It happens to me about twice per year and will always be when I am half-awake, half-asleep, so I have always atttributed it to my physical body not being totally animated yet by my spirit, which travels during sleep. It is as if I am trying to get back into control of my body and of wakefulness too fast, faster than my body can come fully awake to follow the mind and brain's commands. I have no scientific explantion, only my experience.

Dear Allie, Yes I have experianced sleep paralysis a few years ago and it was truly a ferful experiance. Waking up and feeling strange almost as if a curant was running through me and not being able to move can put fear into the most people. You are right the more one strugles the worse it is but you are terified not to fight. Guess what, stop strugling and you will fall asleep again and wake up just fine.

Sleep paralysis is definately a medical problem and in my case at the time I had an overactive thyroid and at the same time suffered from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Once the thyroid normalised and I started controling my blood sugar the sleep paralysis vanished as if by magic. I might still get one very rarely once a year or so especialy around the Christmas and New Year due to being tempted by too many sweet cakes and tarts and pudings. Now even that has stopped as I make sure to have some form of protein (milk, eggs, cheese, meat, chicken or fish) before bed time to make sure that the blood sugar remains balanced during the night. This can happen to diabetics as well if they are on insulin injections but dont eat properly. Keep a food diary to make sure that you are not intolerent to something you are eating. Have some form of proetien at night and not too many sweet things and I'm sure your sleep paralysis will vanish althouth it will take a bit of time. It would be a good idea to have a medical check up just to make sure all is ok. Circulation problems can have the same affect so make sure you do regular exercise as that helps.

As for coming out of your body and seeng yourself that is called OBE an out of body experiance which is a form of astral traveling. The experiance is very simmilar to sleep paralysis in the beginning and it is dificult to allways tell them apart. If you eat properly, exercise and make sure you have some form of protein before bedtime and your sleep paralysis disapear than you know what caused it. I wish you good luck and please keep us here at I.Q. informed of how it goes so as to help others with similar problems.

well allie it as happen only once for me i was sleeping and i was feeling the room and something dark and evil pass through the door of the room. it jumped on my chest it was like having 500 lbs on me and it grab me at the neck trying to strangle me. i have fight with all my might and i could not move. so i said i am in God and God is in me kill me if you want but you will be destroy. and the dark thing as run away. it never happened again. it is called the old hag. that thing feeds on fear and try to scare you.just like a nightmare.

Definitions The mare in nightmare is not a female horse, but a mara, an Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse term for a demon that sat on sleepers' chests, causing them to have bad dreams.

Dialect variants, as explained below, include the forms mara, mahr, mahrt, mårt, and others.

In High German, the demon who causes bad dreams is most often called an Alp, a word that is etymologically related to elf.

A mare-induced bad dream is called a nightmare in English, martröð (mare-ride) in Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, mareridt (mare-ride) in Danish, mareritt (mare-ride) in Norwegian, and Alpdruck (alp-pressure) or Alptraum (alp-dream) in German.

http://paranormal.about.com/od/humanenigmas/a/Old-Hag-Syndrome.htm

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

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/nightmare.html#definitions

experience and enjoy.

When we sleep, we dream. When we dream, we are doing things and moving around. Our body becomes paralyzed when we sleep, so that we don't get up and move around and get hurt. People who sleep walk have a deficiency in the sleep paralysis triger. Our dreams are hallucinations, but we are usually sleeping when this occures. Melatonin is a natural hormone that helps the body to do it's thing and sleep. Melatonin causes halucinations, so the halucinations are from melatonin and any other sleep associated hormones.

I wached a show called NOVA: What Are Dreams?.

I have had sleep paralysis since I was a child. They were terrifying then. I never discussed it with others until I grew up. Now it generally only happens while taking a daytime nap, usually on the sofa. I had the typical symptoms of an "evil" presence, can't move - but totally aware of my surroundings, difficulty breathing etc. I could hear and sometimes see family members in the living room talking and moving about. I would exert all of my effort to cry out but only manage to make a gruff grunt. I have since instructed family members to shake me if they notice me struggling. Many times they DO notice and jiggle me, which immediately wakes me up. But if I don't get up right away I will fall right back into the paralysis.

