swinginonspirals said:

hey everyone, I have been having alot of sp lately and want to know a little about it, or does anyone know of any techniques to overcome the fear? like i know that it will pas but it is a very very scary 30 seconds, also if i try and keep awake through it I get this buzzing in both ears like and feels like my heads vibrating.

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Every night!

LuSiD9 said:

O.K....  this may turn out to be long post so bear with me.  I'll warn you now, my typing typing/writing skills are pretty bad, and to make matters worse, I'm completley out of it right now. So again please bear with me.

Anyway, I have been blessed/cursed with SP since I was very young, my  first 'episode' I can remember, was when I was around 5  years old, it's pretty vauge, but I remember the buzzing 'elecric feeling' followed by me walking around the room with extreme difficulty (imagine being underwater with 10x the gravity while being elecricuted) and not being able to scream, open doors, or turn on lights...

very scary for a 5 year old to say the least. 

All of a sudden I was floating about 3 feet in the air, if you could of seen the way my body felt, I would of looked like a 'stereotypical ghost', I had no feet!.

with no effort at all. the fear kind of subsided, and I 'floated' back to the bed (the only thing I could think of doing for some reason) and woke up, back to normal again.  Of course, the first thing I did was try to tell my mom about what happened, and of course she looked at me like I was crazy or something mixed with a bit of fear.

It didn't happen again for a few years, as far as I can remember anyway, (kids brains are very good at blocking fucked up memorys) but as I grew a little older, it came back with a fucking vengeance, 5-6 nights a week at least, while I never left my body, I almost always felt or seen an EXTREMLEY disturbing presence right beside me,

usualy I couldn't see it, it was always just outside of my vision and I couldn't roll over, scream, anything... I felt like I was at the mercy of what a christian would think of as the devil (or a close relative at least)if I could see it, which was extremeley rare but most memorable, It would usualy be in the form of a black cloud that radiated pure fucking evil (I am a firm believer in the phrase "evil is in the eye of the beholder", and this is what this entity is ,anything your mind has been programmed to think of as "evil or scary".)

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:edit" over 6 years this original post... I am damn sure this thing is NOT created by my own fears... waaaaaaay too many people across the globe have seen it... for a REALLY long time too.. 

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The most memorable/terrifying SP memory I have had until just recently, happened when I was ...10-11 maybe... I was at my grandparents house sleeping in the usual bed I slept in when I visited them, I was fatigued from lack of sleep (for reasons I can't remember) and trying to sleep when the SP kicked in full force, the usual buzzing, vibrating, electrocution and paralyzed feelings were there, followed very shortly by  the entity, it was a pitch black cloud, looked like a mix of black electricity and black vapour, about the size of a baseball (if you've ever seen the black squiggly/gelatinis/electricty stuff you see on tropane containing plants, or diphenhydramine/diphenhydranate, that sometimes forms itself into hallucinations, imagine all that super concentrated into a little ball of energy that crackels with the most evil vibes you could imagine) it was about 5 feet in front of me at a 45 degree angle, I was lying on my back and couldn't move/scream to wake my grandparents up, and felt completely vulnerable to whatever this entity was up to, I was scared fucking shitless.

I somehow managed to roll over (don't know if my body actually did or not, but it felt like it anyway) and the cloud was now hovering a few inches above the pillow right beside my head! the feeling was unbearable, much worse than normal SP for me at the time, I finally snapped out of it, and turned on the bedside lamp, I tried not to fall asleep again to avoid it from happening again, but to no avail, although the entity never returned that night/morning I had many more short SP episodeds. 

That was before I learned dream control and read 'Lucid Dreaming' by Stephen Le Barge (or done any psychedelics) and found out the experiences I was having were actulay somewhat common in the average folk, and even had a name "sleep Paralysis", HUGE relief, it described everything I was experiencing, plus a few tips on how to stop it, until then I had pretty much kept it a secrect for fear of ridicule/disbelief.  After that point in time though, I was learning to either stop the process or riiiiiiiiiiiiide it out and see what I could do while in that state
I soon realized I could start a lucid dream/astral travel quite easily from the SP state by simply floating out of my body and spinning (easier done than typed).

I am 25 now, and SP is still a common occurance (15-25% of sleep)It can sometimes be a terrifying/draining pain in the ass (like when you have to work in the morning), But sometimes I induce it purposely, through conscious breathing exercises, alcohol hangovers, afternoon naps, sleep deprivation and more, for exploration of the mind/astral/aetheric planes. It also seems to happen when sleeping in a unusual place.

As for trying to stop it, I find wiggeling my toes/fingers can work, and so can just relaxing and trying not to fight it (I know that can be almost impossible sometimes.) If you sleep with a 'signifacant other' try breathing as heavily/fast as you can, they will hear you if they are awake trust me (the only fool proof method I know), as soon as they touch or shake you, you'll almost always snap out of it/wakeup.


as for preventing it, I am glad someone said something about dehydration, that might explain the alcohol hangover effect, I thought it might be from the temporary alcohol withdrawl that causes a hangover in the first place, not dehydration. It seems as though sleep depravation, especialy rem sleep, is a big factor.  I've also noticed that taking meletonin to sleep is A VERY BAD IDEA if you are sucebtable to SP, at least for me it was (unless I smoke a doobie 20 mins or so after melatonin strip, pot seems to lesson REM for me) emotional stress and unusual sleep location/pattern also seem to be a large factor.

