Any had this experience? it deals with sleeping
 

Sometimes when I'm half asleep, I'll start dreaming that I'm walking along then all of a sudden I trip....

I jumped like I'm falling off the bed, My feet actually move. It's a very freaky feeling :eek:

oh god yeah. it's so scary. like, i'll just be laying down and fantasizing, and then i fall, and it feels like i fall, or try to balance myself.

I don't remember if it's like that. But sometimes when I sleep, I get to a certain part of a dream, then my whole body, mostly my feet or legs just jerks, then I wake up. It happens often too, and I dont think its nightmare related.....

I get this sometimes when I'm in the middle of a boring lecture. My whole body sort of shakes as though I'm trying to stop myself from falling. Very wierd.

Freaky feeling! Doesn't it mean that you start dreaming before your brain has time to put your motor skills on standby for the night? Usually happens when I'm dozing at my desk or sleeping on the couch. Odd

These are called Hypnagogic Jerks and are completely normal. So normal, in fact, that many hypotheses state that it is a natural thing that occurs when the body is shutting down to go to sleep.

They are also sometimes called Myoclonic Jerks...I know there is a difference between the two, as they are not exactly the same.

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/neuro/...es/31231a.html
http://www.crhsc.umontreal.ca/dreams/TNmodeling.htm
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...nagogic%20jerk
http://www.soundmedicine.iu.edu/arch...eepTwitch.html

What I find interesting is the brain's ability to fabricate an entire dream *and* sense of time lapse in the split second when this jerk occurs. For instance, the falling off a cliff dream that often goes hand-in-hand with these experiences.

I've had these many a time
thanks for clearing up what it is tehblaed

very nice links tehblaed. :)

haha i hate that feeling. i always have ones where im going down some steps and fall D:

I can't count on one hand the amount of times this has happened. My first reaction is "Where am I?" and the next, "What the hell just happened?"

The links were educational, thank you.

I dont know about that scenario. But i have dreamt that i was falling from the sky, and right before i hit the ground, i shake myself awake. If i did hit the ground and was still asleep, i wonder what would happen.

Oh yeah...happens all the time. I always feel as though I am falling, maybe through ice, or a bridge or whatever it may be. My legs and arms literally jolt up and it feels soooo real.

Interesting information! I've had these many times during my life, but when I was younger, they seemed more drastic- Falling off buildings, cliffs and stuff. Lately it seems all I do is trip..

It happened to me a lot....didn't know so many people experience it too.

I hated it when I was trying to sleep in class.

what sucks is when that happens, and instead, you roll off your bed onto the floor into a pile of what ever stuff happens to be on your floor ( in my case, a bunch of computer parts, ow)

No what sucks is when you wake your Dad up during one of these and the jerky movement of his hands hits you in the mouth.

I've had that feeling before - always in class listening to a boring lecture. The weirdest dream I've ever had almost all my teeth were loose and I could feel them breaking out of my mouth and I just kept spitting them in my hand. It didnt hurt but all my teeth were coming out, sorta like when you loose all your baby teeth at once.

Yea thanks for the info see i kinda knew it was some thing like that when i have just fallen asleep barely i will have the same dream about walking up steps and then tripping and waking up due to my body jerking it feels so real the funny part is when i do this my boyfriend laying next to me will do it right after i do lol either hes faking or making fun of me thats what i think lol

I've been discussing this topic with some of my friends lately -- now I have a name for it! I always get the feeling that I'm jumping over something, but I wake up right afterwards and I try to land. It's a very strange sensation.

yes, i used to have frequent dreams of sliding off something- I've never cared for steep declines, and that was a part of my dreams for a while, but none recently. Just means we're afriad of "slipping" and "tripping" in a certain situation or life in general. We're too cautious or worried.

Maybe that's 'cause he was already awake... :)

yeah i get that....right as i'm falling asleep like the clumsy dumbass i am i trip on the sidewalk (in my head) and my whole body twitches. lol

It's caused by the relaxation of your muscles as you drift off to sleep (about the only worthwhile info i got out of highschool health class). but, I also hear a gunshot as i drift off...hmmmm:hmm:

I jerk myself awake a lot too, but I have another question for you guys.

Sometimes when I'm sleeping I'll dream that I'm pissing. I feel the pissing sensation and everything, then I wake up scared to death that I pissed my bed. It's never happened (yet) but it always feels real at the time. It freaks me out too. Does this happen to anyone else? Or am I just weird? It's okay, you can be honest.

damn-someone else has those??? Mine, i'm always in an odd place out where i can be seen but trying hard to hide... You're right- it is a very surreal feeling. One thing I had heard a very long time ago-if you want a repeating dream to end, tell it to someone, so here's hoping you stop pissing :lol:

Wow the piss dream yup yup!!
I have those I wake up hoping i did not pee the bed i feel the bed then go to the bath room and once when I had that dream I really did pee I woke up and tryed to stop it but i couldnt. It pissed me off so bad the dream was so real I was like in high school for some reason and I went to the bath room I could feel the white hard toilet and every thing I was like talking to one of my old high school friends while i was peeing.
That has to be the worse thing that has ever happened to me thank god my hubby was at work hehe so I could change the sheets.
I hate the feeling that you forget to breath so you wake up and gasp for air but then that could be just me I dont know if any one else does that.

I get that trip-dream-leg jerk thing all the time. Once a month I'd say? It's irritating when I went to get some sleep.

