Awareness of Sleep Paralysis (ASP)
ASP - means awareness of sleep paralysis. You have an
unaware sleep paralysis every night while you are dreaming (= SP). In OBEs
or in IBEs it may happen that you get aware of that fact (= ASP). This
very often is frightening to persons who are not used to it. Nevertheless this kind of sleep paralysis is quite natural.
The sleep paralysis is a body mechanism of security -
it has to prevent body actions while dreaming and you have it every night without being aware of it.
A way to stop your sleep paralysis (ASP) is to move your eyes or to take a deep breath. For both, eye movement and breathing, sleep paralysis is of no influence. For that reason you can control eye movement and breathing and you can use them to break the state. Especially deep breathing helps very well.
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A part from a letter:
That you can't open your eyes or utter a word is a simple sleep paralysis. It is nothing more than what everyone has every day (though not conscious as you). Sleep paralysis is an important body mechanism in order to prevent that you act with arms and legs and that you cry and speak while dreaming - or would you like, that everything around you has been smashed by yourself in your dream-time? - or that your neighbors call the police, because someone was screaming like being murdered? Without sleep paralysis every awakening after night could be a horror trip for you.
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From an other letter:
"....I am completely paralysed, I find it difficult to move.
How can I manage to .... when I am unable to move?
Is there perhaps something that I can do to enable me to move?
You see, once you sense that the .. is entering your room, you can already not open your eyes, and you are paralysed. You feel so helpless!"
Yes, that's logic. To free yourself from paralysis
can be managed by some exercises (In my first OBEs I was paralysed as well,
but after some weeks the paralysis vanished and I never was paralysed later
on in my OBEs and OBE pre-states.).
Procedure:
1) In the state: role your eyeballs and take some
deeper breath. Then try to move your fingers.
2) As a daily exercise: learn to feel energy in your
body and let the vital/magic energy increase intensively. Let the energy
and let warmth circulate through your whole body - starting from the feet
upwards the backside and from the head downwards the front.
Well, I am living in a cold region, but you in a hot
one - therefore it might be a nonsense to imagine warmth; perhaps you better
imagine white light - you have to decide this for your own.
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Awareness of sleep paralysis in a dream
"In a dream I felt myself lying in the bed. An unknown, shadow like person entered, hidden by a kind of paravan. I wanted to leave the bed to be ready against an offend. Shocked I became aware, that I was unable to move any limb. I wanted to call to my wife, but I could only utter some guttural sounds * ).The intruder slowly, step by step approached. When the dark person already had come to the end of my bed, I had the idea, that breathing was still under my control. Breathing in by simultaneously snoring as hard and loud as possible I had success and immediately awoke."
*) In the morning my wife told me, that she was wakened by hearing me uttering sounds. (Bal.)
Commentary:
In this experience the awareness of sleep paralysis was integrated into a dream. The presence of a body awareness in a dream and its integration into the dream action is not unusual, if we consider and remember, how often our urge to urinate is found in dream sequences. I want to emphasize that though a rudimentary consciousness and logic thinking was present the experience was no OBE but a dream. It is important to note this fact, because a great part of OBE horror trips, which create as much fear, and which have been interpreted as OBEs, in reality have been dramatic and OBE-like dreams.
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often i fall back asleep after i take my boyfriend to work in the
morning. i will dream alittle bit then a noise or something will wake
me, but im not awake.my mind is. i cant move or scream, but i can see my
room, the blanket im covered with, and even here the phone ring. i get
frighened and my whole body feels weak and my muscles hurt. ive read about
obe's but other peoples experiences and mine dont match up. i never look
down on my body im always in the same place when i layed down. please
help me stop this i dont think my mind is strong enough. its almost like
i know im going to have one before i fall asleep. please help (Kelly)
You wrote:
"my whole body feels weak and my muscles hurt."
I suppose this is caused by your inner tension because of your fear.
I accept that you want to stop this! I do not really know a method except diminishing your fear. I have used a method for myself which worked very well, but I have no feedback of other persons:
I used to make an imagination on the inner vital force and warmth (as a side-effect of the vital force). Having got a good imagination of my vital force (when I could feel the inner warmth), I started to let the inner force cycle. After some time the paralysis ceased and I never had one again.
Feeling very heavy
One very often has this feeling in the late morning in the short awake phases while still lying in bed. It is the same feeling as you try to produce by will in hypnosis or autohypnosis. As I suppose it is a kind of semi-sleep-paralysis.
OBE Letter 446 ".... What do I experience? Well, I close my eyes, I see the ceiling through my eyelids, and fell 'in the oobe state'. I feel VERY heavy, and it is very hard for me to move... as if no gravity, but heavy. I usually lift my arm in front of my face, but I do not see it (I certainly feel it in front of me). I do not panic by these episodes at all. I actually try to investigate a little further, and try to move around, but this is impossible. Getting up from the bed is incredibly hard, because of how heavy I feel.
Every movement is sloooooow, and almost against a force. Very strange, and frustrating. I want to go and move around......"See as well: OBE Letter 436
Nightmare (HHE)
HHE = Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Experience
Nightmares are neither OBEs nor OBE-pre-states. Because nightmares are experienced as real people are confused and take them for OBEs. Such confusion discredits OBEs.
"People frequently report
feeling a "presence" that is often
described as malevolent,
threatening, or evil. An intense
sense of dread and terror is very
common. The presence is likely
to be vaguely felt or sensed just
out of sight but thought to be
watching or monitoring, often
with intense interest, sometimes
standing by, or sitting on, the
bed. On some occasions the
presence may attack, strangling
and exerting crushing pressure
on the chest. People also report
auditory, visual, proprioceptive,
and tactile hallucinations, ..."
Citation from: hypnagogic and hypnopompic
experiences (HHEs)
Unpublished letter:
"the strangest thing happend to me a few nites ago...
while i was sleeping i heard somebody calling me when
i woke up there was nobody. It happend twice...
the third time someone sat on my bed i could feel him/her... i tried to open my eyes to see who it was and i tried to call someone to help me but i was paralized... the next morning i told my friend and she told me that i might me astro travelling... i have no idea what it is...
2 nites ago it happend again... it felt like someone was trying to suffocate me... i could not open my eyes of move eventhough i was wide awake... "