Lucid Dreaming and Sleep Paralysis
Sleep paralysis is an phenomena that occurs to everyone every time they go to sleep. What sleep paralysis does is cause your body to in a sense shut down; specifically shutting down your ability to move your limbs. This phenomena is the bodies natural reaction to dreaming and occurs so that you do not have the ability to act out your dreams while you are alseep. Now the reason that this condition is so scary is because sometime, rarely in fact, people become consious during this paralysis and panic because they are unable to move and or because they are still experiencing dreamlike visions.
Lucid dreaming is another phenomena entirely. Basically this occurs when a person is able to actively control and or change their dreams by will. In order to be able to do this, one must have control over their unconsious mind to some degree; basically you have to realize you are dreaming in order to begin to control the dream. As such it would see that lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis would work in much the same way because both involve an awareness of the unconsious mind to at least some degree. As it doesn’t seem like a stretch to suggest that those who are capable of lucid dream are more likely to experience sleep paralysis; and to some extend this is true.
Both sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming occur during the REM cycle. Both involve a sense of awareness. However, rather then having lucid dreaming as the cause of sleep paralysis as some suggest , it would seem that sleep paralysis can and should be used a a gateway to lucid dreaming. Researcher Jorge Conesa, who specializes in sleep paralysis, explains that once a person finds themselves in the state of sleep paralysis the probability that he or she will experience lucid dreaming increases. In fact there are way s in which one can ensure that they can tranform sleep paralysis into lucid dreaming.
However, despite the similarities between the two phenomena there are some difference which should not be ignored. For instance while both occur during the REM cycle, lucid dreaming more specifically occurs during either the beginning or end while sleep paralysis can happen at anytime. As such do you think it is possible that sleeping paralysis can only become lucid dreaming during these times? Or can lucid dreaming occur at any point after sleep paralysis? Food for thought.
-Cassey
SOURCES
http://www.dreaminglucid.com/articlejc.html
http://dreamstudies.org/2011/02/08/3-techniques-for-transforming-sleep-paralysis-into-a-lucid-dream/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-brains-sleep-paralysis/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381009990404X
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