Sleep Paralysis

You're just waking up from a long night. You open your eyes and try to grab the glass of water next to your bed and find that you are unable to move! You feel like you are paralyzed - you can't move your arms or legs. There's pressure on your chest as you fight to move your body. You have trouble breathing and are fearful that you're dying. You might even see visions of a person standing next to bed. You don't know what to do, but after a couple of minutes, you manage to wiggle your finger, and the paralysis stops. You're relieved, but scared because you don't know what just happened to you.

When a person is unable to move for a minute or so at the entry into sleep or the emergence from sleep, it is referred to as sleep paralysis. Often times, vivid, perceptual, dreamlike experiences or hallucinations accompany these episodes.

• Most affected people with Sleep Paralysis only have single episodes or very infrequent multiple episodes. If in fact the episodes of Sleep Paralysis are recurrent, the patient might also have narcolepsy, as Sleep Paralysis is reported in 60% of patients with narcolepsy.
• In an ongoing study at the University of Waterloo, they found that Sleep Paralysis most often has an adolescent onset.

        (Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo)

• According to research studies and personal log entries, events that are likely to trigger Sleep Paralysis in susceptible individuals include:

  • Fatigue

  • Anxiety

  • Radical changes in daily routine ( vacations, moving, job changes, etc. )