Breathing during Sleep Paralysis
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 7 years before Aug 13, 2018
MiBeloved 7 years ago
From Pavlina’s forum:
Struggling to breathe during obe:
Hi everyone I'm new to this forum and am so glad I found it as prior to reading everyone else's stories I thought I was losing the plot :-/
I have suffered with sleep paralysis for the past 7/8 yrs. At first it used to scare the life out of me but after 2/3 yrs I realised it wasn't going to kill me and after research on net put it down to scientific reasoning and disturbed sleep as I work shifts. What I couldn't get around my head is why at times I'd float above my bed and watch myself hubby and the baby laying in bed exactly as we went to sleep.. Hence why I thought I was going loopy!
Recently the paralysis had been happening almost every night, including a visitor dressed in black with a hat (quite scary but i put it down to hallucinating at the time) so I researched some more and ended up here reading some interesting and familiar accounts from people. This is also how I discovered obe and lucid dreaming. I'm still a bit confused as to the differences but most of that is covered here and I will keep on reading but one thing I can't seem to find any posts on is struggling to breathe whilst going from paralysis to obe/ lucid dreams. When I say struggling to breathe I don't mean anxiety type struggling or change in breathing... I actually feel like there's no air for me to breathe and although I try not to panic I kind of can't help it when it gets to the point where I feel like I'm going to pass out.
Has anyone else experienced this? I'm unsure if it's all part and parcel if you like of the obe or if it's something medical, or sinister? I don't actually feel like anyone's strangling me, only that there's no air getting into my lungs at all. I'm quite gutted at this as prior to this I was very eager to explore this all further and had managed both obes and lucid dreaming quite effortlessly thanks to my paralysis. I don't want it to ruin the experience or put me off going there but I'm even more alarmed now that I can't find any posts on it, it doesn't appear to be a common thing.
Your advice/experience thoughts would be fab.
Seda
MiBeloved’s Response:
Struggling to breath or inability to move the physical body and sometimes the astral one, is normal in OBE. Generally it is called sleep paralysis. It is really paralysis of the physical body but only in reference to being able to operate that body with the will power as usual.
This paralysis may occur upon leaving the physical body or upon trying to reenter it.
It is not really a paralysis except in the sense that the will power of the individual is unable to operate the body as it usually does when the body wakes up or rises. And this is interpreted by the mind as a paralysis.
During astral projection the will power is transferred from the physical brain to the head of the astral body, and so one cannot operate the physical body. When the astral body returns and tries to fuse back into the physical one, if it is unable to synchronize perfectly, the individual will experience a non-responsiveness of the physical body.
To cause the astral body to synchronize properly, the person may manipulate the breath or make a sudden movement with the astral body or just wait for that body to synchronize properly.
Usually this feels so weird and so restrictive and unnatural, that the person becomes fearful or panics or enters a state of anxiety.
In the effort to operate the breathing, if the person holds the breath long enough, both bodies will snap into synchronization but sometimes when one does this, the two body quickly separate again and one finds the self back in the position of being unable to operate either of the bodies. It feels as if both bodies are stiff and unmoving. This might cause further panic. Eventually however the astral body comes in sync as usual and the person gets up as a physical body as usual.
If you can hold your breath in or out long enough, usually the astral body will snap into place.
There are three important things to know about sleep paralysis:
1. If the body is in a room which has little or no ventilation, that condition of breathing stale air into the physical body while it is sleeping or resting, will cause increased incidence of sleep paralysis. This is because the astral body and the life force in the physical body are not going to get sufficient energization of energy from the stale air.
2. Taking of alcohol or narcotics or sleep-aid drugs or any drugs which affect the nervous system in the spine and the brain, can also cause increased incidence of sleep paralysis.
3. Looking at scary movies can also be a cause of increase incidence of it.
The main thing is to understand what it is and not to panic when you find yourself in that position but to be confident that if you cannot cause the astral form to snap in properly into the physical one, still the condition will pass within seconds or minutes, unless of course you have a serious accident and your body goes into a coma or unless you really have a medical stroke or some other nerve system degeneration.
