Sleep Paralysis and You.

Or rather, me. I don't know if any of my family or friends suffer from this. I get it off and on, for going on a couple of years now. Basically, your brain wakes up while your body stays asleep. When you sleep, your brain floods you with a chemical that keeps you immobile. This is so you don't physically act out your dreams. When you are sleeping, you don't notice this. But if your brain wakes up without your body...you do. You can't even force your eyelids open. And your brain is not exactly out of REM patterns as far as I can tell. The hallucinations are intense. The article gives a good overview of the general feeling.

I had an episode this morning. I notice I tend to get it around seasonal changes. Also, when I wake up at 4 am and compose myself for a "second sleep", I get raging sleep paralysis. Now that I know what causes it, it's not as scary. It's a little unsettling though. When I "woke" this morning I thought I heard the sound of someone turning pages very quickly sitting behind me. Usually I can shake the hallucinatory impressions, but that was a tough one. It sounded very real. Sometimes I hallucinate someone coming up the stairs towards the bedroom and that can be very scary.

Fortunately it's well documented on the internet, so I was able to find out what it was as soon as it started happening to me. I had a really frightening episode of it during an afternoon nap a few years ago. Alex was downstairs playing Neverwinter Nights, which is a Dungeons and Dragons type of game on the internet. It features a lot of supernatural beasties and there are weird sound effects that go with it. There's one sound that's like an electrical storm. I must have been hearing it upstairs during my nap...sometimes when sleeping my hearing becomes hyperacute.

Anyway. I hallucinated that I was being attacked by a giant electrical demon (with full sound effects) while being rendered powerless to defend myself. It really did feel like being possessed, so I can see why episodes like this led to some of our more colorful mythologies. When I woke up all the way (about 15-20 seconds into my "attack") I sat up and was like "WHAT THE CRAP!!!!" That was the worst one. No more afternoon naps for me, nosiree!

I'm going to post some more about Oaxaca soon. I'm almost done unpacking and out of the post vacation depression. The abrupt transition from paradise to "raining and dark night over Oakland airport while lady next to you describes scary flight she had once over Kennedy Airport and wouldn't shut up the whole time the plane was trying to land, etc..." was a letdown indeed. But I'm crocheting and stuff and watching good movies.

I got the extended version of "Fanny and Alexander" from Netflix a couple of weeks ago and sat down and watched all nearly 5 hours of it in one go. It is SO good and worth seeing. It's a great movie to watch for the holidays because the whole first scene is a wild Swedish Yule party. It's used as a device to introduce all the characters in this wild family called the Ekdahls so it goes on for a piece. I love it. Makes me glad to be alive. I'm thinking of buying it. It's like watching a masterpiece painting in film form. (I wonder what filmmakers say about paintings..."nice oil still!")

MPK