Not long after graduating high school something strange happened.
One early morning I found myself in bed awake but unable to move or speak.
Trapped in this state I tried to scream but couldn't.
Then I realised that a spirit-like creature was on my bed strangling me!
I mean this experience was bizarre but it took me a long journey around the world
to study this phenomenon and try to understand what is the science behind sleep paralysis?
So sleep paralysis is this transition like state between wakefulness and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep.
And during REM sleep you have vivid crisp lifelike dreams
and to prevent you from acting out these dreams and hurting yourself
your brain temporarily paralyses the entire body.
Now this is a smart thing because it prevents you from hurting yourself.
Sometimes you wake up while you're still under the spell of REM paralysis leaving you stuck.
In a sense wakefulness and the dream world collide.
So these conflicting signals you know, messages to your body to...
MOVE! MOVE!
And no feedback coming back from the body it, creates a confusion and your sense of body image gets all distorted.
Now the way your brain deals with this confusion is by building your body image for you.
So it says: 'Let me hallucinate what your body image looks like.'
And in a sense like autocorrect or filling-in-the-blank it will create your body image for you.
The result is bizarre bodily hallucinations, you can see your limbs rotate in the air or sink into the bed
or your entire body may project out there in space, you have an out-of-body experience.
Now this body image distortion also impacts your ability to distinguish between self and other,
the sense that I am me and you are you.
And as the barrier between self and other dissolves,
you mistake your projected body for a separate entity with its own free will.
In my research in over six countries, we found that cultural explanations
can have a big impact on how people experience sleep paralysis.
Throughout history there have been stories of people seeing and sensing ghosts during sleep.
There are different beliefs for this.
In Egypt people blame a jinn, an evil genie of sorts.
In Italy people talk about pandafeche, which is a giant cat or a witch attacking you.
and in Denmark people attribute it to things like stress.
Those who have striking or supernatural beliefs about it tend to have it much more.
They also have longer paralysis and greater fear.
Once sleep paralysis is interpreted through the lens of fear,
it leads to more anxiety and unwanted night-time awakenings and more sleep paralysis.
This vicious cycle, which I call the panic hallucination model, continues to feed on itself
until sleep paralysis becomes chronic, prolonged and potentially even traumatising.
So how do you help these people?
I've developed a psychological treatment called meditation-relaxation-therapy applied directly during sleep paralysis.
In a pilot study in Italy, we showed promising results,
a +50% reduction in sleep paralysis after using this therapy for only eight weeks.
But of course we need to do more research to be sure of its benefit.
Now I still experience sleep paralysis now- and-then and I get to explore my own theories.
Sometimes I try to imagine ghosts just to see if i can create my own monsters.
I'm usually unable to complete this experiment out of horror.
But instead I resort to meditation-relaxation- therapy, just to calm myself down.
But scientists like myself are among a select group of people who can say they're working while sleeping.