me. It was a wave like feeling from one side of the body to the other ending with my right arm. Med change and it never happened again.

that's also another point ---- certain medications can make night terrors or sleep paralysis worse. even make dreams worse or not able to remember. Some once you come off a med your dreams are wild.

[northwest]

Speaking of weird things, last night I had a dream I was in some bar and getting extremely drunk from just 2 beers, the feeling was so real, then waking up to find I have a high temperature (making me feel dizzy, and my head feel heavy, which accounts for the dream)

[Grandpa Greenman]

Ever wake up with sleep paralysis and have to pee? Now that would be a drag.

[Radian]

My last & only (hopefully) SP episode, if I had had a weak heart, I'd be dead right now. No kidding. It was real, and the terror was real. I'm glad my heart aint weak.

anyhoo.

[SkepticalEd]

any thoughts on sleep paralysis and a possible spiritual or supernatural connection? now im not just chalking it up to that because science doesnt understand it yet. well, im not trying to.

the PURE TERROR of the events is very troubling.

heres a link if your unfamiliar with this phenomenon.

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa112000a.htm

I had one episode of sleep paralysis, the classic "old hag." There are NO spiritual or supernatural connections. And you're wrong, science understands it and there are experiments going on all the time in labs, I participated in one such experiment back in the 1970s after my SP experience. I used to sleep on my belly and one night when I "awoke" I couldn't move. I felt a weight on my back. The sounds I was hearing were horrific. I tried to call through the open to my nephew sleeping in another room and my vocal chords were paralyzed also. Eventually I fell asleep and awoke normally in the morning with memories of the experience. I never slept on my stomach again. If it happens again, I'll probably be on my back and I hope to remember the other experience and will just go through the experience. Prior to my experience, I knew about it from the 1960s. Here is a definition of SP:

Sleep Paralysis (SP) is a common medical condition and usually tagged nowdays as a Sleeping Disorder. The symptoms can sometimes include complete to partial paralysis of arms, legs and upper torso, a tight or heavy pressure on your chest sometimes with a choking sensation and almost always experienced as you are about to fall into sleep or just come out of sleep. The most remarkable symptoms of SP are the accompanying audio and/or visual hallucinations often causing extreme terror and panic in it's sufferers, who more often than not mistakenly believe they are being visited by aliens, malevolent beings and other evil presences.

NOTE: When I finished typing my reply and hit the button I got a pop-up accusing me of hijacking someone's thread and I don't know what that was about. Does anyone know?

Edited September 10, 2007 by SkepticalEd

[Skim Milky]

Doesn't mean you jump to a conclusion that it is paranormal.

i specifically stated in the op that i wasnt jumping to that conclusion. geezzz.... i just wanna hear what people come up with about this.

[Skim Milky]

It doesnt have to be either a muscle/brain thing or a 'presence' thing.. We can't really know. All you know from the small post that I can determine is this:

1. It scares you.

2. It doesn't kill you.

So I think the cure is to get over the 'scared' and realize that you don't die from it.

Then it matters not what about science or presence, you're good either way.

And the part about 'science' that seems to be possibly misunderstood in my opinion is this...

"Sorry, I didn't catch the "science doesn't understand it yet" part."

"Neurological mechanisms are complex, and will occasionally misfire..."

Now, do our body system misfire or do we make mistakes in science and change our minds when we find out better?

Could be either way I'd say.

We didn't think Nature could be more then the machines we make yet Danny Tammet IS alive and IS all this....

Which science currently 'cant really explainz'...

um... i know it wont kill me...i didnt die.....but its just a fearful experience. like being awake on the operating table but unable to move.

