Your Ideas on Sleep Paralysis

[Angi]

Explanation of sleep paralysis is here.

I've been experiencing sp with the frightening effects since I was about 15, I am not narcoleptic and to my knowledge it does not run in my family. For the few years I've understood what it is (I discovered there was a name for it on the X Files, not kidding), I've only heard scientific definitions and explanations for it. But in the last month or two, I've been hearing spiritual ideas of what it is. So I'm curious, what are your takes on this? Is it just an issue with my brain or is it a spiritual gift?

Hugs and Blessed be
Angi

[goddess_in_embryo]

I have it too. I think it's a spiritual gift. My dreams are so intense, that sometimes I think that I just don't get back to my body before it wakes up. And so, I get there and my body doesn't know what to do... so... frozen. Scary as all hell, but connected to a great gift, so I accept it.

[Alluscion]

I dont have sleep paralysis but I have had multiple events that are similar to aspects of it. I was unaware to having them until my boyfriend kept asking me what the deal was. I apparently sit up suddenly and exclaim, 'What is that?!" or something of the likes. I generally have no recollection of it. But there has been a few times where I have been jarred alert by seeing a black shadow liquid, or an entity drip down from the seeling or up from my pillow. sometimes the color red is assosciated with it, but it is a hard moment in time to really explain. And if you are wondering about the shadow liquid, I dont think specifically it has something directly to do with the 'shadow people' or whatever they are called. I have seen a shadow person and it isnt like this liquid.. I know my mother,and grandmother have a history of the dream realm following them to awake, but I dont know wether it is realted to spirit of psyche. I feel there is alot to learn from the dream realm, and that there is more than just the imagry to the dreams, but as for that stage in between awakw and asleep, i am still kinda unsure as to what is really goin g on.. though I have a million and ahalf theories..of vairing degrees of reasonability..

[Shifty]

I have had sleep paralysis intermittently thru my life. :x Visual apparitions, sounds, tastes, whatever will be placed over what my senses would pick up in mundane conditions; by my noggin I guess; as if they were all actually there. It's scary and it prompts me to move. Movement is always impossibly slow. I eventually speed up and come into wakefulness, but if I just rollover, I slip back in.

The latest (about 2 months ago) was particularly frightening. I can barely move during any episode, but in this instance it seemed so because a haggard, white/grayish/blueish woman figure was laying across my waist, over my blankets. (I could feel the weight) She was turned away from me. She was still and unmoving. She was covered in tattered gray/white rags, and her skin was bright blue. She looked hazy; there was this constant gray cloud surrounding her, that would mix with and stir up the other colors in her. The whole time I was observing her, I had been moving my eyes to the left, where her head lay. The instant I could finally see it, the whole figure twisted around unnaturally like a snake, put its face up to mine and screamed with some kind of crazy humongous mouth and dark, vacant eye sockets. x_____X Her hair was white and was blowing in all directions; cascading and merging into itself making firey kinds of colors and I wanted to pee I woke up right after that.

I'm not particularly good at spotting any higher meaning these things represent other than what they appear as. Sometimes I do feel that my brain is purposefully scaring me, just so I'll wake up.

[Amur]

Haven't had many experiences with purely sleep paralysis, although it has happened everynow and then and felt weird. But everytime I've had an OBE experience there has been a sleep paralysis before that so I think it might actually be possible to slip into an OBE from sleep paralysis by some techniques.

Check out salt-cubes website on OBE etc, got some good techniques there listed. http://www.saltcube.com/

So I really encourage you to get accustomed to the sleep-paralysis fear and get through it (you can use the devouring technique to remove the fear from it) and then start to scientifically experiment around with it

Peace!

[Renicure]

Dear Shifty,

I have exactly what you have- sleep paralysis coupled with visual, auditory, angelic visitations, and the opposite too. I would try to wake up but it just slips back even worsening in intensity. This is an extremely uncomfortable and fearful experience for me because it feels as if my soul has been abruptly ripped from my body and warped to another dimension. I have grown to neglect this behavior and dub it in today's medical standards as epilepsy however ironically spiritual healers are drawn to me like a moth to a flame and have tried to explain to me that I am somewhat gifted. I have yearned for a normal life all my life but my encounters with people who are intuitive want to reveal and elucidate what this experience seizures or channeling call it what you want to is. All I can say is I have had so many encounters during this episode with so many things that I do not understand but some good and some bad. But all in all I was forced to believe by a higher being and other spiritual healers that it is a gift that I can hardly control myself and understand. But anywayz if you ask me personally I am uncomfortable in labeling myself as gifted and see it as a huge strange and paranormal thing that is extremely freakish.

[h0bby1]

i experienced it lots of time, and i just read up that its something that a full muscle tonus loose that occur when you fall asleep, sometime which is supposed to protect you from moving during your sleep or dream whatever you dream of, it generally occur also in dream where i feel stuck or some kind of very slow and then i wake up and feel that i can't move =) well i don't really like the feeling but i generraly just fall asleep back. i think its something about bad syncrhonisation between your conscioucness and muscle control. sleep is a very complex mechanism anyway, it concern body as much as soul

[h0bby1]

in fact i feel its something like removing the set gear on a car so that you won't be able to move even if your spirit sent the move command, muscle won't react and this give you the ability to send move commands while you sleep whitout actually moving

[h0bby1]

and i guess sometime it just occur that your mind just get out of the sleeping state and the body is still in the sleep states even if i can't really explain how it works biologically speaking

[h0bby1]

i also have read that its often linked with somnabulism, but i don't think i ever been somnanbul

[h0bby1]

somnanbulism might just be the oposite of sleep paralysis where your body is in wake state while your mind is in sleep state

[h0bby1]

it might just be a sign that something goes wrong into your sleep state changing

[KristenWhoa]

I also have sleep paralysis
and im not sure what to make of it
O always see the same thing in a black robe watching me from a corner of my room when it happens.
Once it was in my closet and it was bobbing around like an egyptian but it was soo much more creepier than a egyptian.

[Renicure]

Dear Kristen,

I have had different guises and mists watch me too. And I know I am not crazy because I am a 3rd year medical student. I have paid attention during the day while I"m awake if these things are around however their energies are very very subtle and implicit. I do notice the different clicks-noises in my room like a finger thudding on my dresser or computer desk and at times someone or thing making a noise to wake me up when I am really suppose to. There are other things such as the radio tuner being on a different station, portraits in different positions, stuff not being exactly where I left it. I am not trying to remake any ideas I have watched in movies to scare people but really to disclaim certain esoteric events. But back to how it relates to sleep paralysis as we dubbed is that these encounters with the spiritual realm can manifest in our states. I had the unfortunate experience like you all my life is that the more I fear being in this state the more the entity or darkness gets more threatening and powerful. It is related to the brain and how it goes to sleep as hObby 1 puts it. What happens is that the amygdala area center in the brain located near the brainstem which controls fear is fired rapidly and has dominance over your entire brain while the body is dormant. Different parts of your brain are conscious and witness these events. And how your being / soul is shifted through time space continuum to another reality or dimension is very relative to you. We each experience something that is very select and unique. But I am here to credit the fact that is there a function to this can someone actually use this ability for the better and not be so stricken? I personally have calmed myself down during my episodes into a mere OBE meditative state and that is all.