
Head asleep, body awake - linux2647
https://alvinalexander.com/misc/head-awake-body-asleep-hear-myself-snoring/
======
whatl3y
Not exactly the same, but I've gone through sleep paralysis 4 or 5 times in
the last 10 years and it remains one of the most terrifying things I've
experienced. It happened upon waking up from a short nap, and always while I
was on my back (I usually sleep on my stomach or side at night).

The first time I went through it I had no idea what was going on and for the
~60 seconds that it lasted I went from thinking if this was really happening
to whether I would be able to tell my family I loved them again. The
subsequent 3 or 4 times I experienced it (after extensive research following
the first episode) I repeated the thought that this was temporary and would go
away soon forcefully until it in fact did after 60-90 seconds.

I know this is an evolutionary defense mechanism our brain/brain stem have
developed over time, but wow is it awful if you ever go through it.

~~~
SaintGhurka
Did you have the sense that someone was in the room? Reports of an ominous
presence often go along with sleep paralysis.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
I've had a whole range of hallucinations from it, visual, physical and
auditory, eventually I tended to get the paralysis part less and less but
still have the hallucinations.

Things like the feeling of someone on your back grasping you and talking into
your ear while trying to fall asleep. Sitting up awake in the morning and
seeing fully formed objects floating in the room like a floating filing
cabinet, fully formed person in the room not a "Shadowperson". Auditory ones
usually happen as you're falling asleep and its all voices you know sorta
talking gibberish sentences.

Around the same period of time it started I also began having lucid dreams
too, generally always had a bit of trouble sleeping.

~~~
seqizz
Ah crap, I only had it once and that Shadowperson was too close to my ear,
whispering gibberish. I felt warmth of its breath, I think it was literally
the fear which woke me up..

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sjdegraeve
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman recounts a similar
"drifting" of the location of the ego while in a sensory deprivation tank:

"I tried and after a while I got my ego to go down through my neck into the
middle of my chest. When a drop of water came down and hit me on the shoulder,
I felt it "up there," above where "I" was. Every time a drop came I was
startled a little bit, and my ego would jump back up through the neck to the
usual place."

[https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg](https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg)

~~~
joveian
Thanks, a nice read.

There are commercial versions of these around in various places; we have one
here in Portland, Oregon. I haven't tried it yet but it seems like a very
interesting experience.

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jl2718
I used this state for lucid dreaming quite a bit. It’s actually the opposite:
the brain is starting to dream but hasn’t forgotten where it is yet. So you
can ‘get up’ slowly and walk around while your brain imagines the perceptive
inputs. I can’t do this in any ‘normal life’ state, only when isolated in
strange places (military deployments).

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TristanDaCunha
So weird -- when did we all decide to start saying "I was laying in bed"
instead of "I was lying in bed"? I have noticed this shift over the past few
years.

Laying has always been past tense "That day I lay in bed for hours" or
transitive "I lay the books down". Chickens also could be laying in bed, if
eggs are coming out of them. Lying has always been intransitive "I was lying
in bed". But nowadays, "I was laying in bed" is almost all I see.

~~~
def8cefe
You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence.

Single quotes, not double quotes, should be used in your comment since you are
not completely and directly quoting your source.

You should not be capitalising the first letter of a quote when it occurs
after the beginning of a sentence.

These are just some of the grammatical errors you've made in two paragraphs.
I've probably made some too. It's pointless to discuss these things outside
academic contexts as long as the text can still be understood.

~~~
lone-commenter
Those are _typographic_ eccentricities, to be pedant :)

And they're not even that uncommon on the Internet and amongst tech people.
(See the Jargon file[1], for example.)

But I get your point: pedantry is often needless, and sometimes even lacks
proper justification (see taejo's comment). But it's difficult to stop seeing
errors when you see them, so I would forgive the parent for being _that Hacker
News guy_.

[1] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-
style.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html)

~~~
def8cefe
No, it's English grammar. (EDIT: Actually it's not. See, there are mistakes
everywhere. It's not typographic either though.)

There's nothing to forgive. My comment was instruction on being a better
reader/listener.

Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and
you will absorb more information.

~~~
lone-commenter
> Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and
> you will absorb more information.

I agree. Form is not so important.

~~~
def8cefe
It's something poor students/learners do. You spend all your time looking for
minor errors in instruction or text so you can 'win' while missing the actual
lesson or overarching idea. I am definitely not innocent of this as a former
high school dropout lol. Cheers.

