Sleep Paralysis
Tony Crisp
Many people experience feeling paralysed while they are partially awake but dreaming. This may be due to the fact that voluntary movements are inhibited during periods of the dream process. All brain signals to the voluntary muscles are stopped. Therefore if we become slightly awake and attempt to move at that time we feel paralysed. This is not sensed as a problem if we are unconsciously involved in a dream. While dreaming another level of will takes control fo the body, so any sounds or movements made are not from ones conscious will.
If enough self awareness arises in the dream state, then awareness of the inability to move may occur, along with the anxiety this can arouse. In fact this is probably only a problem to people who are frightened of the paralysis, as for most people, active dreams manage to break through the inhibition enough to cause mild movements and vocal sounds.
Another factor is illustrated by what Susan says in the example below - the harder she tries to move the worse it gets. Our unconscious is very open to suggestion. If this were not so we would lack necessary survival responses. In a dimly lit situation we may mistake a shape for a lurking figure. Our body reactions such as heartbeat, react to the mistake as if it is real until we gain fresh information. Whatever we feel to be real becomes a fact as far as our body reactions are concerned. The fear that one cannot move becomes a fact because we believe it. When Susan relaxes, and thereby drops the fear of paralysis, she can be free of it. This applies to anything we feel is true - we create it as an internal reality.
‘It starts as a dream, but I gradually become aware that I cannot move. The harder I try to move the worse it gets and I become very frightened. I can neither move nor wake myself up. Sometimes I feel as if I am leaving my body. But to deal with the fear I have learned - its a recurring thing - to stop struggling, knowing that I will eventually wake.’ Susan Y.
The excellent description in the following example was given by Roy Herbert. It was taken from a feature he wrote. Unfortunately the news-cutting did not have either the name of the paper or the date with it.
‘In this condition, I can hear what others are saying to make me come to. The bed-room is the one I am in though sometimes altered in layout and the real persons in it may be joined by dream ones. I can speak and even offer suggestions on how to bring me awake, such as cold water on my head, though I am told that the words are not intelligible. I am aware that my mouth is dry. My brain is working on some levels that are far from asleep. I have been able to censor swear words from anguished advice I am offering the rousers for fear of offending them, though I am not awake.
The worst thing of all is that I have almost no power in my limbs while the struggle is going on. The prospect of sinking back into deep sleep, unable to move, is terrifying - so dreadful that I finally burst fully awake with the sensation of shooting up through water into the air.
I don’t think that I can be unique in floating halfway, half awake and half asleep, paralysed but speaking and thinking in a half real world. It might be interesting to hear from other sufferers.
Other strange phenomena occurring either during or on the edge of sleep probably have similar causes, or are linked in some way. Roy Herbert’s description vividly portrays the experience of being locked half way between the ‘real’ world and the ‘dream’ world, and perhaps that is part of the fear experienced. But the threshold of waking that Roy is trying to approach need not be the one that leads to a loss of the dream state. What I mean is that Roy’s dream imagery stops when he wakes. For many people their dream imagery persists when they wake, and they have to travel further into waking than Roy does to lose the sense of having no control, or of being invaded by experiences from ‘outside’ themselves. (See: hallucinations and hallucinogens.)
Much of the problem felt by people in these states arises from their relationship to what is being experienced. Many people actually seek the state Roy describes through self-hypnosis. In my teens I studied and practised a mixture of relaxation techniques and self-hypnosis in an attempt to explore what Tate later called altered states of consciousness (ASC). After a few months practice I found I could enter a condition where I had no sense of a body, and felt myself to be awake in the depths of sleep. As I had consciously sought this there was no fear attached to it, and I could rouse myself easily.
However, the terror Roy and other people speak of in regard to the paralysis, I have experienced myself, and witnessed in other people, who felt themselves powerless against a spontaneous eruption of emotions or urges from the unconscious.
One such person, a teenage male who had been told in an emotionally charged way by his mother that he would die if he continued to masturbate, decided with much fear that he would never masturbate again. The fear became more pronounced when he began to masturbate while asleep. This loss of control over himself deepened his anxiety still further, and made him feel he was in some way possessed. He eventually managed to stop this sleep masturbation by wearing tight swimming trunks, thus causing him to struggle to reach his penis, and thereby wake himself and avoid the dreaded possession. It wasn’t until he was twenty one that, having read about some basic information on how the unconscious follows suggestions and emotions, he managed to let go of his fear, and with relief found the ‘possession’ no longer had a hold on him.
If we can understand that we have two levels of will, the conscious will that enables us to move around and make decisions while awake, and the unconscious will that takes over when we dream, creating full surround environments and events, and paralyses the conscious will to some extent. The unconscious will that we confront in dreams and sleep paralysis is what directs all the functions of our body and mind. It is far more important than our consious self, and actully needs to take over more fully sometimes to regulate, grow and harmonise our being. When the unconscious will pushes through to waking awareness we experience it as what have been called hallucinations, a voice speaking to us, spontaneous movements or speech, as happens in dreams.
If that can be fully digested you can begin to work with and actually gain benefits from what is really an extension of your mental processes and possibilities.
For fuller information about the levels of sleep and the different experiences we meet in each, See Levels of Awareness in Waking and Dreaming. See also: ; movements during sleep; yoga and dreams; LifeStream.
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