Sleep Paralysis

[bankside]

The brains of all mammals are equipped with a clutch-like mechanism to disengage motor control during dreaming. That's what protects us from the risks of sleepwalking while unconscious; our bodies have evolved to prevent us from acting out our dreams so we can sleep securely in a stationary position and remain in the safe place we selected when we went to bed.

It is not at all surprising that this mechanism slips up sometimes.

My dog can be fast asleep but with muffled barks and feet twitching; in her dreams she hurtles across the back yard to chase away the magpies. It is not at all astonishing that the same mechanism can have trouble unlocking…producing a conscious person whose body remains stuck in neutral.

If I found myself in that situation I'd try to recall this point and relax while waiting for my brain to fully wake up. It did happen to me once or twice as a child, but before I knew of the phenomenon, and I think it would have been a great comfort to know what was going on.

As far as lucid dreaming, I have never needed special techniques to distinguish dream from reality. My dreams register in my mind as though I were watching a film. A participatory film with the best immersive 3D television imaginable. And I can get caught up in the plot line. But I don't recall much difficulty in remembering that it is a dream, or in losing a sense of self as the observer.

In the same way that a scary movie doesn't bother me because "It's just a film" I can maintain that detachment, or at least access it readily when I've "had enough of" a given dream.

I wonder, what are the downsides to lucid dreaming?

 

[freefall]

^You guys are making me miss lucid dreaming. How fun it was to soar through the universe at will, and land on planets that were made of all glass...

....or go find somebody and be a slut.

I rarely have sex dreams and those are the only thing lucid dreams haven't been able to grant me

 

[Kulindahr]

I get sex dreams but they're almost always a case of somnium interruptum.

 

[Kulindahr]

Bankside, in my case, I began to remember other, SWS dreams, in which I had sex with women. This led to an ego crisis of identity and fueled a clinical depression.

Also, the precognitive dreams began to interfere too much with my daily life.

And the other dreams I'd had, in which it was made clear to me that I could time-travel, or tap deep into the powers of my subconscious mind, I began to fear for my sanity.

I'd be willing to risk a bit of sanity if my subconscious mind would allow me 'druid' powers, like to be able to make all of a certain species in an area die, or even change to another species. Of all the frustrations of my conservation work, invasive species is right near the top.

 

[Kulindahr]

Hmm. Very, very interesting, Kulindahr.

I was never given any indication that I could develop any powers like that. In the scary dream I'd had concerning Monsters from the Id, I felt an unspoken feeling that "he" was talking about telekinesis...

That would work -- I'd just have to be able to move millions of individual molecules around.

 

[Kulindahr]

I've had two sex dreams in my life. They were both with women though...

...why is that???

Your subconscious is straight?

 

[bankside]

Your subconscious is straight?

Could've been nightmares...

 

[Just_Believe18]

I used to have sleep paralysis when I was younger. It was terrible. There was nothing worse than opening your eyes and being unable to move. Eventually, I found a way to beat it. Basically, gather all of your focus to the thought that in a split second, you're going to jerk your entire body. Then do it, once or twice, until your body finally clicks together and you move again.

 

[freefall]

I was never given any indication that I could develop any powers like that. In the scary dream I'd had concerning Monsters from the Id, I felt an unspoken feeling that "he" was talking about telekinesis...

Dreams are projections of the mind, or sometimes the id. But I don't think it will transgress into something out of limits

I mean, it's not like the movie 'In Dreams', right? Otherwise, I would've died twice already (yes, I dreamt looking at my own corpse, the first one in a carcrash, the second one after a bomb explosion --').

 

[freefall]

I would have interpreted that dream an entirely different way.

When I dream of corpses, etc., I know there is big trouble ahead.

I take it you believe in dream clairvoyance, then?

I wonder if sleep paralysis is similar to locked-in syndrome or Old Hag Syndrome.

Old hag syndrome is the old entity for sleep paralysis, but locked-in syndrome is an entirely different condition.

Locked-in syndrome is not a normal condition. Instead, it is caused by damage to the brain (due to many causes, e.g. stroke, trauma, etc.) in a way it causes complete paralysis of the body while the person remains conscious without defects on the intellectual and mental function. Usually the person maintains contact by eye movements and blinking. It's pretty rare but possible.

There is a man who got this syndrome and wrote a memoir about it. The name's Jean-Dominique Bauby and the memoir is adapted into a movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Both are good things to view

 

[JJ-Klein]

This has all been very interesting to read. Funny how the topic turned to lucid dreaming...I actually have quite a lot of experience with that.

I used to have a recurring dream constantly. I won't go into boring, excessive detail but it tortured me for years because I needed to get through a doorway in this dream and everytime I ran for the door, I woke up. So I kept telling myself that everytime I was in the house with that door, it HAD to be a dream. Eventually it clicked and I could tell I was in a dream as soon I was in that house so could then control everything....except getting to that fucking door! I had some pretty wild dreams back then, all within my control. Anyway, one time I had the dream and finally got to go through the doorway and into that room that was kept out of my reach for so many years. Ever since then i've never had that dream again.

