9 Ways to Wake Up From Sleep Paralysis
Posted by Ryan Hurd on April 29, 2010
Sleep paralysis is the terrifying feeling of being held down after just waking up or going to sleep. You can’t move or scream, and sometimes this paralysis is accompanied with the certainty that someone –or something — is in the room. Quite simply, sleep paralysis is one of the most horrifying experiences in life, because we know we’re awake but can’t believe what appears to be happening to us.
The truth is, sleep paralysis is a biological event and it can be often prevented by attending to lifestyle choices, but making new habits can take time. So how do you wake up from sleep paralysis tonight? There’s not a lot of information available. Below I compiled 9 ways to get out now, adapted from my ebook Sleep Paralysis: A Dreamer’s Guide.
Note: Because this is such a personal thing, some of these tactics will work for you, and others won’t. Choose the ones that make the most sense to you intuitively. Think of these strategies as tools in a toolbox to bring out when the conditions are right.
1. Don’t Fight
If you feel like you are being held down and you can’t move, do not fight back. This actually will intensify the experience. Not only is fighting back likely to increase the feelings of being held down (so much that it may seem like you are being crushed), but fighting back will also increase the fear, thus triggering the emotional centers of the brain and strengthening this lucid nightmare. Controlling fear is the most important skill during these moments.
2. Surrender and Go with the Flow
Instead, try to relax when you notice SP starting to happen. Prepare an affirmation like “This is SP and I am okay.” If you feel pressure on your chest, see if you can “go with” the pressure rather than against it. It’s like winning a fight by having no resistance. For example, for me, I often feel like I’m being pushed into the mattress when I have SP. I let myself go, and mentally “pull” in the direction I am being pushed. What happens is I then “pop” into a full-on dream, or I can wake up directly.
3. Wiggle your Toe
Another excellent tactic that works for many people is to try to move an extremity, such as a finger or a toe. Most of the feelings of paralysis are in the belly, chest, and throat. So focus all you attention on the toe and try to move it back and forth. In many cases, this will break the paralysis.
4. Clench your Fist
This is a variation of the toe wiggle method. Clench and unclench your fist.
5. Focus on your Breath
An easy way to stop these nightmares is to do some controlled breathing. Controlled breathing does several things at once. For starters, it lessens the feelings of chest pain that sometimes accompany SP. Breathing is autonomic like the heart’s beating or digestion, so it’s not paralyzed like the big muscles in our arms, chest and legs. But breath can be controlled with attention or be affected by severe fear, which may be why SP sufferers “forget” to breathe when under attack. If you can control your breath, you can control your fear. Simply draw your breath in at a normal rate, and exhale fully, using all of your lung capacity. Notice that you can breathe fully without obstruction. This technique will keep you calm as the SP runs its course and then you will wake up without any trouble. A few moments of focused breathing with a strong intention to wake up is effective.
6. Lean into Love to Find Courage
Now is also the time to lean into unconditional love. For many, the surest path is in religious or spiritual beliefs. Regardless, focus on a figure that you admire and love. Think of someone who calms you down—someone who you associate with peace, love and safety. This could be Jesus, the Dali Lama, or someone you know personally. In my first SP nightmare when I was fourteen years old, I thought about the love and respect I had for a girl in my class. Embarrassing but true! It worked: the feelings of oppression and evil dissipated immediately. In this case, true love really does conquer all.
7. Getting Help from your Sleep Partner
If someone shares your bed, you can tell them about your SP attacks and what to look for when you are having a nightmare. For example, my wife used to shake me awake whenever I began to breath heavily and irregularly in my sleep. As it turns out, she was waking me up each and every time from an intense SP nightmare. Now when this happens, I tell her not to wake me up, because I actually use SP to go into a lucid dream.
You could also have your partner respond to a verbal request. This only works some of the time, because some people cannot speak in paralysis. But some can. Choose a short word that is easy to say. “Help” is a good choice. When you’re in paralysis, focus your attention on your throat and say “Help.” Don’t try to say it as loud as you can; what may happen is that your imagination will take over and you will only say the word in your dream. Instead, say it forcefully but without screaming.
8. Coughing for Help
A variation of using your voice is to try to cough into wakefulness. Like breathing, coughing can be autonomic or consciously regulated. By coughing on purpose, you can jar yourself awake.
9. Write out the Plan
The suggestions above all have helped hundreds of people get out of SP and get some sleep. Not every tactic will work with you. But having too many tactics in your mind can actually be counterproductive. So it is important to make a plan, almost like the fire escape plan you may have for evacuating your family home in case of emergency. Write it out; this will cement the plan in your mind and make it easier to remember when the paralysis comes on strong.
10. The Ultimate Method I know — I said 9 ways, but this is the single best way to wake up from sleep paralysis and it’s really in a class of it’s own. When you realize you are in SP, scrunch up your face. In other words, make a face like you just smelled something bad. Snarl and squint. Do this two or three times in a row and the paralysis will break IMMEDIATELY. I’m not sure why it is so effective, but unlike the pinky wiggle, this method is foolproof.
