Question: How do we experience sleep paralysis?

Matthew Lee answered on 16 Jun 2017:

No idea at all! I just had to google it and it looks as though it is caused when you have REM sleep while you are awake, which sounds super weird! But one of the ideas is that the sleep paralysis stops you from acting out your dreams and hurting yourself, which makes a lot of sense. The NHS has some good info on it actually http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sleep-paralysis/Pages/Introduction.aspx#causes