[Brad]

Drkfusion: That is just part of sleep, you woke up before your body turned off a certain chemical that is sent to the muscles durring sleep.

I am no expert but here is what I understand of it: In your sleep your body repairs itself, most things must be relaxed so they can be repaired. Durring sleep your body produces a chemical (probbly not the correct term...), this paralyzes while you are asleep.

Sometimes you will wake up and it will take a few minutes before you can move, I have had this happen to me a number of times. At first it was scary but I looked it up, now I understand it is normal and it dosen't bother me much anymore

My first experance with it was a bit worse then yours. I could'nt move which freaked me out, but I managed to open my eyes. For the minute or so that I could'nt move I could see something out of the corner of my eye and I thought it was someone that had broken into my house and injected me with something and thats why I could'nt move. I kept trying to reach for the shotgun I have in the corner of my room beside my bed but I could'nt move, eventally I broke free, grabed the gun, but when I brought the barrel to where the person was standing it was gone.

I know now that my mind played a trick on me, and there was never anyone there, but at the time the thought 'someone is trying to kill me' was racing in my mind, and that minute felt like it lasted forever.

edit- googled it for ya...

Sleep paralysis is a condition in which someone, most often lying in a supine position, about to drop off to sleep, or just upon waking from sleep realizes that s/he is unable to move, or speak, or cry out. This may last a few seconds or several moments, occasionally longer. People frequently report feeling a "presence" that is often described as malevolent, threatening, or evil. An intense sense of dread and terror is very common. The presence is likely to be vaguely felt or sensed just out of sight but thought to be watching or monitoring, often with intense interest, sometimes standing by, or sitting on, the bed. On some occasions the presence may attack, strangling and exerting crushing pressure on the chest. People also report auditory, visual, proprioceptive, and tactile hallucinations, as well as floating sensations and out-of-body experiences (Hufford, 1982). These various sensory experiences have been referred to collectively as hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences (HHEs). People frequently try, unsuccessfully, to cry out. After seconds or minutes one feels suddenly released from the paralysis, but may be left with a lingering anxiety. Extreme effort to move may even produce phantom movements in which there is proprioceptive feedback of movement that conflicts with visual disconfirmation of any movement of the limb. People may also report severe pain in the limbs when trying to move them. Several recent surveys including our own suggest that between 25-30% of the population reports that they have experienced at least a mild form of sleep paralysis at least once and about 20-30% of these have had the experience on several occasions.

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html

Your body can play tricks on you , the mind is even worse...we are just starting to understand the power of our own minds.