Is this sleep paralysis starting?

Hey there,
I just had an unexpected experience today and wanted to ask someone about it.
I fell asleep during the day, without planning to, and also without having the intention to lucid dream.
At some point though, I realized that I for some reason realized I was almost sleeping. Not sure why that awareness happened.
I felt almost not aware of my surroundings anymore, my whole body was tingling very strongly and if I did an effort to keep myself relaxed the tingling grew stronger and I heard noises and voices.
At some point I asked myself ‘is this safe’? because I was actually a bit worried about the sensations in my body. And then lol :smile: a male voice answered: ‘dont worry, just come to us’ (only in my own language of course).
I decided I trusted the voice and relaxed again, for some reason I had the thought that there was also a womans voice, even though I did not hear it.
The body sensations grew and I heard some more noises, one said ‘Gustin’ (+ second name) I heard loud gitar music. I actually thought in that moment that this Gustin must be a gitar player that died :smile: lol. I do not know one in reality so tell me if you do :razz:

All of this kept going on for a while until my door (real door) was blown shut, it freaked me out because I could not see if it was a person coming in or the wind, and I woke myself up to be sure that it was just the wind.
Nothing was there, and I tried to get into that state again, but it did not happen anymore.

What is this, is this WILD?
The odd thing is that I did not try this thing anymore for a long time and I had no intention of sleeping (just reading a bit) so trying to ld was not in my mind at all. But for some reason I decided to try while I was almost asleep already.

Tingling, hearing voices. Thats HI :tongue: You were very close to a WILD, thats how it starts. (I’ve read, not experienced myself yet :sad: )

Ah ok, thank you :smile:

Yeah, you were very close! That state can be very fun. I often hear music too :smile: Awesome that a voice answered to your worrying! It is perfectly safe, although sometimes it can get really freaky :lol: Have fun with it!

Ah cool :smile: thanks for your reply.
Its is freaky, and its something to get used to :razz: lol. I also believe in spirits a bit, so that makes it more scary. Somewhere in your mind it makes you think ‘what if its a spirit’ And then you do not know if its a nice one or not a nice one. Which makes it harder not to want to wake yourself up. But… I do believe its save :slight_smile: so going to try to do this again.

That was sleep paralysis. It’s not something to monkey around with. You were probably on your back, right?

Hey there, nope, on my side.
Not something to ‘monkey’ around with, can you explain what you mean?
As far as I know sleep paralysis happens every single time you dream, so its something natural. The only thing that is different is that you stay aware and experience it happening.

Hmm… Sleep paralysis is a bit scary, but not how you describe it. That’s just gonna get people scared even more, I am not sure are your intentions all right.

Anyways, snowfox, don’t worry, because firstly, that was not SP. And secondly, SP is completely undangerous, it cannot harm you in any way. It is scary though.

Anyways, I think its something like a mixture of the complete-relaxation state and hypnagogia state. I experience something like this every other night, and I find it very amusing, but I seem to break it every time, because I can’t get over the roll over signal (read about it a lil’ bit) and I have a swallowing problem.

I think that this is a stage that leads to SP, so just make it as fun as you can and once you enter SP, don’t fear it, just let go. If you get HH (hypnagogic hallucinations), you must know that they can’t hurt you in any way, or any symptoms of SP (such as the breathing thing).

Remember, SP takes you to LD’s if you don’t fear it, so just go with the flow and imagine a dream. A LD will come to you in minutes.

Wow. A lot of erroneous statements there.

She saw the room around her and was hearing noises. That’s sleep paralysis.

And it can be frightening enough that someone with a weak heart could definitely have a heart attack duing it. And it can leave a person a nervous wreck for days. So no, it’s not harmless.

Now, you can say, “Oh, I know it’s a dream, blah,blah, blah.” But that’s like saying you can take LSD and have a frightening experience, but laugh it off because “it’s just the LSD.” Not so.

As far as sleep paralysis leading to LDs – I’ve experienced both a lot of times, and that’s never happened to me. I think a lot of the people who think they have have sleep paralysis are just experiencing WILDs, and not actually SP.

As far as I know, SP can’t be “induced.” But if you tend to have it, you’re a lot more likely to have it when you’re on your back. That’s why I no longer sleep on my back.

Anyone who has really experienced it never wants to experience it again.

Sleep paralysis is just about the last thing I’d advise anyone to monkey around with.

Ah thank you Beat doctor,
I thought it happened ‘every time’ we dream, literally in during each dream, only usually without experiencing it with awareness. I thought it was the body`s way to keep you from moving about when you are dreaming. So perfectly natural and actually the way of the body to keep itself save.
Is that not true? :smile: Just wondering. I do not know a lot about it.

