half awake / half asleep

bruno

est malade
this year i've experienced the strangest thing.. that in the space between being awake and asleep i have at least a couple of times had to struggle with something that pins me down to the bed, immobilising my arms and oppressing me. a disturbing penomenon.

having zero experience with this sort of thing being that historically i sleep soundly and hardly ever dream (or don't remember, which amounts to the same thing) the nature of these episodes puzzles me. i remember the struggle, the anguish, but for the life of me i haven't found a way to consciously resist or overturn the situation.

has this happened to anyone else here or am i alone in this twilight madness?
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
This is an acknowledged psychological phenomenon - basically when you're dreaming your brain stops you from moving, but when you wake up it doesn't switch back to waking mode straight away.

Did a quick search and, naturally, wikipedia comes through with a bit of a primer on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

I've never experienced it, sounds horrible to me. I do get pretty wild hypnogogic states (that weird state on the way to being asleep) sometimes.

"Wild" and "sleeping" probably don't belong together. ;)
 

tate

Brown Sugar
this year i've experienced the strangest thing.. that in the space between being awake and asleep i have at least a couple of times had to struggle with something that pins me down to the bed, immobilising my arms and oppressing me, a disturbing penomenon.
I have heard of this happening to people when they fall asleep lying on their back.
 

bruno

est malade
thanks for the pointers, both of you.

i have experienced sleep paralysis before but i asked because (and this i neglected to mention) these experiences have been disturbingly physical and in struggle with something, a 'negative entity' of sorts. the pinning down is literal (at the wrists, chest). and the negativity isn't a matter of interpretation, it's literal.

on reflection these episodes have coincided with troubled times on a personal level. but i was used to standard nightmares, this is new to me.
 

bruno

est malade
and basically i just want to sleep! i can skip the introduction thank you very much :confused:
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
If you have a read of the Wikipedia page on hypnagogia it suggests that it's common to feel pinned down and/or the presence of an entity of some sort.

I hope it goes away, sounds shit.
 

bruno

est malade
yeah, i should take up yoga or something.

edit: michael that entry is an exact description! you learn something new every day.
 
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mms

sometimes
If you have a read of the Wikipedia page on hypnagogia it suggests that it's common to feel pinned down and/or the presence of an entity of some sort.

I hope it goes away, sounds shit.

its a common explanation for when people think they've been abducted by aliens.
 
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martin

----
I used to have this, first few times it freaks you out, like someone kneeling on the back of your neck and you can hear them snarling. I think when you realise it's just sleep paralysis, you eventually get over it. I probably get it once every 3 or 4 months now, and just lie there unable to move, thinking, "Oh for fuck's sake, this is boring, wake up"
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Ah... sleep paralysis. Used to suffer from this a lot. Strange thing is that once you are used to the terrifying state, it can become useable, in a way. Some people imagine death/aliens/a succubus are crouched on their chest, but once you know whats going on it can be an interesting (tho still unpleasant) pathway into a variety of dreamstates. The best way to describe the basic sleep paralysis is that you are locked in behind closed eyes, but are very much awake. You imagine you are in your bed, inside your room, represented as a fairly believably real space, but things are sitting on you, heroin demons kissing you, your immobile body being flung spasmodically around the room like a pathetic rag doll. Escaping this torture is hard, as even if you awake briefly you will feel yourself being sucked back in. Something unique about this state is a humming sound, and a buzzing, numbing feel in your body, almost like a massive drug high (or that's how I eventually rationalised it, certainly made it slightly more enjoyable)... as you slide into sleep paralysis the first sign is this humming sound, this buzzing feel inside your body, growing louder, stronger, and then you're in, and this buzzing is almost addictive in this state, extremely difficult to break away from. I presume that it is the sensation of having no feeling in yr physical body. This humming sensation is often widely reported in alien abduction cases. The upside of sleep paralysis is that it enabled me to enter various more interesting states (from lucid dreaming to what I call a zero-narrative dream state). The latter of these was the most shocking of all, a dream which rather than merely being a narrative invented as your mind flits out of dreaming and back to wakefulness, was a pure stream of randomised information, perceived in real time as virtual meta-schizophrenia, where every point of information synaesthesically cross references, and draws metaphors with every other.

@bruno: From experience the best way to properly escape (rather than the multitude of half-escapes which characterise this state) is to keep food or drink by yr bed. If you can manage to eat or drink, for just a few seconds, it wakes up yr metabolism and seems to mean that you do not slide back in. The difficulty is, of course, to get even awake enough to do this.
 
