The grizzly pins-and-needles feeling took over my whole body – I could feel it spread from my face down to every toe. The strongest pain concentrated on my left palm, right under the thumb.
It hurts and I felt paralysed.
My eyes were open and I was breathing through my mouth.
I could hear talking, but why couldn’t I move? I was thinking "Not again!"
The gaze through my eyes was blurry, like looking through the fisheye lens of a camera.
I tried moving my fingers – the right hand was clutching onto a blue bean pillow, whilst on my left embrace, was Mao Mao, my teddy bear. But, no surprise there, I couldn't move my fingers.
I could hear mummy and ivy talking. Hence, I tried to shout out, but I was voiceless.
By that time, my mind kept shouting, “Get up now!”
But I couldn’t move.
I sucked a deep breath in.
And again and again, this repeated as I drift in and out of sleep.
I have been napping a lot these days, even though there was once when I told a friend that I don’t like to take a nap during the day, because it drains my energy. This is still true, but this is one of the luxury things to do when you are on a holiday, right?
The scenario I described above happened to me today, as I took a nap around 2.20pm and finally managed to drag myself up at 3.30pm. I believe I was already awake by 3.15pm, as I was aware of my surroundings ie. I heard mummy on the phone etc.
This isn't the first time that such a thing has happened to me, though the grizzly pain through my body was a new experience. Back in NZ last year, I had experienced a few of these 'half asleep and half awake and can't move' type of situation. Weird thing is that these only happen when I was extremely tired, so I'd take a nap after a lecture or something. Some of them included the feeling you get when you free fall through the air, with the force of the air pushing you back. These "dreams" even included a high pitch scream. Sounds exaggerated? Well, it's not.
Sharing these stories with my friends, some of them mentioned that they have had similar encounters, and were once told of a reason behind it. Apparently, when you get that paralysed feeling when you are sleeping and you can't get up, it is because a woman is sitting on you.
Shivers.
I know. It sounds so creepy.
Thus, I went to research about it just a few minutes ago and came up with sites talking about Sleep Paralysis and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.
Explanations of this phenomenon include the fact that a lot of people experience feeling paralysed when they are partially awake but dreaming. The biological explanation behind the paralysis is that during our dreaming stage of the sleep (which is called the Rapid Eye Movement stage) our voluntary muscles are paralysed. This means that we can't move voluntarily and is important so that we don't act out our dreams. Funnily, I don't remember dreaming during my nap though. Hmm.
As for REM, I remember when I was younger, someone mentioned to me that when we are sleeping, our eyeballs would roll around in the socket. I have to admit here, that after discovering that, whenever I pretend to sleep, I would purposely roll my eyes around (hahaha!)
So anyway, reading about REM, I discovered that there are periods when the movement of the eyes are less vigorous and other times when they exhibit rapid, saccadic movements. The eye movements coincide with the lack of body movement. When REM is interrupted, we will wake to find ourselves unable to move.
Interesting right?
Well, so much for the woman sitting on top of you. Fear not people.. it's just your muscles!
So have you experiences this before?
Labels: deep thoughts, real life, scary, sleep
Ooohhhh!!! I had this kind of situation before! It's really scary. I tried to wake up but I couldn't move my body. And sometimes, I even find myself hard to breath because my nose was blocked and worst thing, my mouth is closed and I can't open it. =( My dad says it's called drunk in sleep.
Even worse, I could hear myself snore in sleep too! OMG.
But, don't worry. Pray for a peaceful sleep before going to sleep and you'll definitely sleep better!