After you wake up, get out of bed immediately and turn on a light. Wash your face with cold water. If you just stay in bed, the chance of sliding right back into sleep paralysis is pretty high.
For more information about preventing sleep paralysis from occurring in the first place, as well as how to get over the fear of SP, check out my ebook. This $12 ebook also covers the science, psychology, and history of SP, as well as methods for using SP to have lucid dreams and other extraordinary experiences.
CC Image credit: Ornoth @ Flicker.
Related posts:
- Sleep Paralysis Treatment – Stop Feelings of Being Held Down at Night
- Sleep Paralysis, Fear, and Spirituality
- New Ebook: A Dreamer’s Guide to Sleep Paralysis
- Sleep Paralysis and Spirits
- Nightmares and Sleep Paralysis
Tags:dream paralysis, sleep paralysis, stop sleep paralysis
Filed Under: sleep paralysis
Hi everyone I have this problem, it scares me so much, when I’m extremely tired I fall asleep and go into a weird kind of dream, in my dream I’m telling myself to wake up or else Something bad is going to happen to me, it’s like I’m struggling to wake up and something is holding me down I try to speak but it don’t work I have to force mysel to wake up by jerking my whole body it freaks me out! It happens very regularly, is this down o stress??? X
I had a dream the other night, it felt like something was making me float towards the ceiling then second it felt like someone was pulling me by my neck towards the back door. And this all happen because me and my kids father had an argument and i went to bed mad.
Hi everyone, i suffer from sleeping and i get scared to go to bed most of the times because of it, because i am sure i will get it once a week there is no doubt in that, i feel like someone is sitting on me and i try to move, but i can’t, i feel so heavy during this thing happens to me, sometimes i feel like someone is grabbing me from behind and i scream and try to wake up, but i can’t, i ask for help, but there is no body to ask from i sleep all alone, so last night while i was asleep and the thing was grabbing me i was trying to text someone to let him know maybe she could help me out, but i couldn’t and i woke up after that so scared, but what made me know that it was maybe just a dream or a nightmare is that while it was happening to me my phone was in my hand and when i woke up, it was on the charger, so here i felt releived, which is the first time, because all this years it happened i had no clue if it was a nightmare or not, but i was just assuming it is. i want to know if this is what you guys call it SP “Sleep Paralysis”?!!
This sounds like sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations, which are basically waking dreams while you are still in REM paralysis. the incongruity with your cellphone is a good detail: you were experiencing a very realistic dream. welcome to the club
The sleep disorder this article describes, is also known as “REM Intrusion.” The experience is both terrifying and wondrous.
I’ve had disorder since I was a child (I am now 50). In 40-something years of dealing with this, I have found a method that has all but completely eliminated my sleep paralysis. After I was able to wrap my mind around what was happening, I learned to remain calm during the paralysis cycle, and I began to take note of consistencies within the experience. For instance, I noticed that the onset of this paralysis would often occur while napping and light dozing during daylight hours. When the sleep paralysis occurred during the night or in a semi-darkened room, I would remember details about my surroundings, or things I could see clearly. It occurred to me that familiar fixtures and permanent objects such as furniture served to heighten the hallucinatory aspects by making the surroundings seem more realistic, which they were. On the flipside, if I was sleeping on my stomach and unable to view the surroundings, the effects were mostly auditory.
So, I decided to try an experiment wherein I would darken the room using blackout shades and eliminate all other light sources such as LEDS and displays. What I’ve discovered is that the Sleep Paralysis, or REM Intrusion all but ceased to occur, and when it did happen, it was short-lived and more of an auditory experience. Without a light source, to illuminate the surroundings of the room, the stage could not be set for the hallucinations to take place and I would quickly fall back into a deeper sleep and circumvent the paralysis experience. So, now, I sleep in a room that is as dark as it can be, and I find that I sleep much better, because I am waking less in the middle of the night, and I hardly ever experience sleep paralysis when using this method.
I just woke up right now to another one of these dreams. I always wake up in my bed and I know in my head that I am dreaming because it feels different, but I cannot move or speak and it’s terrifying. The worst part is sometimes when I have these dreams I hear scary noises and sometimes figures walk into my room and I have no control about it because I’m in this Paralysis. I was able to wake up I think because my laptop was open in the dream, I kept fading back into like the real world realizing I had it charging, it was unreal. I did not like this experience though and I hope to never have one again. I feel that whenever I wake from these dreams too I have to stay up for a little while before sleep or else I have to same dream!
I found that darkening my room by covering all light sources at night in an effort to achieve pitch black darkness, eliminated 99% of the sleep paralysis episodes I was experiencing.
Does anybody kno how to stop dos nightmares? ? I keep having them recently I jost woke up from some I keep having some in a row nd sometimes nightmares I just close my eyes boom I hear something or I talk to myself on my mind about weird stuff I just would like dis to stop completely. I can’t or don’t wanna sleep no more.