This has resulted in losing my ability to be able to lucid dream easily but occassionally I do still have dreams where something just clicks in my mind and I think "wow, this is all I dream" and then i'm able to control it. The human mind is a wonderful thing.

 

[72-Jay]

^You guys are making me miss lucid dreaming.

I miss it too LOL maybe I should ban myself from this & a couple other websites...and instead spend more time in bed (at least until summer when it'll be too hot to sleep well anyway...)

72, the sexual dreams I had with men were completely different in nature than sex in physical life. I moved really closely to them, and our energies in our private area began to merge, with an undulating, tingling feeling. (The closest thing to that feeling in physical reality is that "energized" feeling you get when you're under laughing gas.) It feels really good.

That sounds cool
The the sexual dreams I had were what I can only guess .. somewhat what real life would be like

Another less lucid dream I had seemed to suggest that time travel was possible to us, here in physical reality. Someone told me that most of our ideas about reality were completely wrong, and that if I wanted to go back in time I could slip through a black hole in INNER space (as opposed to "outer" space). I had one other lucid dream about time travel that I have written about in my blog.

One bad side effect that I had was that I began to question the nature of my sexuality. I feel pretty comfortable being gay, but when I was lucid dreaming, sometimes I'd get semi-lucid dreams that involved sex with women. I began to question my sexuality and became clinically depressed. It seems that the ego begins to fracture when its identity is in question.

Those precognitive dreams began to become too much of a problem, too. They didn't often foretell good things, it was usually bad ones...

I'll have to take a look at your that time travel one in your blog
Wow . dreams starting something that leads toward depression kinda scary. Sorry to hear about that man.
Those precognitive dreams sound sorta nightmare-ish to me

I mean, it's not like the movie 'In Dreams', right? Otherwise, I would've died twice already (yes, I dreamt looking at my own corpse, the first one in a carcrash, the second one after a bomb explosion --').

Never heard of that movie..
One time (long time ago, woulda been highschool or maybe even before) I dreamed that I'd died and had became a ghost....(wasn't a nightmare)

72-Jay has already mentioned the fact that lucidity in dreams can vary. I'd like to expand that idea—lucidity, even in the same dream, can wax and wane. In addition to this, some dreams that begin lucid fall into a normal dream state, and others that begin as normal dreams evolve into lucid ones. So we can safely say that lucid dreaming is not a black-and-white issue, it's a spectrum of lucidity.

Exactly! I've always refered to it as 'shades of gray' .. being able to control/modify things is exactly the same 'shades of gray' type thing..

I've had many, many recurring dreams where I'm in the same place(s) over and over and I've always just brushed them off as recurrences.

Normal reoccurring dreams can be kinda cool...especially when you get to go farther along than in a previous one.
Recurring nightmares on the other hand suck (especially the ones that really scare you) ... At least now I know I can "take care of" those without having to physically remove something from the ceiling of my bedroom (don't know why this one dream I got picked that thing in particular...but I did actually consider removing it )

 

[freefall]

By clairvoyance, do you mean seeing dead people in dreams? Well that might happen to other people, but it never happened with me.

Now if you're speaking of presentient dreams, why yes, I believe in them because I've had so many of them. But I must qualify that statement.

72-Jay has already mentioned the fact that lucidity in dreams can vary. I'd like to expand that idea—lucidity, even in the same dream, can wax and wane. In addition to this, some dreams that begin lucid fall into a normal dream state, and others that begin as normal dreams evolve into lucid ones. So we can safely say that lucid dreaming is not a black-and-white issue, it's a spectrum of lucidity.

Presentient dreams worked the same way. I saw a wide spectrum of presentience. Some dreams would approach 100% accuracy; some would be accurate in some ways but not others; some would be accurate, but overlaid with normal dream material, etc. Learning to understand what the symbols meant helped a lot, and enabled me to decipher dreams that otherwise would have remained inscrutable.

In addition to this, I noticed definite patterns. Most often, I'd see dreams that indicated events that took place either three days, or three weeks into the future. This led me to ponder some fascinating theories regarding the nature of time.

It might seem to the novice that all of this represented this wonderful gift, but in fact, it became a curse, speaking perfectly honestly. Who wants to worry about something that might happen three weeks from now?

95% of the stuff was bad, anyway.

From the way you see the dreams as premonitions or represent to a certain extent the truth, you do view dreams as something clairvoyant (i.e. psychic).

I see dreams more as a representation of self, either it is id, repressed/forgotten memory, inner tumult/emotions, etc. I don't really believe in premonition views in dreams.

 

[freefall]

^Yeah, there is nothing impossible in the name of science, heh?