As for the most memorable SP experience I now currently hold, I was trying to sleep (had to work in the morning so it was unintentional) I  had taken a 'dissolve under your tongue melatonin strip' and went to bed like normal, but 10 mins or so I felt the familiar vibration of SP.

followed by the common but weird 'esp' feeling of someone/something being there, this time it was aliens.  I decided to riiiide it out this time and see if I could bring myself somewhere useful...

instead I got the undeniable feeling of a multitude of presences kind of 'scanning my brain' making slight adjustments and such ( i lack a better description) all I could think was "so... you guys fixing me up  or what?" then BOOM, I could see was right ahead of me, facing the dooer, I honestly was convinced that there were aliens standing in my doorway, completly invisible, but something could most definitely be felt.)  I have never read 'Psychic Self Defense' by Dion Fortune , but to combat the evil presence she/he(I'm really not sure) says to envision the figure would most be able to help YOU through this ordeal at hand.

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Viveka said:

Come to think of it, I did have a third period of SP when i first moved to my current town.  This was accompanied by some of the most visceral, disturbing dreams i've ever had with bodily sensations that were just unreal, like being dragged across the the floor, walls and ceiling of rooms on my belly by some intangible force, while onlookers sometimes stood on and observed me casually.  As disturbing as these experiences have been, I treasure them and look forward to more, it's very powerful.  I'm glad other people can relate with their own seemingly very similar experiences.

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Thats weird that you mention that, I have had a few episodes like that , when Sp was at its peak in my life, it felt like I was being hurled around the room like a fucking rag doll, by something with talons, that I could not see...very big and very EVIL, it did not give a fuck about me in anyway, I felt like spiritual prey... I decided to try something new,

I thought "it's MY mind dammit, fuck this" and imagined being surrounded by an infinite body of water, it still had me in its grip but now it was losing control (now that I had no walls to worry about being smashed into )

the only rational thing I could think of doing at this time was kind of 'taunting' it into my field of vision, seeing it wasn't helping my fear really and the next rational thing I could think of doing, was becoming much much bigger than this huge black smokey 'dragon like thing'

so that's what I did, I made myself incomprehensibly large (the thing was about the size of a chess piece to me at tht point) I then cut a circular a chunk of 'water' and made a gap of Abysmal nothingness between and held it in place with a 'force field' (i am very aware of how ridiculous this all may sound by the way) I felt a bit like a god probably would at times, I then proceeded to slowly drift back to awake, and low and behold, my body had not moved from the position I fell sleep in and it had only been about 20 Min's! (felt like an eternity) Carl young would be proud! only problem is now that the dragon is gone, aliens have taken its place

when I had fully waken up, and realized slowly what I had just done, I got a wicked feeling of empowerment, that I still feel whenever I think about it, and although I had next to no real sleep that night, I had an awesome day at work (even though I hate this job like you wouldn't believe) every thing that day went noticeably well.

I think the water I imagined into being could be a strong symbol for my subconscious, and what I did by making myself face that insidious beast of my own creation (probably anyway) and making myself bigger then just playing god with it, was good a symbol of putting my fears at bay, instead of being its rag doll/meal.

reminds me of the dream I had once, when I just learning some lucid dream techniques.  It started as a regular dream that I wouldn't remember, then an old dream  monster of mine stopped in, a TORNADO!

I soon realized it was a dream because the firemen I noticed trying to  'hose' the tornado down, were flying.

"Hmmmmmm" I thought, "I could either be a chicken shit and just wake up right now, or I could do something useful here"... so I ran full tilt at the tornado, and jumped in face first

"well that was stupid" I thought, as the glass and wood and whatever else started shredding me to pieces "oh yeah, this is a dream!" I put myself back together, and preceded to 'ride' the tornado like a horse almost.

the rest of the dream seems to have faded from my memory. I was struggling with A LOT of pent up rage at the time, and when the rage would start taking control of my life, I would have tornado dreams... I started playing the drums in a grind/crust punk band soon after that, and learned to direct it into the music... I get the same feelings playing the drums that fast and hard, as I did riding that tornado... again, Carl Young would have been proud

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I decided to try something new, i thought "it's MY mind dammit, fuck this" and imagined being surrounded by an infinite body of water, it still had me in its grip but now was losing control (now that I had no walls to worry about being smashed into )the only rational thing I could think of doing at this time was kind of 'taunting' it into my field of vision, seeing it wasn't helping my fear really and the next rational thing I could think of doing, was becoming much much bigger than this huge black smokey 'dragonlike thing' so thats what I did, I made myself incomprehensibly large (the thing was about the size of a chess piece to me now)I then cut a circular a chunk of 'water' and made a gap of Abysmal nothingness between and held it place with a 'force field'

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Good work    Very cool that you took control.  I'm usually doing whatever I can to just barely hold on when this has happened to me.  Strange that we've both had the rag doll thing happen.  I can say that when the rag doll thing was happening quite frequently, it was during a period of my life when I had a great deal of energy tied up in certain commitments, particularly a band, job (first in a new place that wasn't for me and ensuing instability), having moved to a new place and not sure why or what to do, and certain patterns that I either knew were no good as far as my ideals were concerned or that I knew were not honoring myself.  So my waking struggle with these things translated into being dragged around on my belly all over the walls in my dreams.  The inner life.  Another set of dreams that reflected the same thing was happening around the same time.  I just remembered these recently leafing through an old dream journal.  I was contained in a small dark space with these black dogs.  Part of me impulsively wanted to taunt these creatures for some reason, a part detached from my better judgement, and when I would, they would latch onto me.  Their mouths were completely lined up and down with very sharp, thick needle-like teeth, covering the whole surface.  So this woUld beclamping down on my arm or whatever, and I would react more violently, getting them more exciterd.  And the more I resisted, the deeper these needle mouths clamped onto me.

I also remember tornado dreams from high school and earlier, and I seem to remember them fondly.  Usually out riding my bike in the open, then seeing these tornados around, sometimes approaching them.  I also had seriious rage issues at that age.  Self destructive eventually, leading me into the phase of my life later where I dealt with the rag doll, needle teeth type of dreams.