Why can't I move?

Hello everyone,

It happens to me time after time; I can’t move well or not at all when in a lucid dream.

Last night it happened to me again. I was just dreaming and suddenly I was sucked into a black and white tube, that’s when things became very clear as if I had woken up. I fell out of the tube in a room with weird objects. I was just standing there and when I wanted to stick my hands in front of my eyes I didn’t see my hands, just the blur of my lower arms. I tried again, but I couldn’t get my hands up. Then I tried to turn my body slightly to look at the other side of the room, but I couldn’t move really. I tried to imagine myself moving but that didn’t work either… so I gave up… again.

Does anyone know why I can’t move and how to change this because it is really bothering me.

It’s called sleep paralysis. robertpeterson.org/asp.htm

No, not SP. I couldn’t move my dream body.

Wait, were you lying in bed in the “your bedroom” (distorted) or in some random room standing?

I was standing in a room that doesn’t exist in real life. I wasn’t distorted, it was all very clear.

It happens to me a lot, every time on a different dream location and I can’t move so I give up after a while and I go back to regular dreaming or I wake up.

Hmm, interesting. Such thing never happened to me so I can’t help you much. Sorry. Maybe you could try closing your eyes and imagining a dream scene. The worst thing can happen is that you open your real life eyes.

I will try that, thanks. Hopefully I won’t open my real eyes, I open my real eyes often while in a dream to check if I’m dreaming, when I close them again I usually just continue dreaming. :happy:

I read somewhere that it’s because you get tangled in your blankets and they restrict your “movement” or something. I’m not sure if there’s any truth in that or not.

That sounds a bit weird because your actual body wouldn’t move anyway…

Something similar happened to me once. When I got lucid, I searched into my pocket to take my dices to do an RC ; I felt the dices in my pocket but I couldn’t move my arm from then. I woke up a few seconds later and I noticed I was lying in a strange position : I was on my chest, and my left arm (which was the one I couldn’t move in my dream) was stuck under my chest. I deduced that this time, there has been a relation between my dream body and my real one, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I couldn’t move my left arm. But I don’t know if that’s the reason why you can’t move in your dreams, it’s just a possibility …

There is some sense in that. I once got tangled in seaweed in a LD which were actually my blankets that were wrapped tightly around me. It happened right before waking up.

Could it be your sc is protecting you from yourself?

try not trying to move.

strange you’re able to pause a dream, open real eyes, use real life senses (sight), then close them to resume the dream but, you cannot move in the dream… that seems rare to me.

I’m sorry, what is sc?

Sometimes when I dream and I want to check if I’m dreaming I open my real eyes and when I close them again, the dream continues, but this has only happened in dreams in which I could move. I think they were low lucid because however I know I’m dreaming and my actual body lies in my bed, I don’t control everything in the dream and I’m not so focused.
But in some LDs where I am very focused I just can’t move. Maybe it does have to do with something about my sheets or I’m lying on top of my arms or something like that…

Subconscious. :smile:

The sensation of your real body actually is really connected to the content of your dream. If someone flashes a light in front of your real eyes while you are dreaming, probably something connected to it will happen in the dream, an explosion or something. Maybe your whole dreamworld will start to flash. Funny thing.

oh I see… like a few years ago I dreamed I was walking trough a pool and I stepped in a huge nail with my right foot and I woke up from a sharp pain in my right foot. But I never knew why that was though.

@zyonc Might be my subconcious, but I have no idea why it would do that in a harmless dream environment, but who knows…

This has happen to me once, i was doin wbtb. Then i was dreamin and i became lucid, i was goin to fly then suddenly i couldnt move. Maybe it was some sorta SP

Something similar happens to me from time to time too. I can move but very slow or I feel weak and can’t do anything or just very slow, but this happens to me only in normal dreams.
I might be wrong but maybe you are not fully aware, did you try to rub your hands or do few reality checks and try again?

this has happened to me a few times, but really only in the few first LDs i had. i thought maybe that’s due to the fact that i’m not used to having an LD yet or something. it went away after a while.
might be that you’re shocked that you’re LDing. i think you should try to calm down, perhaps. maybe you expect too much of the dreams. i don’t know.
also, one time when i couldn’t move in an LD was when i was in a pretty deadly situation - stuck between sharp objects. i became lucid because of that exactly - i thought, hey, i don’t have to get hurt - i can wake up! i tried to get out of the situation too, but then i couldn’t move, and thought i’d get squashed anyway. so i had to wake up. so maybe you’re afraid of something there too and it makes you freeze.
it went away after my 3 first LDs. it should clear up for you too, i hope. i hope it’s not coming back to me either :smile:

Sometimes I become unable to move. Either it’s like moving through some sort of thick substance, or I can’t move at all. I tried to just move “though” it, and with a little effort, it worked. When I got really stuck I just waited a while. Less than a minute and I could move again. I suppose one could think of alternative strategies as well. Don’t move, make the world move around you! Or, shed your body; move as a point of awareness!