How to Induce Sleep Paralysis – Detailed Instructions

Have you ever been in a situation where you were asleep and the next thing you know is that you couldn’t move your body and you get this feeling as if you were being chocked?

You felt this heavy pressure on you making all your muscles tight and can’t move an inch. You try to say something but your tongue fails to cooperate with you.

You feel this extreme fear and you think you might be going insane!

Some people even see dark figures which trigger the fear even more.  This condition is known as sleep paralysis and a lot of people have experienced it.

 I myself have experienced it and honestly, I can’t even describe how scared I was. Your body is paralyzed while you cannot utter a single word. That was truly devastating! 

Now that we have an idea of what sleep paralysis is, we are going to go in a little more depth to understand why and how does this happen. Sleep paralysis is temporary but it is interesting to learn about it.

Sleep paralysis can happen anytime during your sleep or upon awakening. During sleep paralysis, your senses and emotions are intact, but, you may feel pressure on yourself. This condition is not life-threatening but can cause a lot of anxiety and panic. It can also be accompanied by hallucinations and intense fear.

It can often start during adolescence but, can become frequent during the 20s and 30s, although, it does not pose a serious risk. It can last for a few seconds to a few minutes. It is observed that it is often triggered by stress, jet lag, sleep deprivation, or panic disorder.

Sleep paralysis can happen anytime during your sleep or upon awakening.

Sleep paralysis is a type of parasomnia. It is an undesired event that happens when you sleep. It could happen just after falling asleep or upon waking up in the morning, usually in the time between waking and sleep.

Episodes of sleep paralysis are often accompanied by hypnagogic experiences: visual, auditory, and sensory hallucinations.

These occur during the transition state between sleeping and waking up, and they typically fall into one of three categories mentioned below.

1. Intruder: In this case, there are sounds of doorknobs opening, approaching footsteps, a shadow man or a dark figure. It could also be a feeling of a threatening presence in the room.
2. Incubus: This accompanies feelings of pressure on the chest, difficulty breathing with the sense of being chocked, strangled or sexually assaulted by a malicious being. The individual gets the feeling of dying.
3. Vestibular-motor: it causes a sense of spinning, falling, floating, flying, hovering over one’s body or any other type of out-of-body experience commonly known as astral projection.

How do you Induce Sleep Paralysis?

If you’re someone who is trying to achieve it or just want to experience sleep paralysis, or perhaps you want to use it as a gateway to lucid dreaming and astral projection, then, you’re in the right place. You’d think that not a lot of people want to go through sleep paralysis, but the reality is a lot of people want to experience it.

For lucid dreaming, you don’t really need sleep paralysis however; it is very powerful if you can easily get yourself into sleep paralysis. It is an easy way to get into a lucid dream. How easy it is for you to get into sleep paralysis varies from person to person.  For those people who have a very hard time relaxing their body will find it very hard to get into sleep paralysis. However, if you’re someone who can easily relax their body, you can easily get into the state.

Now, another reason why you want to experience it is astral projection. Astral projection (or astral travel) is a term commonly used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE). The person experiencing it assumes the existence of a soul or consciousness called an “astral body” that is actually separate from the physical body, is also capable of travelling outside it and throughout the universe. It is similar to lucid dreaming that occurs in your sleep.

Based on some experiments and research, it is something that occurs in different stages of sleep- lucid dreaming. Regardless, of what it is, or when it happens, it seems that you are best at entering sleep paralysis to actually doing it. For some people, it only ever works when they have been in sleep paralysis and then performed the method to get out of that. When they have tried to do it without sleep paralysis, it didn’t work, whereas, lucid dreaming is the opposite. Lucid dreaming always works even if you are not in sleep paralysis but for astral projection, you do need that.

You are best at entering sleep paralysis to actually doing it!

A study suggested that astral projection type experiences happen in a different state of sleep. If that is true, it suggests that sleep paralysis can also occur in a different state of sleep. Normally, we are led to believe that sleep paralysis only occurs during REM sleep.

Steps to Induce Sleep Paralysis

1. It is possible that the first step isn’t necessary but the first step, just like with lucid dreaming, is to get into REM. This is because sleep paralysis is also known as REM atonia and from what we know, it occurs during REM. You do this by sleeping long enough to enter REM.

   You could start for nine minutes, 3 hours, 6 hours, 36 hours and so on. 6 hours is recommended because that’s typically when the longest REM period is, so you’re most likely to actually hit it. Your REM periods aren’t fixed and they can fluctuate, so, go with the 6 hours.

2. Get up in REM, then, simply lay down in your bed and close your eyes as if you’re going back to sleep. The thing that you really need to focus on, is simply letting yourself go back to sleep with the intention of keeping your mind awake. People often face a lot of trouble while getting into sleep paralysis because they try too hard.

   It’s a matter of paradoxical intention, the actual intention to enter sleep paralysis. Intention to enter sleep paralysis actually stops you from entering it because you try to stay still. To enter sleep paralysis, you need to stay perfectly still and not be moving.

   But, when someone tells you to stay still and not move, what do you do? You tense up and move every muscle in your body in the act of staying still. Hence, we won’t advise you to tense up and stay still. Just go to sleep normally with the intention of keeping your mind awake.

3. You’re going to notice your body going to sleep, while your mind staying awake. Find that relaxing position where you let go and stop moving and eventually, you’ll enter sleep paralysis. Time duration to enter sleep paralysis may vary, but it’s actually pretty quick.

   If you’re laying in your bed trying to enter sleep paralysis for 30 40 minutes, chances are you’re doing it wrong. You’re tensing your muscles, you’re trying not to move, you’re making a conscious effort to do it rather than simply letting it happen to you.

Sleep paralysis isn’t something you make happen; it’s something you allow to happen. If you’re struggling to get into it, allow it to happen. Allow yourself, allow your body to just fall asleep, while your mind stays awake. Set the intention, intend to notice your body falling asleep, and then go to sleep normally. It might result in you falling asleep or it might actually work. Try a few times and see how the results are.