If you read this fully with an open mind you will come out believing the current explanation for sleep paralysis makes zero sense
Lucid dreamsThis is important for context!



Lucid dreaming is where you're aware that your dreaming, it can feel as vivid as real life, and even more vivid in some cases. They are most common during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a period of very deep sleep marked by eye motion, faster breathing, and more brain activity. You usually enter REM sleep about 90 minutes after falling asleep. It lasts about 10 minutes. As you sleep, each REM period is longer than the one before, finally lasting up to an hour.

To cut things short you can do literally anything you want as long as you can truly imagine it in your mind, you can even get high in dreams, literally anything as long as you will it. You could transform into Godzilla and eat skyscrapers.


Sleep Paralysis



Sleep paralysis is where upon waking up you find yourself unable to move, you're completely paralyzed. If your eyes are open you may see terrifying demonic figures, you may also hear demonic sounds, you may sense an 'evil aura'.

The intensity of sleep paralysis experiences differ, one event could be the most terrifying vivid event of your life that leaves you unable to sleep for a month. Another experience could be far less dramatic, like simply being unable to move. I believe these are completely different things and have been coined together by ignorant men.

The current explanation for sleep paralysis

The current 'explanation' for sleep paralysis is that due to a disturbed rem cycle your mind awakens while your body remains asleep, essentially leaving you in a vivid lifelike dream


But wait a minute... If this is the case, why is the experiencealwaysnegative? When you have dreams it can be anything, yet when it comes to sleep paralysis it's always negative. In a lucid dream you can imagine anything and it will manifest yet during sleep paralysis you can't do anything but try to 'wake up'. Some people may try to say 'well duh, if you realize you're paralyzed you're likely to think negatively therefore will manifest demonic hallucinations like you would in a dream. But this is easily countered. - Many times you will see demonic **** before you even realize you're paralyzed! You may only realize you can't move when you try to jump out of your body by seeing something scary.

The explanation for lucid dreaming makes sense and aligns with what you should experience

The 'explanation' for sleep paralysis if you didn't notice, is literally just the same explanation for lucid dreaming with different words used. There is NO 'scientific' explanation for sleep paralysis in 2021

Sleep paralysis is spiritual phenomena in plain sight

Demons/negative spirits are real, that's why the people in Hollywood worship them for power. They aren't doing it just to be edgy

Possibly. I’m a man of science, but sleep paralysis is an odd bird.

I had it two or three times in my early twenties. Only while I was residing in an apartment complex that had a history of odd deaths/suicide, multiple lightning strikes, etc.

repped
agree

i would do lucid dream, but scared of paralysis. its too powerful for me i think

I've had sleep paralysis multiple times before and have never seen any demonic entities.

i was in middle school and a yeti came in my room

i live in fckin georgia and my dumbass couldn't even dream up a bigfoot, straight up white haired yeti

Sick fuk

I've had sleep paralysis at least three hundred times throughout my life. It never gets the least bit easier either. It's among the worst non-lethal things that can happen to a person.

Pretty much agree.

Another creepy clue about the spirit world is how children ages 3-5 almost always seem to make weird comments suggesting they’ve been reincarnated. Talking about foreign places they’ve never heard of or been to, calling their parents “new mommy” or “new daddy,” saying names of supposed siblings who don’t exist. The phenomenon is widespread and very real IMO.

I've had it a few times in my life. Never saw anything creepy or anything, but I could feel a weird presence in the room with me. Almost like something was watching me or right behind me. creepy af

really? i got it a chit ton between the age of 13-16ish, i learned pretty quick the way to break it is to focus on wiggling a toe or finger then everything starts to come to

I addressed this point in the post, sleep paralysis is attributed to multiple experiences despite them being completely different. Your body goes into paralysis when you fall asleep and the kind you experienced is simply disturbed rem sleep

I get sleep paralysis from time to time. I've seen some chit a couple times normally I just can't move. It always ends immediately after I begin to pray.

I just lie there trying to scream out for help, for someone to shake me until I can move. But I can never make a peep. It's so frustrating and terrifying.

I'm a skeptic of this stuff, but there's a part of me that believes there's some small truth to the paranormal, however I don't think humans fully understand what's happening yet.I've accepted that I'll go back to oblivion when I die, but a small part of me hopes that reincarnation is real. It would be both cool and scary though.

Sometimes I'd have dreams of really familiar people I couldn't identify or never seen before, but I FELT I knew them and had memories with them. I'm sure it's just weird brain chemical chit, but it still makes me wonder.It's hard not to panic, but you have to relax and just try to wiggle something on your body until it wears off. After you break out of it, shift positions in bed because sometimes even after breaking out you can drift back in if you stay still.

Well yeah, that's how everyone comes out of it. But it's during that whole process of going from paralyzed to wiggling a toe to moving a shoulder to finally coming out of it that feels like an eternity and is complete suffering.

I found screaming usually does the trick. This usually only happens when Im not in a good sleeping point (too early, in class, not committed to sleeping)


And yeah why tf is it always negative? Why can’t I imagine a bunch of girls or something?

