Prompt #438 Sleep Disturbances

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“Your body prepares for REM sleep by sending out hormones to effectively paralyze itself so that your arms and legs don’t act out the storyline you are creating in your head. This attempt at self-protection doesn’t always work perfectly, and when that happens, what follows is far from pleasant. Sometimes, it is the brain that doesn’t get the message. This can lead to waking up in the middle of the night with the frightening sensation that you can’t move your limbs. In the Middle Ages, this was thought to be a sign that a demon called an incubus was perched on the chest. Instead, this condition is simply a flaw in the sleep cycle, a wrong-footed step in the choreography of the brain’s func­tions that allows a person to become conscious when the body thinks the brain is still dreaming.

“At other times, the body doesn’t fully paralyze itself like it is supposed to. This is the root of a series of problems called parasomnias, of which sleep­walking … is by far the most mild. Patients with REM sleep disorder, for instance, sometimes jump out of a window or tackle their nightstand while they are acting out a dream. Some patients I spoke with who have this disorder have resorted to literally tying themselves to the bedpost each night out of the fear that they will accidentally commit suicide.” -David K. Randall, Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep

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Related posts:

1. Prompt #126 To Dream the Impossible Dream
2. Prompt #33: It’s All in Your Head
3. Prompt #433 Truth in Dreams
4. Prompt #367 Unhappiness with our Bodies
5. Prompt #122 Cause and Effect