Sleep Paralysis

                         I was nine, when I first experienced this.... I found myself unable to lift my hand,move my legs for few minutes. I knew that whatever I was experiencing was real and was even aware of the fact that I was not asleep. But, when I tried to move my body, i was totally paralyzed. Suddenly, I heard a loud noise. Unable to bear that noise, I thought of screaming so high so that my brother who slept with me would understand my condition and help me in getting out of the bed. But, to my surprise, I was not able to open my mouth. My tongue had become dry and I was unable to breathe. I wondered why this was happening to me. By god's grace, this entire episode lasted for just 2 mins. I woke up after that and looked for my brother. He was in deep sleep by that time. I thought that it was a dream.

                        The same episode repeated periodically. I thought I had a serious problem and even thought if I had an influence of some kind of black magic etc,. One day, somehow I told my mom about this problem. She said that she also gets such similar terrifying hallucinations regularly and added that it is not a problem at all.

                       I have now realized that, this frightening form of paralysis, that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, upon falling asleep is known as Sleep Paralysis. It seems that, this is due to a disconnection between the brain and the body which occurs as a result of timing and coordination problem between the body and mind.

                       I figured it out that, whenever I over-slept or whenever I tried to sleep forcibly or whenever I tried to extend my sleep for few more hours, I experienced this Sleep Paralysis. The reason behind this is, by sleeping forcibly, I am giving an order to my body to take rest. While, my mind is not in a position to accept that request since I have had enough rest by that time and hence, the body is getting disconnected from the brain leaving the body paralyzed. So, I get the symptoms of sleep paralysis like sensations of noises, paralysis, terror, and images.

                      Sleep paralysis even occurs most often after jet lag or periods of sleeplessness. Of course, this attack is harmless and will be experienced for very less time. The person would become normal as soon as the brain and body re-establish connections and the person is able to move again. This is just like the forcible system restart that we do by pressing the start button of CPU. When we do this, no more applications would be initialized till the time the system reboots.

                      Even though it is harmless, the horrifying experience felt for those two minutes would last for a longer time. It is a fact that almost 50% of people experience this. In-order to get rid of sleep paralysis, have sufficient sleep and do not over-sleep. Just have eight hours of sleep everyday.