Interesting story about that. When I was a kid I used to go to my grandmas house and had the weirdest nightmares/experiences despite it being a fun vacation time. Never had any sleep paralysis there but I woke up once after feeling my blanket being dragged down to my feet, dead serious.According to the official explanation you should be able to. It really makes zero sense when you think about it

Honestly, try closing your eyes and praying to god in your head. When I started getting more religious it started happening almost everyday multiple times in a row. Its rare now but happens occasionally, when I pray it stops, legit feels like someone letting go of me.

if you have wonderful dreams/wet dreams theres gotta be an opposite

and FYI close your eyes and try to wiggle your fingers/toes. that usually gets you out of it

There are more things on Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I get kinda half paralysis where I make these groans that are absolutely gutteral as I try to speak and I shake violently where I'm trying hard to move but my body isn't willing.

I used to have a bunch of episodes when I was 17-21. From a demon pressing down on my chest, to looking down at myself sleeping in bed. They were so frequent I got used to it and could fly around my house and it felt so real (srs).

I no longer have any episodes and I don’t know why?

A while ago I was learning how to lucid dream. I would slip between lucid dreams, into sleep paralysis, back and forth. The sleep paralysis was too freaky so I ended up trying to stop, but it took a while for the sleep paralysis episodes to subside.

How do you explain that OP? They felt very connected to me.

The opposite of a wonderful dream is a nightmare, not sleep paralysis.

I can answer this but first, was the sleep paralysis freaky because you didn't like your body being paralyzed, or was it freaky because you experienced evil manifestations?

I dont know about all that but I will tell you I had a dream where I was ice fishing with some dream friends.

They all admitted I was acting strangely and I finally realized and told them that I wasnt from there, that i was a different person in a different world and I'd be gone soon.

They all listened intently and one girl started crying and told me she recognized me as it had happened to this person's body I was inhabiting in the past.

So....we exchanged some information and a code word for if it ever happens again.

I'll provide the counter point here for contrast. Children start to form memories between the ages of 2 and 7. Explicit memories and implicit memories. Those kids could very well be hearing someone talking and forming a new implicit memory and being unable to describe it. It's real to them just like memories are real to us. It could be hard for them to know the difference between reality and a false memory. Each time we go back in time to remember something, we aren't seeing a perfect picture, but by accessing it our brain is actually retracing it and forming an entirely new, imperfect picture. Which lends itself to false memories. Deja vu is hard to describe for most people, but it's just the feeling you get when your brain stores a long term memory instead of a short term one.

There's a neat documentary on youtube about sleep paralysis where a guy wakes up during sleep studies looking terrified. Unable to move, his eyes dart around the room looking like he's possessed. When his family is home, they have to barricade his room because he has night terrors that make him violent and attack his wife. Now that's scary. Night terrors are on an entirely different level to sleep paralysis.

If I had to describe the two, night terrors are like being transported to another reality where your nightmares are real. You can't wake up during them. You can sleepwalk, and talk, and cry, but you can't wake up. I can only describe the place you go to as hell itself, and recalling them would give me instant panic attacks. Sleep paralysis on the other hand is very neutral. You are stuck in a dream and don't know it, and you're aware of your whole body. That can be frightening at first. But not completely shocking and terrifying (in the true sense of the word terror) like a night terror, where your body has died and you're separated from everything that is light, joy, and happiness.

But you can learn to relax. I'm not afraid of sleep paralysis at all, but it can be annoying when you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't go to sleep without entering into it again. I've had some terrifying episodes of people stabbing me or holding me down in my sleep, whispering to me. But it's not scary anymore and I don't have those things happen. Last time I "woke up" and saw Plato's statue next to my bed, moving. I can either try to struggle and make it worse, or close my eyes and wait for the uncomfortable feeling to pass, and enter into a lucid dream.

I didn't move, and closed my eyes. Only to wake up again, seeing the same thing, but this time he was acknowledging me and reacting to me. Still stuck in the same place. This time I know it was a dream though, even though I could see everything in the room. Because I wasn't tired in the dream. When you wake up in that state, you're extremely tired. That's how I tell the difference. I can still feel my whole body, still and unable to move, but I know I'm dreaming. I'm not sure if you're ever really awake in that state, but I know that it tends to happen repeatedly, and can wake up and get out of bed, or roll out of bed to try to jolt yourself awake, only to find that it was really a dream of the place you fell asleep.

What you describe about sleep paralysis being largely negative, but highly realistic and suggestible, like a lucid dream. I agree with that, but only because you tend to have a rush of adrenaline when your body thinks it's time to wake. I don't get the overwhelming negativity because I'm just not afraid of it anymore. You can get sleep paralysis on purpose by waking up in the middle of the night, staying awake for too long, or sleeping squarely on your back. And I've done this in order to stay in that paralyzed state and enter into a lucid dream.

What I found is that: You can stay in that state of being aware of your body for a long time. You can enter into a lucid dream and be aware of your body. But you won't have a "positive" episode. Instead, nothing at all will appear. It will be totally neutral like you're awake, just lying there. Instead, you'll enter into the lucid dream and be able to imagine anything you want, any person and any place. And it will remain entirely positive, but it won't be completely immersive. Being aware of your body unable to move, you won't be immersed into the sensations of the dream. It will be just like a memory, where you're aware that you're trying to move but can't.

Much like watching a movie. Interesting, but not an immersive fantasy world.

Both.

I'm recalling that one kid who recalled he used to be a navy fighter pilot and knew way too f*cling much about the real pilots history