[Ghø§t]

I had one episode of sleep paralysis, the classic "old hag." There are NO spiritual or supernatural connections. And you're wrong, science understands it and there are experiments going on all the time in labs, I participated in one such experiments back in the 1970s after mine. I slept on my belly and when I "awoke" I couldn't move. I felt a weight on my back. The sounds I was hearing were horrific. I tried to call through the open to my nephew sleeping in another room and my vocal chords were paralyzed also. Eventually I fell asleep and awoke normally in the morning with memories of the experience. I never slept on my stomach again. If it happens again, I'll probably be on my back and I hope to remember the other experience and will just go through the experience. Prior to my experience, I knew about it from the 1960s. Here is a definition of SP:

Sleep Paralysis (SP) is a common medical condition and usually tagged nowdays as a Sleeping Disorder. The symptoms can sometimes include complete to partial paralysis of arms, legs and upper torso, a tight or heavy pressure on your chest sometimes with a choking sensation and almost always experienced as you are about to fall into sleep or just come out of sleep. The most remarkable symptoms of SP are the accompanying audio and/or visual hallucinations often causing extreme terror and panic in it's sufferers, who more often than not mistakenly believe they are being visited by aliens, malevolent beings and other evil presences.

NOTE: When I finished typing my reply and hit the button I got a pop-up accusing me of hijacking someone's thread and I don't know what that was about. Does anyone know?

What have studies found about these hallucinations? Are there chemicals that activate in the brain to make you see these things? I mean.. these studies have been going since the 60's or so, and if we haven't found the cause for the hallucinations there must be something going wrong.

[SkepticalEd]

What have studies found about these hallucinations? Are there chemicals that activate in the brain to make you see these things? I mean.. these studies have been going since the 60's or so, and if we haven't found the cause for the hallucinations there must be something going wrong.

I've been away from the subject for many years although the memory of that experience is still fresh in my mind. It is known that we go in and out of deep sleep. Like bobbing in and out of the water. It is also known that we have dreams that include "physical" action such as running, leaping, falling, etc. If you were to be, somehow, sort-of awake during these periods you could hurt yourself by banging part of your bed, wall, whatever. You cold also hurt your sleeping partner. My wife had a dream once and I don't know what she was dreaming but I was awakened violently by her elbow on my face! She could have used SP! SP comes in handy when you're being active in your dreams so that you don't thrash around. If you were hooked up to a machine measuring your REM, it would show activity so at that time you are really in SP. Some people awake during SP before their body is "released" by the brain. At that time is when you tend to freak out if you don't know and understand SP. Very few actually do know about and understand SP. But not that many awaken during SP. Due to popular culture, and thanks also to the media, these episodes are taken over by irrationality and you then claim an alien abduction! Not so.

I don't think that SP is the result of chemicals and what you really are experiencing is a dream while you are "awake" and your imagination takes over. You still wake up normally in the morning (or whenever) and normally you'd attribute the experience to a nightmare. Nothing wrong, just the wonderful way our brains tell us that there are many things not yet discovered about how the brain/mind works.

[Radian]

i specifically stated in the op that i wasnt jumping to that conclusion. geezzz.... i just wanna hear what people come up with about this.

There is nothing wrong if you did. I've seen this topic debated many times on whether it is scientific or a spiritual experience.

[dreamer1952]

I had the first sp yrs ago. It was only recently that my daughter told me she had experienced an episode ,that I told her I had those yrs ago.I never heard anyone say they had those experiences.I always thought I was weird.Then my daughter said she found a name for them ,sleep paralysis. Wow! Clears up my mystery! The first one I had, this is what I felt,it happened nearly 40 yrs ago,I felt like I was drifting off into space,a warm comfy feeling,like just drifting off ,floating,you try to move and can't,I tired to talk and say"help " but could not open my mouth.Tried to use my arms and couldn't.My brain felt very much awake but my body asleep. I hear these small munchkin like voices.I can't understand what they are saying but I hear them talking. I keep trying to talk and move till finally I break the sp.After that time,I always know when an episode is coming.It feels like instead of going to sleep you are drifting or floating off.It actually is a good feeling but knowing you will become paralized ,you move before the whole thing takes over.I learned that it always happened when I went to sleep on a certain side of my body. So as soon as I would start to feel that floating feeling, I would turn over. I have not had any of these experiences in many yrs.But now my daughter says she does. They scared me to death ,I do not like feeling unable to move. It is an awful feeling being conscious and not being able to move.I could not open my eyes either or my mouth.I am glad that now there is a name for it. I thought I was possessed or having an out of body experience or something. What a relief!

