One’s experience of sleep paralysis is totally dependent on their perception, expectation and what I call their ‘ease of allowing’.

Sleep paralysis is usually experienced in a negative way due to the expectations and preconceived ideas which help us shape our day to day experiences. Our expectations guide us, but they can also limit us, in terms of reaching outside of what is expected. The sleep paralysis experience is totally unexpected. When we sleep, we have been taught to expect rest and relaxation, an opportunity to rejuvenate the body and awaken refreshed with no disturbances. You simply sleep and then wake up. Dreams are common, yet expected. So too are nightmares. But, sleep paralysis is outside of the scale of normality and supersedes any dream or nightmare.

There is no preparation for the experience and once simply has to live it. The psyche is thrown into shock and the negative experiences that we have read about, watched on TV, felt fearful of and heard about are manifested in the negative expectation which is experienced.

This, combined with perception provides a healthy dose of fear. Fear which is constructed on the history of individual experience. Perception guides all things that we experience. No two people will experience a situation in the same way.  The same story can be told from many different points of view. We can’t avoid our perception influencing our experiences, it part of the human experience. And the perceived experience from the position of having very little information with which to hinge its expectation moves it to a place of fear which can quickly increase to panic and terror.

We get what we expect, and ones’ ‘ease of allowing’ reduces the fear.  It relaxes the body and helps one to experience sleep paralysis from a place of observation, curiosity and experimentation. Whilst, yes, there is some distance between terror and allowing, it can be done. By doing so, wonders can be experienced that lie on the other side of sleep paralysis.