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The other night a friend of mine told me a story. She told me others found it hard to believe what she was telling me. She told me of sleep paralysis and experiencing black figures in the room. She found out later, looking back, that she was experiencing a spiritual emergency and it was a way for her to process trauma within her own life.

As I listened to her story it sounds remarkably like my own story. I’ve had several instances that terrify me so badly I purposely keep myself awake for a night or two after the experience. I never knew someone else had experienced it, too! The experiences always seem to happen randomly, but after hearing my friends story, I began to wonder if it happened when I was working through trauma like she was.

It always happens the same. I go to bed as per usual. Suddenly I wake up, wide awake, but  I can’t move my body. I am frozen and can’t make a noise no matter how hard I try to scream. There are one or more black figures in the room, usually on top of me. I can feel them and sometimes I can see them. They are always silent and they always have an intent to hurt me. One time I felt one pressing against my throat so I couldn’t breathe. Another time I felt it wanted to rape me.

The best way I’ve figured out how to handle these experiences is to close my eyes, and start to breathe deeply with a goal to get back into my body. I begin to will with all my might my fingers or toes to move because if I can get a body part to move I am instantly back in my body. 

After I usually turn on all of the lights and my body is shaking. I won’t sleep for the rest of that night.

I remember to times specifically when I was working through trauma I experienced this including one this past year. While I was practising Kirtan Kriya it was a little bit different than the previous experiences in the sense that there was a Being at the foot of my bed who projected the image of a heart into my mind while my body felt like it had electricity running through it. It didn’t try to kill me but I was still didn’t sleep for two nights after.

Another time was when I first moved to the West Coast and was volunteering at Hollyhock on Cortes Island. I had a wonderful place to stay. My time there was a vortex – the house I shared was with nine other healers. All we did in our spare time was trade sessions. We woke up at six am and meditated before breakfast. We counselled each other. It was a life changing place in more than one way, and I remember in the middle of the night one time, experiencing the sleep paralysis with a black being on top of me ready to rape me.

No one really knew what to make of the experience, including myself, but I had begun to wonder about these black shapes. I know and recognize the mind is a powerful tool that needs to be respected and that I need to learn how to use properly. I began to wonder if these black beings were apparitions created by the mind of my worst fears. I began to wonder if maybe they were thought forms I had created somehow. 

Looking back in my life I see that these experiences came often when I was in the middle of a big emotional shift and doing a lot of work and personal healing on myself. It seems to be a sign that I am undergoing something big in my life and to pay attention. I also noticed I learned how to calmly respond to the situation even though it terrifies me.

It taught me the power of my breath and of being inside my body. It taught me about my will power because I have to connect to my will in order to move my fingers or toes when this happens. It taught me to be courageous. It taught me not to believe what my mind creates. It taught me that fears can truly have power over me if I let them.

I still have fears from the traumas experienced and I have a general lack of trust in the world because of those experiences but I have also spent a long time shifting those things.

Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis like this before? How do you work through or cope with your fears from trauma?

Research/Links
Spirituality and Trauma
Spiritual Sleep Paralysis
Sleep Paralysis and Spirits
Spiritual Emergence Network

P.S. When I was searching for a picture for this post I opened up the one in it now and noticed beside me a spider the size of a penny making his way toward me ON MY BED. I kicked him out (not kill him) and decided to use this butterfly picture.