are there any known connections between sleep paralysis and lucidity?
i have, on average, two or three lucid dreams per week - i have a feeling i may actually have a few more, but my waking habits cause me to forget them.
however, every five months or so, i go through an intense phase of around three or four weeks within which every night is full of up to four lucid dreams - every dream i have seems to be lucid to some degree - and, once again during these phases, every night, an hour or so after going to sleep, i find myself “awake” in a state of sleep paralysis. this can sometimes happen a couple of times each night.
when i’m not in one of these “phases”, i can go for months without enduring sleep paralysis at all. any ideas? it doesn’t bother me - i’ve come to tolerate sleep paralysis quite comfortably - but, nonetheless, i’d still like to know what’s causing it.
The link is that being lucid you are much more easily aware of SP, since lucidity often ends into a zone of half sleep and half wakefullness, which is the period that you experience SP. Another link is that you can use SP as a stepping stone into LD’s too, using the right technique.
yes, perhaps, but the thing i didn’t mention in my original post was that, during these five-monthly phases, almost all of my sleep seems to take on this different role… it’s difficult to describe - perhaps “half sleep and half wakefulness” is the best way to word it: it’s as if i don’t quite wake up properly in the mornings, and don’t quite go to sleep properly at night.
what i can’t work out, however, is whether this feeling is brought on by sleep paralysis, and the feeling in turn brings on lucidity, whether the feeling is brought on by lucidity, which in turn brings on sleep paralysis, whether the feeling brings on lucidity and sleep paralysis, or whether any other combination of these factors creates the effect. or even, perhaps, whether i’m way off the mark with all of it.
Yeah anyway - Sleep paralysis is not a side effect of lucidity - it is more a side effect of dreaming… cause if we aren’t paralysed when we are dreaming our bodies will act out our dream actions.
The reason you are becoming aware of it more frequently during episodes of lucidity (IMO) is because to gain lucidity our brains area of attention (prefrontal brain area)needs to be more activated during dreaming than it is… if you are too attentive then you may just wander into a state of semi sleep semi awake… its hard to describe and I think I am kinda passing the same at the momment.
I feel like I am neither asleep or awake and during the night I am just drifting along with varying depths of consciousness… nothing too deep.
Sorry if this post is muddled… not quite myself today?!
there is the dove, and there is the serpent: choose ye well.
yes, well, i know what you’re saying, what with the brainwave frequencies that determine (or, at least, represent) consciousness and attention - but the general “feeling” during the day doesn’t wholly relate to awareness (i.e. i can still go from focusing to not focusing with the same comfort and speed), so i doubt such things are essentially connected.
i know how silly it is for me to be so vague about it all - in that i haven’t properly described that “feeling”; i’m being a bit teen-angsty, i understand - i suppose i’m just convincing myself there’s a reason i should have loads of lucid dreams and sleep paralyses every few months, and, because of this belief, it’s actually happening.
i still think it’s strange, though, that sleep paralysis should only happen an hour into my sleep, whilst lucid dreams occur whenever.
An explanation could be that when you go to sleep, REM doesn’t start for about 1 hour, and SP coincides with REM to stop you from acting out your dreams. Perhaps during non-REM dreams there is no or much less SP.
