Sleep Paralysis
So, what happens in the body during an episode of sleep paralysis? Essentially, during the dream phase of sleep — known as the rapid eye movement (REM) phase — our skeletal muscles are paralyzed.
The reasons behind this are not fully understood, though researchers have been making progress in uncovering the mechanisms attached to this process.
One popular theory posits that this temporary state of paralysis is meant to prevent us from hurting ourselves, perhaps in automatic response to some violent dream.
During sleep paralysis, paradoxically, our brains — or parts of our brains — become awake and conscious, but the rest of the body is still immobilized.
At the same time, during sleep paralysis, many people experience dream visions and sensations as though they were real — hence the hallucinations — and the fact that they are, in fact, partly awake and conscious blurs the line between reality and dreams.