Arne,
I do understand that you really had very frightening experiences. I think though that the comparison with LSD is not completely right. The difference is, that going to sleep is a natural thing. And going to sleep while keeping yourself aware, is exactly that, keeping yourself aware. With LSD thats not possible.
With LSD its not possible to use your mind and tell yourself that its ok. With being aware while going into sleep paralizis, its different. Then you still have the power of your mind at ready for a big part. But only if you are aware of that fact itself of course, otherwise its like dreaming and having no control.
I tend to agree that sleep paralizis is ok, not very dangerous. It might be dangerous for people that are unstable and unable to balance themselves. Also those people might have more hard images and sounds to deal with (more scary ones).

But again, I do not know a lot, as I wrote to doctor bear as well. Just my thoughts.
Sleep paralysis is natural though, its the body protecting itself.

I’ve taken LSD many times, and I’ve experienced sleep paralysis many times. And SP is infinitely more disturbing. There’s no comparison.

Maybe because LSD triggers serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine? Creates a different way of experiencing things.

If you think you can bring on SP, and you want to do it, then go ahead.

I get this almost every night. If its your definition of SP, its not scary at all. My definition is scarier, but still not that scary as you describe it.

Have you read the forum rules?
I would like to discuss this, but I don’t want this topic to be locked.

It can be induced by many different methods. In every method simply you have something to make you aware. Your body thinks that your mind is asleep, and the body falls asleep. Google “Lucidity 101” and “Lucidity 102”.

I have experienced it. I want to experience it again. One thing is that I have broken it (the breathing and moving method).

And yes, sleep paralysis is natural, I would say its something like a defense mechanism against moonwalk.

Lol, dont become angry. You start discussing it, and I reply, no hard feelings from this side.
Just adding my views and knowledge to your views and knowledge. That is a way of learning too.
I do not think I can bring on SP by the way, I think it happens during ‘every’ dream, naturally. It keeps the body from moving when you move in your dream. Its keeping the body save. Its normal.
The only difference here is staying awake mentally while it happens, that is not as normal.
This time it did not happen on perpose, but it is a way to go into a lucid dream, so I would not mind trying it again if I have an evening in which my mind is clear enough.

The times that I experienced sleep paralysis with awareness where different then this one. This one was about ‘going into it’ almost, with awareness. The other times I experienced it, I was in the process of waking up in the morning… so very different. Then your body goes out of SP, which is different. Sometimes it was scary but as long as I reminded myself of the fact that it would soon stop, it was ok. The fear lies in feeling like you are not in control. Its a normal fear. But not needed. Usually when I try to move my fingers it does not work for a moment, but quite quickly it does. The body responds to the mind when the mind is willing it strongly enough. It just takes some moments. Which means that you are in control.
It might be that with LSD it works differently, maybe also the long term effect on the brain made the SP experiences stronger then usual. I think that could be possible, but do not know for sure. LSD does mess up the balance of how neurotransmitters work when you are awake and when you sleep.

Yes, I see the room around me and hear noises too. But those noises are coming from the waking world. Not from the dreaming world. Hearing things and seeing things that aren’t from the waking world is a different matter.

Little Fox, go to Wikipedia and look up “sleep paralysis.”

Moonwalk?

Wikipedia is not the same as a number of different books on sleep and such. But I know what is written there as well. And I know SP can be very scary when it goes together with scary hallucinations. It can also go together with stuff that is not scary, depending on the state of the mind probably, just like with nightmares.

But I stop with this discussion :smile: since I do not know what your experiences are. I understand that you yourself strongly had very scary experiences and I understand that this is what you want to warn me about. Which is ok of course, thanks for that.
I am actually a person that tries to only experiment when I have a clear mind and an overal restfull feeling. I usually quite careful.

It’s happened to me enough times that I know that the account in Wikipedia is correct in all particulars. It’s very well researched too.

I understand your experiences where like that.

No, no, no. Thoes noises are coming from the dreaming world too for me. I don’t find it scary at all. I repeat, I experience this almost every time I go to bed drowsy. It is not sleep paralysis. I have felt real sleep paralysis. Its way different.
This is just an entrance to SP.

@Little snowfox: Yes, I tried to describe the difference between going-into and going-out SP to a friend of my few days ago. I never experienced going-out SP tho.
You haven’t experienced going-into this time I think… Its something like gravity is growing… And it starts from your legs… Going up and up. Once it comes to your chest, you start to breathe hardly. Then I started to breathe fastly and deeply to get out of it (I didn’t know what I must do to induce LD from that state).
It did include HI’s and HS’s, but they weren’t that scary. I experience both HI’s and HS’s every night (literally here, every night).

And two last thing to say before going to bed:

  1. Anything related to dreams differs from a person to person.
  2. If your mind’s clear, you won’t be afraid of hypnagogic sounds nor hallucinations.