Baland Jalal is currently one of the most active researchers of the sleep paralysis phenomenon. A Research Fellow at Harvard University, he received his Ph.D. from Cambridge and is the author of about 50 scientific articles. Expertscape recognized him as the world’s best sleep paralysis expert in the last 10 years. We have repeatedly covered his articles on the cultural influence of myths on the fears of SP, as well as the meditation-relaxation therapy he developed.
In January 2021, an interview with the expert was published, in which he answers the most popular questions about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Jalal loves to share a personal experience from one of his first self-experimentations. On one of the occasions when he himself experienced sleep paralysis and an out-of-body sensation, instead of getting scared, he decided to hide a piece of paper in the pocket of his “astral body” pants and see if it was still there when he woke up. Of course, the paper was nowhere to be found. The researcher jokes about the uniqueness of his work, which allows him and his colleagues to perform such improbable experiments in their dreams.
In the interview, Jalal called sleep paralysis “the window between REM and wakefulness.” In this state, we are affected by the physiology of REM sleep, for example, muscular paralysis, yet at the same time, our wakefulness centers gradually become more active. “And so, when you go in and out of REM, that’s where you have a lot of interesting things going on.” In this state, the researcher explains the structures that are responsible for our self-perception are disabled – that is why we can see ourselves from the outside and have out-of-body experiences.
When asked why people see ghosts during episodes of sleep paralysis, the researcher answered that the ghost is “your own projected body image.” “A theory that we proposed is that during sleep paralysis, you’re sending all these commands from your motor cortex, responsible for movement saying “move”. And since there’s no feedback coming back from your limbs – your body – telling your brain how to create a body image, your sense of self gets distorted. More typically you see this intruder-like creature…You create a scenario of fear around the projected self,” – the scientist explains. Get rid of your panic and do not try to control your movements – this is the main secret to fighting sleep paralysis.
Thankfully for us, Jalal’s rational mind prevailed over his projected fears, and we can now eagerly await more discoveries from this singular expert!
The interview was published in The Naked Scientists in January 2021.
