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Post by pat on Apr 2, 2013 19:53:41 GMT -5
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Post by raybar on Apr 2, 2013 20:45:27 GMT -5
"Surveys put the number of sleep paralysis sufferers between about 5 percent and 60 percent of the population."
At little vague, I'd say. But at least I know I'm among the 40 to 95 percent who are not sleep paralysis suffers. Not yet, anyway.
But then, I don't sleep very well, and you probably have to actually be asleep to get paralyzed this way.
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Post by faskew on Apr 3, 2013 7:31:06 GMT -5
I experience it now and then. Used to have it bad in late high school and early college days - and other times of stress. When it began in high school, there was often the "Night Hag", too. I would "wake" paralyzed, with a face floating just above mine, then the face would zip away into nothing. Of course, I had no idea what was happening. No knowledge at all of hypnopompic or hypnagogic sleep states. I have chronic problems with neuralgia and tried Lyrica for a couple of days. It gave me seriously scary sleep states, where I saw shadow people all around me.
I've always thought that the origin of the belief in souls and an afterlife came about in the early days of humans when people had dreams about the dead. It could have seemed perfectly reasonable for those folk to think that their dreams were an alternate reality or some such. Shamanism is the earliest form of religion that I know of, and it too has a likely source in dysfunctional sleep. People seek answers and explanations, and if they don't have enough information to come to a correct conclusion, they'll happily choose a wrong one. Ignorance is bliss. 8->
Fred Askew
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Post by raybar on Apr 3, 2013 11:26:41 GMT -5
College did provide some really bad dreams. I was almost afraid to go to sleep for a while in sophomore year if I remember correctly. But no paralysis and no trouble distinguishing between reality and dreams. Well, there were a few moments during LSD fun, but that's a different story.
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Post by pat on Apr 3, 2013 12:51:21 GMT -5
Have only experienced sleep paralysis once that I'm aware of.....no visions associated with the event, but it was scary as hell. I'm awake and could absolutely not move. Cripes, add a vision to the feeling and I can easily understand why some might deduce it was something else.
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Post by faskew on Apr 4, 2013 13:26:19 GMT -5
You'd think that since everyone's brain mutes signals to muscles during sleep, that this phenomena would be very, very common. The only difference between this and regular sleep is being awake (or thinking that you're awake) and not being able to move for a couple of seconds. I suspect that many people have had such experiences, but, unless there was an accompanying hallucination or dream, it was so routine that they didn't notice it.
Fred Askew
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Post by raybar on Apr 4, 2013 13:44:51 GMT -5
Is it really only "a couple of seconds?" Anecdotes I've read make it sould like it last quite a bit longer than that.
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Post by faskew on Apr 5, 2013 7:28:09 GMT -5
Hmmm. Not sure. To me it's always been sort of like a falling dream, you know, where you feel like you're falling and then wake up suddenly when you hit. I have the experience when I'm waking up, so it's over pretty fast. It's sort of like coming to the surface after being 2-3 meters underwater. A discrete start point, a quick transition, then you're out. I think that other people may still be completely asleep and only think that they are awake, so they could probably have much longer experiences. I start the experience while asleep, but wake very quickly.
Fred Askew
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