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How to induce sleep paralysis!

King-Anubis

King-Anubis

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 9, 2012
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Hello!

As per my post here I thought I'd post my method for inducing sleep paralysis here and see if it works for others :)

To prelude, some observations: I've found that there are two types of sleep paralysis episodes: those that occur as you are falling asleep - and thus mainly hypnagogic in nature - and those that occur in the dead of night when you've been asleep for sometime. The latter are generally the more frightening ones, but from my experience they are far harder to induce and involve, somewhat, an element of luck. This 'guide' focuses on the former.

Second of all I noted that all of my sleep paralysis episodes, and in fact most of those reported by others, involve two major aspects. The first is that they are laying on their back - which is easy to mimic. They also mentions feeling a 'weight' on their chest or being unable to breathe. This I believe is just that: being unable to breathe. Combining this idea with the existence of hypnagogic hallucinations and you get that dictated below, which for me at least works 80% of the time. It's just finding the right balance between sedation and timing.

Anyway, the key factor in helping to induce the 'hypnagogic' sleep paralysis I've found is, unfortunately, drugs. Mainly tranquillisers or hypnotics of some form. When I worked out this method I was taking quetiapine - a major tranquilliser. I have had some luck with using over the counter insomnia preparations too (such as diphenhydramine), so if you can't get any benzos or the like, they might work. In theory, any drug which slows your breathing is likely to work if you get it at just the right level - and this includes alcohol.

Off we go...
  1. First you'll want to get relaxed. How you do this is up to you, but I recommend avoiding all stimulation. Take a bath, read a book, or whatever floats your boat. You'll also want to avoid any stimulants, such as caffeine, for a good few hours before hand. In fact, if you can time you going to bed with a caffeine crash the easier it'll be.
  2. This is ultimately optional, as I think it could work without them, but it helps: Take any tranqulizers you have. If you take them frequently, take them in a slightly higher then normal dose - but do not overdose (please :)). You want your body to be slightly more sedated then it usually is, but not so that you're out cold. I won't recommend any combinations as what works for me could harm someone else, but it just takes trial and error to find the right amount.
  3. Lay down in bed just before you start to feel tired. Try to take everything away that could disturb you, such as phones, and try to darken the room as much as possible. I always found that the digital display on my alarm clock would distract me so I covered it up. Again, this takes trial and error.
  4. Now this is the key part: lay on your back and do not move. Place your hands so they're comfortable, but try not to move. Basically what we are doing here is trying to trick your brain into thinking your asleep. As you fall asleep your brain will be sending signals to your body to move - to roll over, for example - and this is simply your brain 'checking' if you're asleep. By not moving, you're telling your brain you're asleep.
  5. You may begin to experience hypnagogic hallucinations, and this is fine. If you're looking for sleep paralysis though you'll have to bare through them until you can feel your breathing beginning to slow. Some of you may notice where I'm going with this. If you've ever taken hypnotics before you may have noticed that it can sometimes be difficult to sleep on your back because you can't breathe properly. This is what we're looking for.
  6. As your breathing slows your body may react and 'wake you' to help breathing. This may be anything from jolting up coughing to your eyes opening suddenly with a small energy rush. We basically want the latter. By this point your brain should hopefully think you're asleep and, you too, should quickly be falling asleep too. If your breathing slows enough before you fall asleep then, unsurprising, you'll be awakened. Time this just right, and your eyes will jolt open, you'll be unable to move (your brain thinks your asleep) and you'll be greeted with some horrific hypnagogic hallucinations - sleep paralysis!
  7. And that's it! If you get good with it, it is in fact possible to 'chain' together lots of episodes one after the other. That took me a lot of practice to do, but it works! (For me at least :P) I should also note that if you fall asleep on your back it's possible to wake up later in the night, on your back, in a sleep paralysis episode - so don't be too annoyed if you just fall asleep too quickly, you could wake up later!

