sleep paralysis

[Battle_Warrior]

Has anyone ever experienced sleep paralysis??? I had it in Aug. of this year. Do ghostly encounters have anything to do with it? I had a strange dream about my dead Grandpa and when I woke up, I couldn’t move.

 

[redredsox]

Every night, when you dream, your body releases a type of paralytic. This is so you don’t act out your dreams. People who sleepwalk often have a problem releasing this chemical.

For some people, they wake up before the paralytic wears off. Especially if they wake up during the deepest part of the sleep cycle.

Hope that helps!

 

[GEddie]

Has anyone ever experienced sleep paralysis??? I had it in Aug. of this year. Do ghostly encounters have anything to do with it? I had a strange dream about my dead Grandpa and when I woke up, I couldn’t move.

I have. I woke up and could barely move my hands, as though I were encased in some kind of sheath. I knew what was happening though, and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, I could move normally.

There’s nothing ghostly about it; it’s a natural misfire in your head. Your brain releases your muscle tone when you fall asleep, so your limbs don’t thrash around while dreaming, which wastes energy and could be dangerous. Ever feel your limbs jerk while falling asleep? That’s the muscle tone releasing. (Sometimes this doesn’t work, and you have the reverse problem, sleepwalking.)

Normally, the process reverses before our minds come awake, and we never know we were in “paralysis.” Sometimes though, our head wakes up first, and we can’t move, because our muscles are still slack. It’s perfectly natural, if awkward. When it happens, don’t be frightened, go back to sleep.

The fact that you dreamed of your dead Grandpa earlier is coincidence. I dreamed of no one dead when I woke up in SP. It’s just a natural mystery of our bodies. As JP2 once said, “Be not afraid.”

God Bless and ICXC NIKA

 

[braumeister]

I have had this. When I wake up mentally, my body has not waken up. It’s very strange. I can’t move any part of my body or speak clearly. It’s terrifying. It has not happened in a while though.

 

[Zekariya]

It’s happens to me every once in a while (including very recently). It isn’t fun at all.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Off topic a bit, but I remember a sermon by a Baptist minister in which he mentioned that he’d twice had his life saved by divine intervention when he was much younger.

In one case he was following his father through long grass on the family farm. Suddenly he found he simply just could not move. He was being held rock steady - “like being held by a giant hand” he said.

His father wondered why he wasn’t keeping up and came back to get him. But as he got close to his son, he saw a death adder lurking in the grass right where Alan (the young would-be pastor) would have taken his next step. Yet Alan didn’t know it was there.

As far as Alan was concerned, God or an angel had actively prevented him from taking the next, possibly fatal, step. But this was a real event, and not a dream.

In the case of the OP’s dream, it seems to me that the other posters have made a strong case for the cause being natural. It seems the OP may have woken up in the middle of the dream, and suffered the temporary paralysis experienced by others.

 

[Liquid47]

Yeah I get it all the time lol.

It’s an incredibly disturbing experience, but it’s nothing directly supernatural.

I usually think supernatural thoughts when I have it though, I guess because my mind is half asleep half awake.