An acquaintance I met recently asked me about 'sleep paralysis', after learning that I work in sleep. Since there are probably others with the same questions he had, I thought it'd be good to write about it here.
Sleep paralysis is the phenomenon where one wakes up from sleep, yet finds he/she cannot move. The only muscles that seem able to operate during this brief period are those of the eyes. This can be a terrifying experience - the acquaintance's first thought was that he had died and was having an out-of-body encounter. It is not that uncommon for folks with no history of sleep disorders to experience sleep paralysis occasionally.
It is believed that the cause of sleep paralysis is tied to the mechanism of REM sleep. During REM sleep, the body is normally atonic - meaning, your muscles do not exhibit any tone. (If you pick up someone's arm while they are in REM (without waking them up), it will be limp.) When you wake up, you are nearly always transitioning from REMS, and thus it's believed that sometimes the transition out of atonia lags a few seconds behind consciousness. The result is briefly feeling like your soul is stuck in the shell of your body.
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