Lucid dreaming, Sleep paralysis and Hypnagogic hallucinations

So... my first blog post. It's about those things that happen when you go to sleep. Dreams. And things that affect these dreams, or things that can happen when you sleep.

So, I have had some strange experiences over the last couple of years, and I remember them all but never really dwell on them too much. I always thought them interesting things, but never anything that I could explain or ask about, due to the difficulty of explaining them to people, and to the fact that I've never heard stories from anyone I know that sound remotely like the experiences I had. So I put them in the back of my mind, always there to recall if the suited situation arose, and always in my memory but never deemed important, so never thought about very often.

Recently a friend put up a post on her facebook saying something along the lines of "I wish that I could lucid dream". I had never heard of lucid dreaming and didn't know what it was, so I looked at the comments. There were way too many to bother about reading, and the last couple I scanned over said something about dreams within dreams. I assumed this is what lucid dreaming was, and didn't place any further importance on that.

Then, today the words cropped up again somewhere on some internet page, and I was interested so I clicked the link, and many more after that, and read all about lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is when you realise during a dream that you are dreaming. Usually the shock of this realisation wakes you up straight away. Inception, anyone? Like that scene where Leo has the initial interview with Ariadne, and when she realises that she's dreaming, it falls apart. But when you are lucid dreaming, you are able to stay in the dream, and sometimes even manipulate things in it to your choice. I realise now that this is what has happened tome on many occasions. I, unlike most people who lucid dream, did not train myself to do it, but instead it happened naturally. It is usually really cool when it happens, but can sometimes be scary, especially if you have a Hypnagogic hallucination.

Hypnagogic hallucinations are very difficult to explain, so if you go to this link it will be more informative than anything I can say. But it is kind of where you can feel these vibrations in a half awake, half dream state and you feel like there is something or someone there when there isn't. Sometimes this thing/person can be sinister, which is when it becomes a bit scary. Another thing that is very scary is sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis is related to hypnagogic hallucination, and is, in short, when either your body goes to sleep before your mind, or when your mind wakes up before your body. When you are experiencing sleep paralysis, you can go into a state of full body paralysis in which the only things that are functioning are your involuntary movements, such as blinking and breathing, and your mind. Usually, your mind registers this and you panic, which is often enough to wake up your body.

When I first experienced this, I couldn't move anything for a long while, so naturally I freaked out and a million thoughts flew through my head, the most dominant one being: I am dead. I have died, and am forced to be stuck in this bodiless state forever. It truly scared me, and I think it may have been one of the most fear-invoking experiences of my life.

People who have experienced sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucination sometimes believe that they have been abducted by aliens or possessed by demons. I once had this weird thing where I was dreaming, but also half conscious. Because I can't explain it, further info is below*.

What it is like:

If you can't see that, the top one is the mind saying ''What are you doing!?'' and the bottom one says ''Can't move my body...!''

Creepy artwork and images that have been created, inspired by sleep paralysis and/or hypnagogic hallucination:

*I have also had an experience like this, so if you found this post interesting, read the initial post on that forum to get an idea of what it's like, because I am just terrible at explaining it well.

Also, this resolved question on Yahoo! Answers is pretty close to what I had, with of course the difference being the situation in the half-dream.

On another note, I was reading a forum on this website, and none of it was what I was looking for, but the closest sentence to my experience was: "its kind of just a moment out of time when your body convulses in an almost fear-like representation of something you didn't experience, something that bypassed your consciousness and went straight into your nervous system." Taken from this link.

Thankyou for reading this, sorry it's so long. Hope you found it interesting! Feel free to share any of your sleep & dreaming experiences, or leave an opinion, via comments :)

Much love,

Emma