Tingling and auditory pressure

[Dempster]

Hey everyone

As this is my first post, I won't bore you and I'll get right to the point.

I'm 25 years old, and for about 20 of those years I've had these 'episodes' where I would feel a rush of 'tingles' through my body. For the longest time I've associated them with bad dreams, as my mind would get the better of me and think wildly of demons and creepy things coming to nab me in the dark.

But a few years ago I started to get really interested in them. I started looking for answers, thinking they were night terrors, or sleep paralysis. But none of the descriptions really stuck well enough. I started talking to a good friend about it, and she immediately came up with the term "astral projection" and that the feelings I were getting all these years are the first steps to spiritual self discovery (She's big into Buddhism and meditation).

Well, all things pushed aside for the moment, I'd like to explain what I feel during these episodes.

It happens when I lie down in bed and start to doze off. Something startles me and I wake up. When I start to drift back off to sleep, I get an extreme tingling sensation that starts near my tailbone and rushes up my spine, rushes into my head, and causes a loud distortion sound and light pressure in my ears. Then as quickly as it happens, the sound is gone, and my entire body tingles. After this happens, my body is completely paralyzed. I cannot speak or move, but I can move my eyes and look around the room, but I don't recall ever opening my eyes.

After exploring this for the past year or so, I've noticed that I "wake up" twice. While my body is tingling, like I said, I can see around my room, its like I woke up. But if I want to move, it takes quite a struggle, and then I seem to 'wake up' out of the state like I was dreaming. Its all very confusing and hard to explain.

I was hoping someone here might be able to shed some light on the subject.

Thanks for your time,
Dempster

[Stevo]

From a spiritual level, this is a big thing that anyone could jump on and go, "OMG ur OBEEEEing" Try to be a little more cynical in these things.

Since you're a question asker, let's ask a question. What is sleep paralysis?

Apparently through scientific belief, what you remember and what you are experiencing are no different. It is up to us to make the seperation between mind and physical. With this in mind, when we are sleeping, it's like we're actually experiencing something. We believe it to be real.

So while our mind is influenced to think we are somewhere experiencing something that we aren't, it's only natural to react. These reactions can be movement. Walking, touching, talking, and some cases screaming.

To remedy the fact that while we dream we would move around and talk and possibly bring harm to ourselves, the body shuts down the connection between the concious mind and the body. All the things we think to do, which is mainly movement, becomes paralised. Thus is sleep paralysis.

Where everything becomes foggy is the seperation between sleep and awake. It's proven that sleep paralysis can happen to people who are concious, and this gives light to the idea that the body doesn't always completely know when we are asleep. This also brings to question just what is the seperation between the mind and body. Of course, those are another story.

[Dempster]

Thank you very much for the quick response

This is the first logical conversation on the subject I've had with anyone in awhile. Everyone, like you said, is quick to jump on the topic and say that its a spiritual journey without trying to explain what's really happening.

I still don't understand what the extreme tingling sensations are though. I would wager that its your body literally shutting down nerve connections in preparation for dreaming, shutting off between the brain and muscles so, like you said, we don't injure ourselves during dreaming.

This is all very interesting, I'll have to read up some more

[Stevo]

Personally, I didn't want to jump on any specific conclusion of what the feelings are. I do have a few suspicions.

First off, as you said, could be the sensation of the nerves nulling. I have no idea what it feels like, so I'm not sure. Whenever nerves shut down on me, it's usually my leg falling asleep, and it doesn't feel like anything until I stand up again.

Secondly, it could be no different when the usual person gets the tingling up their spine. I have no idea what causes that, so again I'm not so sure.

As for the possibility of 'spiritual awakenings', I feel the spine has very little to do with anything other than your body. Heck, let's toss in a long shot. The tingling is the spine nulling connection to the brain, and the noises you hear are in your mind on a 'switching modes' feedback thingy. Who knows.

As long as you aren't in pain, or losing sleep, don't be too worried. They might just go away. Half the time there's a medical explination to it.

[Ben K]

Its a common side effect of simply falling deeper and deeper asleep. Dont really want to say if its a non-physical thing or simply a magnification of your body when you fall into a "trance". If you ignored the sensations you could probably have an OBE or lucid dream. The good thing about that is once you start OBE/LDing the sensations get less intense while the experiences get more and more rewarding.

GL!

[sterlingindigo]

I've found that Kundalini Yoga answered a lot of questions for me on this topic.

As for auditory pressure, lately I've discovered that the apex of a really big yawn (no kidding) can induce the auditory vibrations/pressure.  Anyone else?

[-lines-]

I used to have a whooshing noise and an odd feeling just before I had nightmares. Haven't had any in ages though, because I taught myself to control my dreams or to just jump out of the nightmare before it happened. Long after I stopped having nightmares, I started having sleep paralysis episodes, but just before they kick in, I get the same feeling and noise in my dreams as though I am having a nightmare (which sometimes actually kicks a small one in). No clue why it'd feel the same though.