If you’re in REM sleep, and thus NDing or LDing you have SP. Is that correct?
I ask this because I found a news article (check the “Sleep Sex” thread in “The Stuff dreams are made of” forum). This article has an “expert” claiming that “sleep walking” activities are possible during the REM stage of sleep.
I remember many many times when someone would ask “if I do something in a dream, will I act it out?”. The answer was always the same "no, because if you’re dreaming you’re in the REM stage, which means you have SP. Sleep walking activites happen during the “deep sleep” stage, where sometimes SP can be broken out of.
Is this “expert” full of **** like I think he/she is?
I always thought that the reason some people sleepwalk is because they didn’t go into SP while they dreamt. I don’t know I guess, hopefully someone else can give a good answer…
I hope not, because if that’s true, what’s to keep me from smashing into walls when I walk around in the dream? I haven’t sleep walked lately, but I do have a history of it.
Normal sleepwalking occurs during non-REM sleep (mainly delta sleep). I don’t think it is considered as a sleep disorder, merely as an innocent side effect of the sleeping process. In non-REM sleep you’re not paralysed, hence the possibility to sleepwalk. Because they’re in non-REM, sleepwalkers don’t really act out their dreams, but there can still linger some fragments within their minds. Because they’re in delta sleep, they’ll react very disorientated and confused when waking them up.
However, there are some REM sleeping disorders which occur during REM sleep. Here, the sleeper acts out his dreams. This is far more serious than the innocent sleepwalking, because people might get hurt. This is really a disorder because the usual paralysis is shut down by some hormonal/neurotransmitter malfunction. So the expert is probably right, but only if he’s talking about sleepwalking as a form of REM sleep disorder, in which the very act of sleepwalking reflects the dream actions of the dreamer. But as I said, this form of sleepwalking is NOT the regular and more innocent one, which is best known to people.
