What happens during sleep paralysis and how to stop it | Hacker News Reader

What happens during sleep paralysis and how to stop it

discovermagazine.com

9 pointsbookofjoe8 comments

Funnily enough, when exploring lucid dreaming in my 20s, I ran into sleep paralysis. My experience tracks with the article (eg: sleeping on my back amplified it) This stopped only after I started using a CPAP machine, which I’m surprised wasn’t focused on more in the article. If obstructing your airway causes you to wake up a bit, maybe that’s what leads to sleep paralysis or even lucid dreaming? Curious if others have experienced something similar.

I had sleep paralysis during my first year of university. I used my new found freedom and independence to stay up all night, drink tons of energy drinks and eat extremely badly.

The first time I got sleep paralysis I remember seeing a faceless man standing over my bed and just feeling terrified.

Googled it that day and have slept on my side ever since. I’ve had the occasional waking up unable to move since then, but nothing near as bad as that first night.

https://archive.ph/uKJtw

Why would you want to stop it? Use it to induce lucid dreams

As someone who gets lucid dreams frequently, they are overrated. I can see how maybe they could be fun as a novelty, but if you get them a lot, the drawbacks become very apparent:

1. A lucid dream is not as rich and immersive as a real dream. The more lucid you become, the more boring and pointless it feels. You might as well just be daydreaming.

2. Lucid dreams are caused by a failure to enter REM correctly, so a night that you get a lucid dream is a night that your sleep quality suffers.

If I never had a lucid dream again, I would be 100% happy with that. (And if I never had sleep paralysis again, I would be 500% happy with that.)

What you describe does not resemble the lucid dreams I had back then, with ability to fly, teleport, make things appear, etc. with vivid colors and details. To me it was pretty much Inception style and blew my mind.

The only drawbacks for me was that you realized pretty quickly that it's a lonely experience, you get to share that universe with absolutely no one with yourself.

And also it needed lots of discipline. I didn't have the chance to have them "naturally" as it seems being the case for you.

I got it pretty regularly as a kid, though it disappeared completely by my mid 20s or so.

You want to stop it because it triggers a massive, involuntary physical fear response. Not so much when waking up, but certainly when falling asleep. You feel with complete conviction and certainly that it will kill you if you don't fight against it and wake back up. Doesn't matter how much you know it's not true.

Some people even get hallucinations of evil figures attacking them during this, it's likely where the concept of succubi and incubi comes from.

Yes, I was half-joking. I had sleep paralysis during my 20s and I was terrified. I honestly thought an evil spirit was in my room.

Then I discovered the explanation and lucid dreaming, then I was a little bit less terrified and even managed to fall into sleep paralysis "manually" and trigger lucid dreams.

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