You can solve this by two ways: avoiding sleep paralysis or conquering sleep paralysis
I’d recommend that you learn how to “master” and conquer it instead of avoid it. Like Loah said, become more familiar with it. The more you know something, the less you fear it. I know it’s hard, I suffered from nightmareish sleep paralysis ever since I was a kid. You get a sense of panic and hopelessness, and the hallucinations just make it worse. But now that I have much more control over what happens, and that I know what to do when I’m in sleep paralysis, it’s a lot less scary.
You could always try avoiding it though. There are lots of ways to do this.
-Avoid sleeping on your back. It hasn’t been proven that sleep paralysis is caused by sleeping in a supine position, but from what many different people and I have experienced, I can say makes it more likely.
-When you get that feeling just before SP, move your arm, leg, or entire body. This may sound easy, but sometimes it isn’t, especially when you’re in deep trance.
-Cross your arms or legs, sleep paralysis is less likely to happen (Speaking from my own personal experiences, I have no proof of this)
But what do you do when you’re already IN sleep paralysis, and everything is going to hell?
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Close your eyes, keeping your eyes open in sleep paralysis is a good way to ask for trouble
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Calm down. The firebreathing zombie isn’t real, and it can’t hurt you.
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Don’t worry so much about your breathing. You only feel like you’re having trouble breathing because when you’re relaxed, your breathing is automatically slower and deeper (sleep breathing)
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IF you want to get out the sleep paralysis, try moving your toes, fingers, and try to breathe irregularly. Smaller muscles are much less affected than your bigger ones. It’s waaay easier to move your little toe than your arm in sleep paralysis. Trying to move all your muscles at once (Legs, arms, and back) is not going to get you anywhere either. When you manage to move your toe or finger a lot, your body realizes you aren’t unconscious and puts you out of SP
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If you want to get into a lucid dream, try imagining your dream body “floating” or moving away from your physical body. Don’t move out by getting up. Move your body as a whole, without using any of your muscles (aka levitating). When you’re far enough from your body you’ll be able to move around in your dream body.
Hope that helped ^^
EDIT: Forgot some details
There are two main kinds of SP.
There first kind where you suddenly fall into extremely deep sleep paralysis. This is the one with the heavy hallucinations, and it’s the most difficult to break free from. It’s caused by a sudden relaxation of your body, and a sudden drop of your awareness followed by a rise of awareness, enough to make you realize your situation. This usually comes suddenly and unexpected, and it often catches me with my guard down. The hallucinations that come with this are usually strong, auditory can be very “loud” and your visual hallucinations can be very bizarre and vivid. For example, you could be in sleep paralysis and see objects or entities moving around in your room, changing shape and color, your roof opening up to reveal the sky, etc.
The second is when you are relaxing in your bed for a while, and don’t move for a while (like when you WILD). You slowly become more and more relaxed, until you are completely relaxed. About two minutes after this, sleep paralysis starts slowly washing over your body. If you let it set in, it slowly becomes more and more powerful. The hallucinations here are usually auditory with a little visual hallucinations like objects in your room changing shape.
The third happens when you fall asleep, and then wake up into sleep paralysis. You can’t do much to avoid this. Usually it happens to me when I realize I’m dreaming in a very unstable dream. To others, it happens after they wake up in the morning. The hallucinations and the paralysis for this varies a lot. Sometimes it’s strong and sometimes it’s not.