Hopefully that makes sense! If not then I'll be happy to edit it, just mention it below :)

Happy travels! :)
 
Work on lucid dreaming techniques. You'll end up in the hypnopompic state, whilst learning.
 
i miss this, used to happen quite often. haven't had it in a very long time. but danged if i'm gonna get into tranqs.
 
Phenibut has caused this for me multiple times.. I also learned how to use it to have lucid dreams with much success..

At the very least they are VERY vivid.

I've mentioned my lucid dreaming technique (can be done with or without phenibut) in a few of the lucid dreaming threads around here.. I managed to achieve lucid dreaming in about 3 nights of trying and would then achieve one almost every night (it even carried on after i stopped using the technique)
 
Thanks for writing that up, KA.

It doesn't sound much different from the Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming technique, which I've had only limited success with. The biggest difficulty is finding the right balance between sleepiness and wakefulness: either I fall asleep too soon or I'm too wired to drift away.

Last night was kind of scary. I had taken about 140 mg DXM throughout the course of the day followed by some cannabis mids right before turning in (in addition to mirtazapine and melatonin). I didn't slip off into unconsciousness as usual, but rather felt like I was about to go into a seizure or something. I feared I might die if I let it go on, so I jolted awake and stayed that way until I could fall asleep normally. Probably should have gone with it, since looking back on it now I was probably in no real danger :\
 
I find it pretty easy to induce due to being highly introverted by nature. Simply lying down in a comfortable position, allowing the breath to slow naturally, and just focusing your attention on your point of observation. Doesn't work if you're tired or mentally drained though, you need the focus to not just get sucked into the sleep state.

I think most people are easily capable of it, however, due to the hallucinations I think most people have conditioned themselves to avoid it from early childhood experiences. Most children go through a stage of night terror. I certainly did, but it fascinated me so I never shut that door intentionally.

Meditation helps, or rather having a calm mind when things are dark and silent. Again I think people remember seeing shit when younger, seeing entities etc and they'd rather not go back there.
 
I <3 Sleep paralysis.. The most scary ones are always the most interesting (the feeling is horrible but then i wake im like :) shit that was cool)
 
DIY mysticism ftw! I can't see why this wouldn't work.

I can't remember having experienced sleep paralysis, but I imagine it's more interesting than fun. Most people who experience it unintentionally and remember it vividly find it frightening, and I reckon a good number of people would still find it jarring even if they'd read about it, induced it intentionally, and thought they knew what to expect.
 
I've only ever achieved sleep paralysis through the dream state, and it's usually between the hours of 4-9am. It also tends to happen a lot more when sleep is broken up into two segments. The second segment is where it will happen.
 
in my teens i thought they were ghost or alien visitations. towards the end of my twenties, i could feel them coming. felt a bit like tiny electric shocks. i imagined they were a bit like small epileptic fits. that sensation seemed to be around the edge of paralysis. sometimes i was able to force movement, at others it was futile. i think by forcing movement i was just waking myself up a bit more.

still, once it kicked in, it was a truly frightening experience.

except that one time i was on an antidepressant and the thing appeared as bruce lee (having watching a film or two of his before bed). he was clearly standing beside the bed, open eye hallucination. that wasn't scary at all.
 
^ I can relate to much of what you were saying like the first few times I thought It was aliens/ghosts. Truly scary my first few times were when I was in my mid teens Id try to speak or move, even trying to open my eyes was a task. But I got over all that shit once I researched sleep paralysis/lucid dreaming, and I was like okay I'm not a nut case.

I actually had an episode last night. I took about eh 100 mg of vicodin (I have a high tolerance to some this sounds like a lot),Anyways went about my day got my hair cut/dyed. Then I told my s/o that I needed to take a cat nap.
So I lay down and I drift into the sleep paralysis state and I was absolutely aware of my mind and body , so I drift into a state of lucid dreaming and im like oh shit (fucking awesome!).
I felt heavy and tingly all over my body. So at this point I'm like im going to try and manipulate this dream as much as I can.
So I try to lift my body up into the air, first I started with mid back and arched it upward, then I lifted up my feet I look at my feet and they are higher up than my head (head was still in my pillow) so my whole body felt like it was floating but my head.
I didn't achieve the whole floating thing. But after all that shit went down I was absolutely enlightened.
I don't know when my episodes will hit maybe it was the vicodin IDK but i'll be more aware next time and keep practicing. It's pretty cool.
 