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bruno

est malade
Ah... sleep paralysis. Used to suffer from this a lot. Strange thing is that once you are used to the terrifying state, it can become useable, in a way. Some people imagine death/aliens/a succubus are crouched on their chest, but once you know whats going on it can be an interesting (tho still unpleasant) pathway into a variety of dreamstates. The best way to describe the basic sleep paralysis is that you are locked in behind closed eyes, but are very much awake. You imagine you are in your bed, inside your room, represented as a fairly believably real space, but things are sitting on you, heroin demons kissing you, your immobile body being flung spasmodically around the room like a pathetic rag doll. Escaping this torture is hard, as even if you awake briefly you will feel yourself being sucked back in. Something unique about this state is a humming sound, and a buzzing, numbing feel in your body, almost like a massive drug high (or that's how I eventually rationalised it, certainly made it slightly more enjoyable)... as you slide into sleep paralysis the first sign is this humming sound, this buzzing feel inside your body, growing louder, stronger, and then you're in, and this buzzing is almost addictive in this state, extremely difficult to break away from. I presume that it is the sensation of having no feeling in yr physical body. This humming sensation is often widely reported in alien abduction cases. The upside of sleep paralysis is that it enabled me to enter various more interesting states (from lucid dreaming to what I call a zero-narrative dream state). The latter of these was the most shocking of all, a dream which rather than merely being a narrative invented as your mind flits out of dreaming and back to wakefulness, was a pure stream of randomised information, perceived in real time as virtual meta-schizophrenia, where every point of information synaesthesically cross references, and draws metaphors with every other.

@Bruno: From experience the best way to properly escape (rather than the multitude of half-escapes which characterise this state) is to keep food or drink by yr bed. If you can manage to eat or drink, for just a few seconds, it wakes up yr metabolism and seems to mean that you do not slide back in. The difficulty is, of course, to get even awake enough to do this.
very interesting, gek, thank you for that. no aural fuckery here, i'm happy to report. also happy to report that i have experienced the exact same state of non-narrative association several times, though not for some time.

the truth is that i have avoided fucking around with dreams for roughly the same reason that swears gave in another thread, which is that i have to deal with enough garbage awake that i feel my brain deserves a rest, particularly a rest from orders. the question of free association and recombination of things without my conscious intervention is crucial also in that the few times that i do remember something i use it as an oracle, a very effective one. but i'm certainly up for a little exploration now, given these experiences. plus it's my dreamspace, i don't want other entities barging into it!
 
Used to happen to me quite frequently too but i learnt to just relax into it, realize it is a dream like state then consciously try and go back into it with a measure of control. I love it when it happens now, it kind of lets me know I'm alive.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
heroin demons kissing you, your immobile body being flung spasmodically around the room like a pathetic rag doll

interesting. i would say that once the heroin demons kiss you, trying to wrest free is like two full months of sleep paralysis 24/7, you're awake the entire. fucking. time with your eyes wide open (even on proper doses of subutex) and it's a million times more painful. don't kiss/ride/chase/feed the demon. ever.

this has been a public service announcement.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
last time this happened, I woke up out of a creepy dream, and felt a distinct presence in the room, about 4 feet to the left of my bed. I couldn't see it because my head was turned slightly the other way, but could sense it watching me, like it was taking its time deciding what to do with me. it was the dead of night, and I lay there paralysed for what seemed like an eternity, just waiting for that thing to... I don't know what. it seems the harder you try to scream or move just 1 finger the more paralysis tightens its grip...

on a lighter note, has anyone ever sleep-dialed? my GF once told me in the morning that in the middle of the night I made a phone call, and she apparently later went home and got the message - I had left a message on her home answering machine when she was sleeping right next to me... but she couldn't understand what I said, it was a bunch of gibberish.
 
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polystyle

Well-known member
Bruno
Would some kind of stress relief help ?
meditation maybe ...
You said yoga , meditations easy to do at home , doesn't cost
 

swears

preppy-kei
Does anybody ever experience a few seconds of false memories or assumptions while drifting off to sleep? For example once just as I was drifting off to sleep I "remembered" visiting Edinburgh, whereas in real life I've never been there. No real sites or sounds or experiences, just the idea that I'd gone once.
 

Ach!

Turd on the Run
I first heard about hypnagogic and hypnopompic states in a Reynolds interview with Aphex in Melody Maker, around the time when SAWII was released. I just thought let you know that.
 
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