Is Sleep Paralysis A Form Of Alien Abduction? (What Is Sleep Paralysis)
From ancient tales of demonic nocturnal visitors to modern reports of alien abductions, a long history of terrifying stories can be linked to sleep paralysis. Several scholars, including Christopher French, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, UK, believe accounts of UFO abductions and extraterrestrial encounters could actually be incidents of sleep paralysis. According to The Daily Mail, one psychologist explained that people who believed they had alien encounters might just be suffering from sleep paralysis or faulty memories. I am of the opinion that sleep paralysis is the strongest possible explanation for the belief of many that they have been abducted or encountered something paranormal.
It is much more likely that someone who experiences sleep paralysis just a couple of times will end up believing in the supernatural, than they will ever know what sleep paralysis is. I think that a person suffering from sleep paralysis; particularly if he only experienced a couple of cases, is far more likely to hear about ghosts or extraterrestrials, rather than read about Sleep Paralysis. About 25% of the people in the world experience Sleep Paralysis, with around 5% getting a full-blown spectacle of visions, sounds, tactile hallucinations, and abductions.
Recent studies from Canada, Japan, China, and the U.S. suggest that sleep paralysis can affect at least 40 to 50 percent of all humans at least once, with one study from Newfoundland, Canada, finding more than 60 percent had experienced it. Fortunately, sleep paralysis (also known as the "old hag syndrome") is not harmful, occurs only at the edge between waking and sleeping -- whether as you are falling asleep (hypnagogic or predormital) or awakening (hypnopompic) -- and is usually an indication that your body is struggling to properly move through sleep stages. Often confused with sleep apnea, since sleep paralysis sometimes disrupts your breathing, sleep paralysis is an entirely separate problem marked by awareness (you are aware) and is usually accompanied by hallucinations, while sleep apnea is not.
Full-body paralysis usually occurs during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, which occurs multiple times per night.4 Sleep paralysis is a transitory state occurring when the person becomes aware of this unmovement, usually during falling asleep or awakening.5 These experiences may be accompanied by either hypnagogic (during falling asleep) or hypnopompic (during waking). During REM sleep, the body is completely paralyzed, with the exception of the eyes; your eyes are moving forward and backward. People are asleep when they enter REM sleep, a quasi-conscious stage of slumber where the eyes are free to wander but the rest of the body is still.
Lucid dreaming is associated with narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that causes one to fall asleep unintentionally and abruptly, but is not a symptom. If you are unaware of what a hypnopopic illusion is, it is usually a highly frightening experience.
If you believe that you were abducted by aliens, then going online and finding hundreds of other experiences like yours can lead you to believe in them even more, or at the very least, to create a narrative which allows the individual to believe this is something that should have happened to themselves.
One things for certain, sleeping apnea does not need to keep you awake at night. Both nightmares and REM behavior disorder (RBD) can trigger yelling or screaming while sleeping, and when the yelling comes along with the symptoms of sleep apnea, such as drowsiness at night, waking with a pang, and nightmares, treatment might be in order.
Mrs. C is terrified of sleeping at night because that is when the extraterrestrials will arrive. Although Ms. S has not had a alien experience in around 5 years, she does not feel safe sleeping at night, and she instead sleeps at daytime. She also has chronic sleeping difficulties, which frequently keeps her up well past sunrise. Despite my intense desire to regularize Mrs. Ss sleep schedule, Mrs. S continued to struggle with falling asleep, so I (PK) added melatonin, 3-6 mg, to bedtime.
Demonic imagery aside, paralysis is really a necessary component to sleep. People frequently feel sensations like being moved, sitting, held, or floating, and the paralysis often leads to feelings of dread and panic. Descriptions of sleep paralysis worldwide have shared the sense of a malicious person or presence in a room; the aching feeling of being crushed, pulled, or touched; and visual, tactile, and aural hallucinations ranging from laughing devils and demonic dogs to dark shadowy figures and sexually obsessed witches.
Sleep-paralysis features like pressure and pain, presence of an intruder, sexual encounters, body disassociation, and bizarre lights and sounds blend seamlessly with film depictions of extraterrestrial visits. Additional social contexts and narratives about spiritual encounters or alien abductions also contribute to the belief that there is another explanation than sleep paralysis for the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Their research really came to the same conclusions that have been drawn from other scientific attempts at the alien abduction stories, the majority concluding that these experiences are in some way related to dreams and other phenomena seen in the dream state. They also point out that earlier studies indicate that roughly half of stories about encounters with aliens and UFOs take place while a person is asleep or relaxed.
For their study, the researchers collected 152 individuals who claimed they had previously experienced a lucid dream -- a type of dream where the dreamer becomes conscious of being asleep -- the dreamers, and asked them to attempt to attempt to locate or conjure up an extraterrestrial or UFO while sleeping normally at home at night. In a first study, we evaluated 10 individuals who reported abductions by space aliens, whose claims were related to apparent episodes of sleep paralysis, during which hypnopompic hallucinations were interpreted as extraterrestrial entities.
Although individuals were not able to perform gross bodily movements while asleep, they were able to open their eyes and were able to report events occurring around them during this episode.8 The patients interpreted their experiences with sleep paralysis in subjective terms. A combination of neurotransmitters is thought to be responsible for the paralysis experienced during REM sleep, acting together to shut down the activity of motoneuron.
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Dreaming of turtles suggest motherhood, fertility and wisdom. The turtle might be related to the emotional part of the dreamer, the unconscious. It comes from deep in the water and only surfaces when it comes back to lay its eggs. The leather-back turtle lays its eggs back where it was first born. We can use this analogy as something coming back to the conscious via unconscious or vise versa.
May represent moving slowly towards something (such as goals) or someone (slow to get involved / commit).
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