I never have sleep paralysis when falling asleep, it happens to me when I wake up. I can induce it by taking aniracetam before I go to sleep
 
I always remembered this as been a mixture of terrifying and fascinating. Almost all my episodes were unintentional, brought on by sleep deprivation, excess caffeine or comedowns.

Nothing quite like waking up to music playing with the lyrics been sung backwards in a demonic voice, crying echoing down the hallway and a black mist floating around your bed. Yeah it was interesting but i can't recall a more terrifying experience in my life.. not sure i'd want to induce that again. Give me lucid dreaming any-day..

Infact i once did try to induce lucid dreaming, but it went all wrong.. i was frequently counting the fingers on my hand throughout the day to create a habit of doing this every half-hour; when i eventually fell asleep that habit remained, so at some point i woke up to check my hand.. i wasn't completely awake. I counted six fingers which i initially considered normal until my brain remembered counting five fingers throughout the day, so when i looked again and saw six.. the realization of been aware of my dream state hit me all at once, but i was thrusted into a sleep paralysis state rather then lucid and i can't say i enjoyed it.. lol
 
Toucan said:
enjoyable!
I wouldn't say so, the demon in the room won't let it be so :(
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Id say it's all up to the dreamer for it to be enjoyable or not. But I guess sometimes you cannot control what kind of episode you'll have. I've never had anything Demonic or scary, just the first few times it happened to me it scared me because I was unsure of what was happening.
 
gr33n3y3z said:
Id say it's all up to the dreamer for it to be enjoyable or not. But I guess sometimes you cannot control what kind of episode you'll have. I've never had anything Demonic or scary, just the first few times it happened to me it scared me because I was unsure of what was happening.
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I think it was just horrible timing for me personally; the dream i was having prior to waking up into sleep paralysis was centered around been lead by a false sense of hope towards a utopian town, which was actually disguised as a form of hell.. so i woke up feeling that dread which just fueled the noises and visuals in the paralysis, it was pretty fucked. But something i wont forget.. lol

The other time's i've experienced it havn't been anywhere near that one time in intensity.
 
This happened to me for the first time last night, I had never heard of it before, it was very frightening.

I had been trying to fall asleep for sometime and at first I was sort of stuck between being in a dream and being awake. When I closed my eyes I see(dream) that my dogs were in my room and climbing onto my bed, but when I opened my eyes and looked around they weren't there...this went on for about 5 minutes, each time I would close my eyes I would immediately re-enter the dream of my dogs jumping onto my bed, well eventually my wife saw that I kept opening my eyes and looking around and asked my what was up, this pulled me out of the in/out of a dream state that I was in...but when I tried to respond to her I couldn't. I couldn't talk, I couldn't move, I was trying as hard as I possibly could to move anything and I couldn't, but the sleep paralysis continued in "waves" that peaked and receded every 15 seconds or so, as the "wave" of paralysis receded I would be able to get a few words out and twitch my arms and legs, but I could only get out like 4 or 5 words when the wave would peak again and I'd be unable to talk at all, and it was even hard to breath. Because I was only able to get out a few words every 15-20 seconds it took me a while to tell her what was happening and by the time I had pieced together a description of what I was experiencing it stopped. That feeling of being completely aware of whats going on but being unable to move a single muscle or even talk was very disconcerting.

After I regained my facilities I came to the conclusion that my body was stuck in sleep mode while my mind was awake. I'm just waking up this morning, and saw this thread by coincidence but I do plan to do some research about this phenomenon later.
 
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