Free writing

So now I need to start my free writing assignment on sleep paralysis, I have had sleep paralysis about 10 times. starting a little over a year ago. The first time it was horrifying beacuse I had no idea what was going on. Later after some research I figured out it was a thing called sleep paraylisis that is in the parasomnia family of sleep disorders. Other disorders in this family are called sleep walking and night terrors. Sleep paralysis is often linked with narcolepsy as well. When you have sleep paralysis it is when you awake suddenly from a state of REM ( rapid eye movement) sleep and your motor functions are inactive. This is because in REM your body disables these functions to keep you from acting out your dreams physically in bed. The result of waking up in this state is being paralyzed for anywhere from 30 seconds to in some cases, hours. You can open your eyes and look around but that is about it. It is usually accompanied by a pressure on your chest a feeling of dread, feeling a presence in the room, and hallucinations. There are two types of sleep realted hallucinations, Hypnogogic and hypnopompic. The prior takes place before you go to sleep the later after you wake up. The hallucinations might manifest as the cause of your inability to move, and the pressure on your chest. There were many reports of creatures, demons, imps, even aliens, holding people down or sitting on their chests. THis is usually very frightening to most people the first and even following times. Sleep Paralysis is usually brought on by sleep deprivation, a strange sleep schedule, muscle atrophe, stress and possibly other reasons i'm not aware of.

Sleep paralysis

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
1.) Symptoms of sleep paralysis can be either one of the following or a combination:

Paralysis: this occurs after waking up or shortly before falling asleep. the person cannot move any body part, cannot speak, and only has minimal control over blinking and breathing. This paralysis is the same paralysis that occurs when dreaming. The brain paralyzes the muscles to prevent possible injury during dreams, as some body parts may move during dreaming. If the person wakes up suddenly, the brain may still think that it is dreaming, and sustains the paralysis.

Hallucinations: Images or speaking that appear during the paralysis. The person may think that someone is standing beside them or they may hear strange sounds. These may be dreamlike, possible causing the person to think that they are still dreaming.

These symptoms can last from mere seconds to several minutes and can be frightening to the person

http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html

2.)Sleep paralysis is most often associated with narcolepsy, a neurological condition in which the person has uncontrollable naps. However, there are many people who experience sleep paralysis without having signs of narcolepsy. Sometimes it runs in families. There is no known explanation why some people experience this paralysis. It is not harmful, although most people report feeling very afraid because they do not know what is happening, and within minutes they gradually or abruptly are able to move again; the episode is often terminated by a sound or a touch on the body.


http://www.dreamsnightmares.com/sleepparalysis.html

3.)There are a number of historical and urban cultural myths, which can be, somewhat, explained by this experience. The Incubus, which appears in ancient literature, is one such example. In the book Incubus by Kiessling, It was described as half man half beast, attacking in the night. The word night "mare" has been derived from the word incubus. In Greek it was ephialtes, in Latin incubus, in German mar/mare, in Old English maire, Old Norse mara, Old Irish mar/mor, and all mean "one who leaps on, oppresses or crushes."

The demon of the night has also been called 'The Old Hag' a description and myth coming out of several cultures. The Old Hag was described in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.


http://csicop.org/si/9805/abduction.html

4.) If you believe one set of claims, nearly four million Americans have been abducted by aliens. This figure has been widely publicized and is often assumed to mean that millions of people have been visited by members of an alien species and, in some cases, physically taken from their beds, cars, or homes to an alien craft or planet.

Personal accounts of abduction by aliens have increased since the publication of Budd Hopkins's books Missing Time (1981) and Intruders (1987) and Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987). There is considerable variation among the accounts, but many fit a common pattern. Wright (1994) summarized 317 transcripts of hypnosis sessions and interviews from 95 separate cases and concluded, "Numerous entity types have been visiting our planet with some regularity" (Part 2, p. 6). However, the "gray" is clearly the most common alien and over the years a typical account has emerged (see, e.g., Mack 1994; Schnabel 1994; Thompson 1993).

The experience begins most often when the person is at home in bed (Wright 1994) and most often at night (Spanos, Cross, Dickson, and DuBreuil 1993), though sometimes abductions occur from a car or outdoors. There is an intense blue or white light, a buzzing or humming sound, anxiety or fear, and the sense of an unexplained presence. A craft with flashing lights is seen and the person is transported or "floated" into it. Once inside the craft, the person may be subjected to various medical procedures, often involving the removal of eggs or sperm and the implantation of a small object in the nose or elsewhere. Communication with the aliens is usually by telepathy. The abductee feels helpless and is often restrained, or partially or completely paralyzed.

The "gray" is about four feet high, with a slender body and neck, a large head, and huge, black, slanted, almond-shaped eyes. Grays usually have no hair and often only three fingers on each hand. Rarer aliens include green or blue types, the taller fair-haired Nordics, and human types who are sometimes seen working with the grays.

The aliens' purpose in abducting Earthlings varies from benign warnings of impending ecological catastrophe to a vast alien breeding program, necessitating the removal of eggs and sperm from humans in order to produce half-alien, half-human creatures. Some abductees claim to have seen fetuses in special jars, and some claim they were made to play with or care for the half-human children.

Occasionally, people claim to be snatched from public places, with witnesses, or even in groups. This provides the potential for independent corroboration, but physical evidence is extremely rare. A few examples of stained clothing have been brought back; and some of the implants have reportedly been removed from abductees' bodies, but they usually mysteriously disappear (Jacobs 1993).

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1st day of Dynamic Imaging

I just created my blog for the Dynamic Imaging class.