Sleep Paralysis

Feeling paralyzed within a dream or while waking up is actually a physical process of protection by your body while you are asleep. The fear & rush of adrenaline bring you to partial wakefulness, close to waking up completely. While we are asleep (in REM state), our brain induces paralysis to prevent us from acting out our dreams, and quite possibly hurting ourselves. (See Sleep Walking, below) There have been reported deaths of people with this mechanism being faulty, who fled a dream "monster" and threw themselves out of a high-rise apartment, or ran into the street and were struck by a car and killed. There have also been reports of people "fighting" dream assailants, and sadly when they "come to" or awaken, they find out they have hurt or even killed their housemate or spouse. THIS IS RARE.

If your sleep disorder has reached a stage where you may be on the verge of violence or accidental injury, I strongly urge you to go to a sleep clinic and get help. Stress and being overtired are triggers for sleepwalking, and you can learn how to alleviate these triggers.
Being aware of dream paralysis is a good sign that your intuition is heightened! Being partially awake in a dream is the pre-cursor to lucid dreaming, a highly enlightened state in which the dreamer is totally awake within a dream, and reality merges with the dream-scene... one can will oneself to fly, cause magnificent manifestations of artwork, create a quite realistic reunion with friends or relatives who have passed on...the possibilities are endless. Once one has lucid dreamed, they are never quite the same. Life has opened a door of heightened awareness, which truly feels more real than one's waking life.

DREAM THEMES and TRIGGERS

Dream Themes and Dream Triggers are basically the same thing; they are just UTILIZED differently. A dream theme is an identified recurring image in one's dreams, such as dreaming often about a school, while a dream trigger is both realizing that image is recurring, and USING it to trigger lucid dreaming. So, if you experience frequent dream themes, you have the capability of progressing into lucid dreaming more easily than someone who doesn't. The way it's done is like this: you are having yet another dream about schools, for example. You think to yourself, "Here's that school again! Wait a minute...I've been out of school for years now, so I MUST BE DREAMING!" and poof--you're lucid!

In order to accomplish this, it helps to keep that dream journal I talk about on another page, and follow the other tips. I also suggest visiting the lucid dreaming webpage links I have listed on my Links page.

Right now, my dream triggers are still church and schools. I've had that recurring theme for years now. Some dream themes of the past have been: roaches, bathrooms (hated those!), spinning heads, dead bodies, and a recurring nightmare in which I was paralyzed while an evil, shadowy entity sped towards me, which I had all my life until finally facing my fears in waking life 4 yrs ago, and since then I haven't had the nightmare reoccur. (Thank God!) It was by working through that recurring nightmare that I became very interested in dreams and their meanings. Once you face whatever issue the dream theme is representing in your life, and "heal" it or conquer it, that particular theme will either evolve or disappear from your dreams altogether.

Here's a link to a huge resource on sleep disorders put together by NASA:

SLEEP DISORDER RESOURCES

Here is an A-Z by State listing of Sleep Disorder Clinics:

American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Copyright 1996-2008 by ZenCyn - Cyndi Russell

Contact me with this FeedBack Form

keyword search keywords words dreams angel angels dream nightmares nightmare symbol symbols sleep disorder zencyn cyndi guide teeth symbology night terrors insomnia terrified sleepwalking sleeptalking talking apparition ghost new age metaphysical spiritual altered consciousness vision precognitive esp help interpretation interpret dreams tooth house red white blue green yellow black pink gold husband lover sex making love friend boyfriend girlfriend zombies mummy mother father dad sister brother aunt uncle cousin neighbor family chair flying tree book reading angelic light whoosing noise driving car truck bicycle moped motorcycle horse elephant zebra birds peacock duck food kitchen cooking refridgerator oven dishwasher dreamt cleaning washing machine wash hands bath pool ocean sea lake water road path mountain hill bear tiger wolf boss sports football baseball basketball video games playing game pumpkin fruit fighting food fight die dying scared screaming screamed scream cry crying cried help afraid sleep walking sleep talking eating apnea insomnia what does it mean emotions emotional upset mad angry sad happy party stairs bed travel grass war hiding hallway Tibet