As I've got older (46) I have realized this is due to my body not completing a sleep cycle. The more I learn about sleep paralysis, the less intense and frequent they become. I am able to coach my brain through it more easily now. I no longer feel an "evil" presence. The last few times I have decided to "ride it out" by trying to go back to sleep. It just takes too much effort to force myself awake.

Two times ago I tried this but my face was in a pillow so I was afraid I might stop breathing. I decided to go through the major exertion method and wake up. This truly takes all of one's energy! However, this last time...about a month ago...I was in a better position, and even though I still felt panic about breathing, I just told myself to go back to sleep and I would eventually complete the cycle and wake up. I went to sleep right away and finished the cycle, waking up normally about 20 minutes later. I was quite proud of myself!

I often wonder if sleep paralysis is related to Low Blood-Sugar, which I have. People with LBS and Diabetes are much more prone to a coma state when their blood sugar levels are extreme.

Practicing "Sleep Hygiene" and eating healthy foods also has helped reduce the frequency and intensity greatly! It is my opinion that stimulants and drugs, including caffeine, alcohol, too much sugar, unnatural sugar substitutes, and any kind of drug will only exacerbate the intensity and frequency of sleep paralysis.

My 19 year old daughter just now told me she too has been having these issues since she was small. It must run in families. Now I can help her overcome it's severity at a much younger age! She also suffers with LBS. I am glad she told me :-)

Owning our power gives us control over what we do, what is going on within, and what happens to us (via our own sovereignty).

I think 'night terrors' have been around in one form or the other since the beginning of time spawning all sorts of supernatural lore in its wake. Things like a cat stealing your breath or the old hag sitting on your chest even tales of the succubus .ect. I am pretty sure that a combination of chemicals glycine and gaba(acronym for something you should google)lol! to a couple different nerve receptors in our body/brain during REM cycle causes sleep paralysis but do your due dilligence cause I sure ain't no brain scientist. Lol! As far as meaning I just think its our bodys way of keeping us in the top bunk or cavemen from rolling into the campfire and sometimes we get caught trying to wake with our brain still full of said chemicals and voile' a night terror._. at least thats my thoughts on the matter?

When you go to sleep, your body must go into "shutdown mode". Your breathing slows, as does your heart rate; your organs slow down their processing functions- for example, your kidneys slow down so you do not have to urinate as frequently as you do while awake. Your brain also rests, but it does not completely shut down. This "partial" shutdown is what can lead to many sleep disorders and weird happenings such as sleep paralysis. Your brain cannot just turn off; your brain-stem continues to keep your vital processes going, such as keeping your heart beating, and your lungs breathing. A final protection is to "put to sleep" your motor functions. This is so you do not act out what you dream. (Of course, if you do, it is called sleep-walking!) It is when your consciousness is not also completely asleep that problems arise.

There are quite a few little and big sleep goofs and mishaps. Sleep apnea, where a person stops breathing completely, is perhaps the worst, but snoring is the most famous. Both snoring and apnea are indications of a sleep disorder, and a sleep study will show that you might stop breathing as often as once a minute (like me...). If you do either of these, you need to have a sleep study immediately.

Sleep paralysis is a strange disorder, and usually does not happen frequently. It is a case where you are only partially awake; you are conscious enough to notice that your body is "paralyzed" but not enough to truly wake up- and therein lies the rub... It is frightening to be conscious enough to observe your own paralysis of sleep, but not really be awake enough to wake up your own motor functions. As mentioned above, one solution is to just tell yourself to go back to sleep, and all will be well. What is really going on is a kind of lucid dreaming- if you are observing yourself sleeping, you may be able to also slide into lucid dreaming. Both are what I call "doubly conscious" states. You are asleep, but also conscious enough to direct dreaming. In sleep paralysis, you are conscious of your own "sleeping state". That is all that is going on.