I hope this is the correct area of the forum in which to post this question; I’ve seen others post similar questions here so I’m going for it. And I apologize in advance for any run-on sentences.
Last night I woke up to the sound of my boyfriend (lying in bed next to me) saying in a scared/slightly panicked tone of voice, “oh my god, oh my god” and I thought he was having a nightmare (a little background on him: he doesn’t pursue LD’s but he knows I’m totally into it), so I was going to try to wake him up. But then I realized he was already awake and he said he couldn’t feel his left arm. I thought his arm was asleep from lying on it in his sleep but then he told me what was really happening and I’m stumped.
He said his arm rose up in the air by itself, he thinks it rose up in his sleep, then he woke up and it was still rising, it was like his arm had a mind of its own, it was numb and he couldn’t control it, he said you could’ve put a drill through it and he wouldn’t have felt it. He also said he tried to take his right arm and push his left arm down and he couldn’t, it just kept rising up in the air, like it was stronger than his other arm (he is right-handed, BTW).
I know from watching him sleep that his body doesn’t always go fully into sleep paralysis when he is dreaming because sometimes when he dreams he twitches and jerks a lot and I’ve seen his arm or hand go up in the air before but more toward his face (last night it just went straight up but parallel to the bed), so I’m thinking something in his dream caused the arm-raising but then why couldn’t he control it upon awakening and with fully conscious awareness of it? I witnessed it after I awoke so I know he wasn’t still asleep/dreaming. Could this be some sort of partial sleep paralysis or something else? But if he was partly paralyzed, how could his arm move yet he couldn’t control it?
I suspect you are right about the partial paralysis. There are some poor souls in this world that do not enter sleep paralysis, mainly due to illness ro injury if I am remembering correctly.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it unless he is dreaming he is a boxer and starts taking swings at you
It must been an OBE or something like it. Look i would put more in this post but time is ticking out so im in the classroom and i want to get out of it…
To noanswer42, I witnessed the fact that he was awake and not dreaming but I can’t clarify the arm-rising thing, I’m just taking his word for it. I started rubbing his arm for him as soon as I awoke because I thought his arm was asleep so I don’t know if I helped him stop it from moving up into the air or not and I can’t ask him because he’s asleep right now. Maybe I can go sleep next to him and enter his current dream and ask him that way.
I can sometimes make my arms rise by just concentrating on it, and not using my muscles, but it does take a good amount of concentrtation. I did it once, and I kept at it for ten minutes, and my arms were raised above my sholders.
was he working out before going to bed I did the same thing once and I was sleep walking he probly was about to sleep walk when he woke up and found his arm in the air. sometimes your body does not fully paralyse and it does some strange things well it is asleep. waking life is basicly lucid sleep walking.
are body paralysis us to provent us from acting out are dreams.
Intersting theory!
Just had to say it… was anyone else reminded of Dr. Strangelove and his weird Nazi arm with a mind of its own? heh… that was a good film.