Sleep paralysis
I suffer from sleep paralysis from time to time. I used to get it more often than I do now, and so if you know what are some of the causes of sleep paralysis are then you can probably deduce a thing or two about me. When you slip into sleep paralysis regularly, you learn to deal with it, you learn that the wave can be ridden out. For those that don’t know, sleep paralysis is a phenomenon whereby your brain wakes up, your eyes open and you are technically awake, but your entire body is still asleep, unaware of what is happening in your brain. You are therefore conscious but unable to move. Sleep paralysis gets frightening because it is so close to sleep that more often than not while you are awake, and paralysed, you are still capable of dreaming.
One incident five years ago scared the living daylights out of me while it was happening. It was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I woke up, but couldn’t move, and I could feel energy rushing through my body. It was a strange sensation, but I could hear it rushing through me as if I were standing underneath a very heavy waterfall. At that moment I was convinced it was a ghost and I vowed that from then on I would always believe in the supernatural. The fear was unreal. The presence of a “ghost” was something I’d experienced before, but never so emphatically.
In the past couple of years I’ve only experienced sleep paralysis maybe a dozen times that I can recall, which is far less than I used to do, and is a blessing believe you me.