Luckily, I have never had a "death rise", because, although I now know what it is, experiencing it must be another level. On Instagram, I asked my followers in a story if they had ever experienced sleep paralysis and too much sleep. People answered yes, some even told me their techniques to get out of paralysis.

Although the space that Instagram gives you to respond is too small, I would like you if this has ever happened to you to leave a comment on this post about your experience and if you have any advice or technique to get out of the episode that may be of use to someone, It would be great if you shared it.

The expression “the dead man got up to me” is quite common in Latin America, although if your country calls it something else I would like to know (write it in the comments), but since it is a phenomenon that happens to humans of all Places in the world have different names and even different traditional explanations that reflect their culture, for example, in Japan it is called kanashibari, which means metal ties or chains and is attributed to the possession of your body by an animal spirit. which can be a dog or inugami, a fox or kitsune, a tanuki, a type of Japanese canine that looks like a raccoon, or a sashiki warashi, which are spirits of children who play pranks and actually represent prosperity.

I was surprised that in Japan where they are great at scary stories and legends, such a creepy experience does not have an evil connotation, in China it is believed that a ghost visits you, in Egypt they believe it is a jinn or evil genius, in Germany they call it “Hexen gehen vorbei” which means witches passing, in Italy they call “Panda feche” to the entity that sits on top of you that could be a witch or a cat (tell me if it's true), in Iran they call the presence “Cabus” sitting on your chest, in Thailand they call the phenomenon “fium” which means enveloped by a spirit.

And in Saint Lucia, a little island in the Caribbean they call it “cocma” which means “the attack of the dead Spirits of unbaptized babies that climb up to squeeze your neck” so I give them the first place for the most terrifying interpretation of all.

It is obvious that sleep paralysis is very common, but what is it; To explain that we have to understand a little how sleep works when we are awake like you while reading this publication (I hope), your brain is very active receiving signals from your sensory organs eyes, ears, tongue, nose, skin etc. and in the Below our brain there are regions called wakefulness centers, that is, they help you stay awake. These wakefulness centers communicate with your cerebral cortex, which is where sensory stimuli are processed through neurotransmitter molecules, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and acetylcholine that stimulate the regions of your cortex Brains responsible for perception, sight, taste, hearing, smell, touch, etc.

When we are asleep we experience dream phases, the difference between deep sleep and Rem sleep is that the wakefulness centers, which put our senses to work, are activated even if we are asleep, if we measure the activity of our cortex when we are in Rem sleep. It is very similar to when we are awake, that is, we are having vivid, visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory experiences, although we are not receiving those stimuli through the corresponding sensory organs, you can imagine what is happening. Exact!!.

It is in Rem sleep that your brain secretes gamma-aminobutyric and glycine that serve to paralyze your voluntary muscles temporarily. This is important because without this paralysis we would act out our dreams and we could get hurt; and this gives us a clue sleep paralysis is a Rem sleep disorder where you wake up or at least a part of your brain does while you are still paralyzed, you can open your eyes, see and hear, but your breathing is still under the control of Rem sleep, so it does not respond to you when you want to breathe voluntarily. This can feel like a kind of suffocation because our lungs are breathing calmly automatically while we would like to scream.

The above and the inability to move produce a lot of fear because obviously and that produces hallucinations, in sleep paralysis, although you feel awake, you are not, the functions of your brain that make you dream are still active, thought flows many times incoherent things that happen when you are about to fall asleep and also about to wake up, but the difference is that here they mix with the reality that you perceive by having your senses active and this manifests itself as hallucinations, that is why people see things.