Every beginner that have heard of Lucid Dreaming or Astral Projection has heard about Sleep paralysis before. I will explain what sleep paralysis is and what the dangers of sleep paralysis is.
What is sleep paralysis?
Sleep paralysis is a sleeping state where you are unable to move. This state is in the middle of awake and sleep. People often see hallucinations and are scared by what is happening. With lucid dreaming, you come across sleep paralysis, but it is not as bad as it sounds. You can use sleep paralysis to lucid dream! Sleep paralysis is an easy state to form into a lucid dream there are many ways and I will explain later what techniques you can use.
Is sleep paralysis dangerous?
Short answer no. These are examples of problems caused by sleep paralysis:
- Anxiety. People who experience a lot of sleep paralysis and do not know how to handle this state can create anxiety for sleeping.
- Nightmares. People who do not know what is happening in the sleep paralysis state can hallucinate about something scary, and since you can not move this gives an extra layer to a nightmare.
- Depression. Researchers found out that people who are having depression can handle sleep paralysis a lot worse. They tend to have them more and this creates a barrier to break.
You can see there are some problems caused by sleep paralysis. When you are learning to lucid dream you can prevent this from happening and use it for something more cheerful. Want to know if lucid dreaming has any dangers? Read my article about the dangers of lucid dreaming.
How to turn sleep paralysis into a lucid dream
Turning a sleep paralysis into a lucid dream is easier than using any other technique. There are only 2 steps you should take.
First, you should be aware of this state. Sleep paralysis is easy to be aware of because you can not move or barely move.
Secondly, you have to visualize a place you want to go to. When you do not know what you won’t just try to visualize a cool lucid dreaming goal like flying. When you are visualizing you probably will shortly see vivid colors and it turns into a lucid dream. Be aware that you go through a state where you hear and feel vibrations.
My experiences with sleep paralysis
In my years of lucid dreaming, I came across a lot of sleep paralysis. This is not common to have so many in a short period of time but suddenly I got that. I used a lot of wakes induced lucid dreaming with wake back to bed and this made it fun. I have had sleep paralysis where there was my favorite candy next to me and I couldn’t take it, at least I knew how to turn it into a lucid dream, so I ate as much of that candy as I could.
Final thoughts
Don’t be scared of sleep paralysis. If you are scared of sleep paralysis do not be. Sleep paralysis does happen to everyone every night, but only a small percentage is aware of this state. I have talked to some lucid dreaming experts, and they told me they have never experienced one before! If you are still interested and never had a lucid dream try my guide on how to lucid dream tonight.
