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Comment by mitchellshow | Hacker News Reader

As someone with chronic sleep paralysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis), it is astonishing how frequently I read about pseudo-paranormal or "OBE" experiences and go, yeah, that's just sleep paralysis man.

Although, the causes of sleep paralysis still aren't well understood, so maybe it's a VR bug after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Same, I’ve had sleep paralysis for as long as I can remember. A lot of stories of alien abduction, out-of-body experiences, mystical visitations by nightmares and demons, &c. strike me as plainly SP. Learning that it’s a normal sleep disorder made the experience less frightening and confusing, and kept me from falling into the trap of thinking of it as supernatural. Now if I have an episode I just relax and wait for it to be over. I haven’t had one in a long while, though, by avoiding triggers such as sleep deprivation, stress, alcohol, and sleeping on my back. Unfortunately, that also means I have to avoid lucid dreams, which are closely related—and yet as far as I’ve seen, this connection is rarely talked about except by the lucid dreaming community (also often rather mystical and full of woo).

I've had SP a few times, more often on the couch than in bed for some reason. A friend that has these experiences very often gave me his pro tip for dealing with them, as soon as you realize you're having SP, simply use all of your will to bend your index finger, the second you get your finger to bend, you snap out of it. Worked for me the few times I've had to use it, and it gives you something to focus on at the same time.

Sure, different things work better for different people, and that method is certainly worth a try, as I’ve heard it works for many people with SP. Fighting it tends to just make it worse for me—usually giving me a false awakening after which I often wake up paralysed again, sometimes two or three times. Sometimes it does help to try to regain control of my breathing—a big part of the anxiety for me is being “stuck on auto”. Could be related to sleep apnea, dunno.

I sometimes get SP (couple times a year max) given long sessions of programming, sleep deprivation, weakened immune system. part of me recognizes them and is able to "step aside" while mind stays busy generating colorful "wannabe frightening" pictures. whole thing reminds me muscle pain after hard workout but for the brain. most peculiar thing is that body sort of associates fear with liberation.

Yeah, the whole time I was reading that section I was thinking the article was just going to be based on quackery that could easily be explained by sleep paralysis and stimulating brain regions responsible for proprioception. The sudden turn into utilizing it for VR was unexpected and quite interesting.

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