Last night I had my first lucid dream in a month. Here is the dream:
I’m on a cruise. The ship is very large and I’m trying to find a way to an upper floor. Somehow I know that there is an elevator behind a junk shop. I walk through it and find the elevator. I’m not lucid yet. I go to the elevator and get to the upper floor. The floor is very spooky, not like I excepted it to be. The room is very small, dark and quiet. There is no way out than the elevator and very dark stairs right to me. There are just walls everywhere else. I peek behind a corner to the stairs and think that there’s something dangerious. I start to breathe more heavily and deeply because I’m so scared. That’s when I become lucid, the breathing makes me realize that it’s a dream for some reason.
There’s a window on the wall in front of me. I see some green smoke outside and hear a strange voice too. I would like to peek out the window more carefully, but I remember that I planned to focuse on my hands next time I’m lucid, because I have had difficulties to stay in dreams when I’m lucid. So I raise my left hand and examine it very closely. My fingers are wide and flat, like fingers of an alien. Then I’m starting to lose the dream. I try to keep my eyes open and focus on the hand, but then I open my eyes for real. And I’m not sure but I think that I woke up with my hand raised up. I do a reality check if it’s a fake awakening, but it’s not.
Shouldn’t the body be paralyzed during REM? I often scare during LDs that I’m doing things for real. In my last lucid dream, for example, I tried to inhale at the same time I pinched my nose. But I couldn’t do it because I was so scared that I was pinching my nose in my bed too and would suffocate.
Does the paralysis stop just in the end of REM? That would explain why I woke up with my hand raised up last night.
I think that sometimes it happens that the paralysis stops just before the end of the dream. I have no experience with this, but it has happened to a friend of mine. His real arms would start to move just before the end of an LD. He has the impression that the movement is what caused him to wake up, but I think he was going to wake anyway.
Prob the signal and thought to move your arm was still in your consciousness while already your dream was at an end so your brain was in a transsition stage from rem to waking, taking the moving signal with it witch resulted in moving your arm while almost woken up, moving your arm in the time you moved from rem to waking.
A similar thing happened to me once during a lucid dream. I knew the dream was coming to an end and I started to rub my hands together to prolong it but, I failed. I woke into SP with my hands over my head with the palms together ( as though I was just rubbing them ).
If I dreamt of an elevator I’d probably worry about getting trapped in it and then I would
When I have LD’s, the only thing I feel I might be moving in RL is my eyes. I sometimes become aware of them being closed in the dream which then makes my vision go wrong so I want to open them but I’m sure that will wake me up.
Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain enters slow-wave sleep. The period of slow wave sleep is accompanied by relaxation of the muscles and the eyes. Heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature all fall. If awakened at this time, most people recall only a feeling or image, not an active dream. This also explains the groggy “slow” feeling when awakening. During this time, the afferents responsible for movement are paralyzed in order to keep the body from injuring itself or taking involuntary action during sleep. The somatosensory cortex (the part of the brain primarily responsible for movement and motor control) is essentially, deactivated.
Quite simply put, sleepwalking occurs when the pathways that are closed off during REM sleep to prevent neurotransmitters from reaching the somatosensory cortex, or any other motor lobes of the brain, open up and allow neurotransmitters to reach these areas, which will then cause the body to act out actions done throughout REM sleep.
Periodic limb movements of sleep are intermittent jerks of the legs or arms, which occur as the individual enters slow wave sleep, and can cause arousal from sleep. Other people have episodes in which their muscles fail to be paralyzed during REM sleep, and they act out their dreams (sleepwalking). This occurs when incidental firing throughout the cortex reachs area of the brain that are typically blocked off during sleep in order to protect oneself. How exactly the brain seeps through the blocks, and why, are not exactly known.
So, it isn’t completely abnormal to have incidental movement of your limbs throughout sleep, it is just uncommon.
