Paulius's Blog

The Twin Bodies Technique and famous sleep paralysis. These techniques are completely harmless and have nothing scary except maybe wrongly chosen name.
While focusing on body while falling asleep, lucid dreaming practitioner can sometimes notice some strange distortions, shaking or even paralysis. Although all of these circumstances can seem frightening at first, they are 100% safe. These strange states happen during REM sleep when all the voluntary muscles in human body are almost fully paralyzed. Only muscles used for breathing purposes and those around eyes that regulate eye movements are free to move during this state.
We can say that REM is psychophysiological state which purpose is to coordinate different brain systems. For example, independent neural systems cause muscular paralysis, blockade of sensory input, and corticalactivation. When these three systems are working together, your brain will be in the state of REM sleep and youwill probably be dreaming.
So, when does sleep paralysis really occur? Well, sometimes the REM systems don't turn on or off at the same time and it can happen and you could be, for example, awaken from REM sleep but your nervous system didn't register that awakening and you can't move your body even you know for sure that you are awake. That is the most common example of sleep paralysis. People usually have panic reactions during states like this and are completely unaware that such reactions are counterproductive; they stimulate emotional ares of the brain and cause the REM state to persist. If you are interested in lucid dreaming you can use sleep paralysis as a tool when it occurs to you. You can look at it as if you have one foot in the dream state and the other in the waking state. To become lucid in this case means to step over with both feet and enter the land of dreams and helping tool offered is The Twin Bodies Technique.
1. Relax completely
After you awake from a dream, lie on your back with eyes closed. Feel the muscular tension in your body and become aware of it. Tighten your face and head and then relax them. Repeat these steps for your neck, back arms and legs. Feel all the tensions disappear from every part of your body and breathe slowly. Concentrate on your breathing for a while. When enjoyment of being completely relaxed fills you, affirm your intention to consciously enter the dream state.
2. Focus on your body
Keep your eyes closed and slowly start to observe your thoughts. Slow your thinking down and keep breathing slowly. After couple of minutes try to focus your attention on your physical body. As always in lucid dreaming techniques, help yourself by using 61-point exercise to pass your attention from one body part to another noticing sensations at each point. Watch for signs of strange sensations, vibrations, and distortions of your body image since they are signs for you that lead to REM sleep paralysis. At one point you will experience sensations like those described above which will rapidly develop into complete paralysis of your physical body. When you get to this stage you are ready to "leave" your body and to enter the dream world.
3. Enter the dream
You learned about sleep paralysis and now you can recognize that state so you are ready to leave your physical body and go visit your dreams. Imagine that your have two bodies which are like twins, only, one is real and physical while the other one is magical and dream body. Let your thoughts move from phsycal to dream body, let yourself inhabit that spiritual body. It will feel like you are floating with it, so, allow yourself flying around, don't think about anythnig just observe and follow your dream body commands. You are in a lucid dream now.