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bokwoon
> I did some things in Alaska before where I used yoga techniques to very
> slowly fall asleep, and I was able to stay awake while my sense of hearing
> and sense of touch went away

I would love to be able to "sleep" while preserving consciousness. Willingly
losing consciousness terrifies me. It's like death. You are physically unable
to observe the moment you transition from consciousness to unconsciousness,
because observing inplies consciousness. Sleeping is basically leaping into
the void.

~~~
gfody
lookup WILD (wake induced lucid dream) it's basically the practice of
remaining conscious while falling asleep - techniques for dipping your toes in
the void instead of leaping in head first

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TomMarius
I turn into a zombie when nearly asleep. You can help me stand up, order me to
do things and I will obey with no memories of it happening. If you order me to
go to another room (e.g. the bedroom, as my girlfriend does), I will be very
confused next morning.

~~~
S_A_P
Confused that you woke up in the bedroom? Do you not normally sleep there?

~~~
TomMarius
Confused how I appeared there - even though I can deduce it now. It's a very
strong feeling of missing information that does not go away even after she
tells me.

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mikesabat
I have a weird experience sometimes when waking up. It's not sleep paralysis,
at least I don't think so, it feels more like a deep meditation.

The only way to describe it is that I (my mind) is working at two different
levels. At one I am dreaming or thinking of something and at another level I
am observing the dreams of the first "I".

Really hard to explain. Does anyone else have this happen or know the
phenomenon?

~~~
joveian
I think I've had something similar a number of times, like daydreaming while
another part of me is disengaged, although in my case not really observing in
any active sense just half asleep in a different way :/.

I think this may be related to altered thalamus activity (less relaying)
during sleep and meditation.

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njsubedi
I have noticed that the senses detach when I'm sleeping with hands on my chest
too. In our community, it's believed that demons possess you if you sleep with
hands on chest. Probably its because of this kind of feeling. Weird, indeed.

~~~
Cthulhu_
For me it's vision and hearing that seems to go; I'm aware that I'm still
awake, but my mind has drifted off elsewhere and isn't processing any visual /
auditory things anymore. Mostly if I'm dozing off in front of the TV.

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godshatter
I've had my body fall asleep while my mind was awake before, but not the
opposite. It's a very odd sensation feeling your body snore of it's own
accord, with your breathing rate slowing down, hearing sounds in the
environment. This happened a couple of times while I was trying to learn how
to move from the waking state into the dreaming state (WILD technique in
lucid-dreaming parlance). I managed it once, but it was a lot of work for me
(lots of others can do it much easier than I can).

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barbegal
Objectively you can only hear through your cochlea. You can sense vibrations
through your skin but that is very different to hearing yourself snore. My
guess is that the author's ears were in such a position that it appeared to
his brain that the sound was coming from above their head. Combined with
knowing that snoring comes from your mouth/nose and with the author's eyes
closed his brain could be tricked into thinking it was "hearing from the
body".

~~~
khyrbd
i hate feeling my own heartbeat or a situation when i realise that I'm
actually breathing, Cause when that happens I'd attempt to maintain my
breathing rate manually it's awful asf.

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satvikpendem
Sleep paralysis is quite useful for lucid dreaming, as once you're in that
state, you can transition to a lucid dream easily.

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ConsiderCrying
It's fascinating to me how the author describes this as a wondrous and curious
experience. I feel like that's something that many people, me included, would
imagine in a nightmare. Being awake but not in control, cognizant of your own
self and body. That's something straight out of philosophical horror stories.

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hoppla
I’m not sure what it’s called, but I once experienced being trapped in the
dream. I knew I was dreaming and had full control over my actions, but I just
could not wake up. I was very young then, and remember I resorted to jumping
of a high fall. That woke me up, and I was happy it was only a dream.

~~~
pedalpete
Sounds like a lucid dream. I've had it a few times, last week I had one where
I was really stressed about losing my backpack, and in my dream I said to
myself "I don't want to be stressed about this, it's just a backpack, and I'm
in a dream anyway", it was at that point where I realized I was dreaming so
said to myself "so...if you don't want to be stressed about this, just wake up
then", and upon waking, I was laughing at myself over how silly the experience
was.

It's quite fun, if you've done it once before, maybe you want to try it again?

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crvdgc
Mr. Robot vibe.

~~~
unique__
Mind awake, body asleep.

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libra1
I wonder if this may have to do with the "second brain" that scientists claim
exists in the gut: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-
brain/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/)

------
bfieidhbrjr
Learning to astral project is worth the effort.

~~~
ryder9
"astral projection" has no basis in objective reality

~~~
motoboi
I'm curious about the 'objective reality' concept. Care to explain?

~~~
ryder9
The onus of explaining is on the person claiming astral projection without any
proof of basis in reality, not on the person being skeptical of those claims.
It's called the burden of evidence.

~~~
gfody
astral projection is just oobe and "experience" implies subjectivity w/no
claim of objectivity and no corresponding onus or burden or anything