[Belial]

I feel that this sort of 'dream state' is nothing more than a overactive brain, trying to work out complex emotional thoughts, and just freezing at a single point in time/thought, and thats the thing you remember most.

If your computer crashed now, you would be more likely to remember the crash than the last thing you was doing.

[LostInTheWoods]

Since a very young age I’ve been interested in the paranormal, and believed that I had been witnessing paranormal activity. I was always telling my family but they didn’t really take me seriously as I was young. When I was younger I hadn’t learnt of sleep paralysis yet, so when I was sure that I was awake in my bed but could not move, also hearing strange noises and seeing shadows move across the room, I was certain that it was not normal. It’s only in recent years that I have really become fascinated by this subject, and with the interest growing, it seems that there has been more paranormal activity surrounding me. Just things like seeing things out of the corner of my eye, or hearing noises when no one else was at home with me, objects shaking, and just a feeling of some kind of abnormal presence. I suppose I am paranoid about it quite a lot of the time, but I really do feel that this is real. Now skipping forward to this year. One night whilst everyone else in my house was asleep, I was sitting in my bedroom and heard a woman crying, it was only faint (almost like a quiet whimpering) but I heard it, and although I was sitting right next to an open window, I was sure it was coming from inside my house, maybe even my bedroom. I even went to check on everyone after this and they were all very much asleep. I was very scared whenever I stayed in this room, and this sounds very silly, but I could not sleep in this bedroom, often I waited until morning to sleep because the light would be coming through the window, and I felt safe as it was daytime. Whenever I did try to sleep in the dark, I just felt like I was being surrounded by something, like there was always something right next to me, and there was movement all around the room. In the end I had to swap rooms with my sister, this is only going back about a month. Now I felt that I would be fine in this room, as my sister had never experienced anything strange in there. For about the first week nothing happened, it was absolutely fine and I thought I would be able to get back into a normal sleep pattern. One night I was sitting up in bed watching TV, and I heard something moving about and scratching under my bed, it wasn’t very loud but loud enough to get my attention; I thought it was one of my cats, as they often did that. I was watching a spooky movie on TV and started to get a little freaked out and turned it off in fear of another sleepless night. I was about to sleep and decided to kick the cats out as they usually woke me up by jumping up on the bed during the night, and then discovered that there were no cats in my room. This scared me, a lot. I turned on the hallway light, turned off the light in my bedroom and got in bed, pulled the duvet over my head and tried to sleep. After a while, shadows, or shapes, started moving around the room and I was hearing unintelligible voices, then it felt like something was lying directly on top of me, and putting pressure on me. I was scared as I felt awake and thought it was happening. Then it just stopped, and I have no idea whether this was a dream, or not, because it felt extremely real. So I told myself I had been dreaming, but just the thought that I could have been awake and that actually happened scares the hell out of me.

[momentarylapseofreason]

I had a 3rd SP that turned into a rape. Like an Incubus type thing. I didn't see anything but I felt it and heard it.

It threatened to slam me on the edge of the metal bed post if I didn't shut up and quit fighting it.

It was covering my mouth as I was screaming at the top of my lungs with all my might. I couldn't move but I could scream. I saw everything in the room and heard my mother & son snoring/breathing next to me. (we were in a Hotel) I felt being attacked, physically elevated in the air, spun around as it threatened to drop me. This started out like a very, nice sensual dream at first, until I realized it was/seemed real but I couldn't see anyone and I could not wake up, move or escape. I then panicked. I felt fully awake though. The window was open, the moonshine lighting up the room, and a nice breeze was moving the curtains. I could feel the breeze.

My mother heard my muffled screams (yes muffled) eventually, that's what's odd, and turned the lights on asking what the heck was going on. then everything stopped.

My mother got her first chronic life threatening allergy right on this very night directly after my SP, which pretty much ruined the rest of her life.They never found what was causing it. Coincidence ?

Edited January 23, 2009 by momentarylapseofreason