I get it fairly often.. someone once told me it was soemthing like:

"your subconcious trying to keep you from falling asleep for whatever reason". It happens right at the transition from conciousness to unconciousness.

Dunno if that's completely true (and I have clicked on the links yet).. but it sounded good to me :)

Yeah. I'll almost be asleep, and then my leg will jump a mile and my heart wil start racing. If you get muscle spasms while awake, eg - in lectures, you're either very tired or stressed.

My dad says that it's an instinct from when we evolved from monkeys. He says that when you're in a tree asleep (as a monkey), that you would wake up in a start to make sure that you didn't fall out of the tree. Also, to sleep light in case of preadators. It is something that has been implanted in our subconscious for a long time. And...it happens to every single person on the planet.

On another note, those pissing dreams always wake me up, and I obviously have to piss. One time tho, in my dream, I found a bathroom. All I know after that is my couch smelled like piss for like 2 weeks. It was all cold and wet too. Ugh. I did throw it away after that.

Yep, I get those all the time when I'm falling asleep, or drifitng off in class. It happens enough that I always just assumed it was normal. :)

I hate it when that happens and I'm falling asleep in class. No one would have ever noticed me drifting off until I jerked around in my chair! :mad: I HATE IT! :mad:

'cause yer a munkey

:lol: Your theory is pretty interesting.

I have dreams where I have to go pee really really bad, and then I finally find a bathroom, and I get to go pee, and while I'm peeing I wake up and think, "OH SHIT, I FOUND THE BATHROOM IN MY DREAM" and then I realize, whewwww, I didn't pee the bed, but of course I have to pee like VERY badly and I get up and run to the bathroom.


Also, I have the twitch stuff, but rarely do I have dreams that go with them. I frequently twitch while going to sleep though. Used to freak my wife out when we first got married. It doesn't often wake me up I don't think. The really bad ones that do wake me up are often like a full body convulsion - I'll just spasm from head to toe really quickly and make like a half crunch and then back to straight out position extremely quickly. Those wake me up. At least enough to stir and go back to sleep.

...sleeping is weird stuff.. and I just love it. Of course, I don't get enough of it though =)

Awesome,Awesome links.thank you muchly.

funny how everyone thinks it is only them.

I thought i was the only one who's legs spasming woke them up

Wow, I'm super late on this thread but I will say that I experience the exact same thing as described by the author of this post. Also, my girlfriend often times kicks and convulses when entering sleep and doesn't usually wake up from it.

when i get too high and watch a movie sometimes it happens, i just jerk out of sleep

but when i was a kid i used to kick the shit out of anyone that was sharing my bed, i couldnt help it

other than that, when i have intense dreams, especially greatly relating to reality, i experience the same as the author

I get the falling dream sometimes, where im on a bed (totaly diffrent from my own) and im falling through space, and im haveing a blast (rollercoaster type excitement stress LOL) and then it hits the ground, asphalt. and my whole body jerks and i kinda like bounce on the bed in real life and wake up, its cool lol. its fun, wierd but fun

I always wondered the same thing about this sleep-jerking stuff until I took psychology freshman year of college. It was then I found out your body actually paralyzes itself during the sleep process, and that sometimes if your brain overrides your need for sleep it will suddenly purge your muscles of the paralysis chemicals, causing the jerking reaction. I'm sure that's pretty much what all of those links said, but I'm a lazy American and I didn't feel like reading up on it more than I already have.

thats always kinda freaky.

i don't think i've ever tripped in my dreams, but i've fallen from a few cliffs or out of an airplane before and i always think to myself about halfway down, "wow, this sucks... i don't want to die like this, time to wake up..."

the weirdest thing i've felt was when i got shot in the stomach in one of my dreams... i woke up and my stomach really really hurt and i could've sworn i felt blood gushing out. it freaked the hell out of me.

I have a similar occurance, but the most notable one was when I thought a football was about to smash my face in...that wo0ke me from my half slumber

Once I was taking a nap on the bed while a friend was reading a book beside me. In my dream I was standing up in a bus and the bus hit something. I flew to the window and woke up" My friend was all freaked out cause the whole bed had moved.

This happens to me all of the time. One time I was in the hospital during one of my pancreatitis attacks and I was on morphine and I was sleeping. I was dreaming about crossing the mississippi river and all of the sudden the bridge stopped and my car was falling off the bridge and my whole body jerked. It scared the piss out of me.
Sometimes when my cats are sleeping I notice that they start to move there legs and I wonder if they are dreaming about chasing something.

Yea I do that shit all the time scares the hell out of me

I'm glad I'm not the only one with a cat who "dream runs". Mine also will start to purr and meow in his sleep.

On nights that I know I'm not going to sleep well I do the jerking awake thing. It just makes me angry because then I can't go back to sleep!

i have these often. in class, il fall half asleep, and suddenly freak out and make noise(kind of snort, and have a small thrash)to the amusment of my classmates. and teacher for that matter

I find that these dreams usually occur when I've had a particularly stressful or exciting day and haven't completely wound down before going to sleep.

Yes I hate it when that happens

I can always tell when my girlfriend is falling asleep because she jumps like 3 inches off the bed right before she dozes off.

I think we all have that falling off or tripping on something or nothing sometimes and then jerking your body. It is pretty wierd.

My puppy, he's a shih-tzu, starts moving and shaking while he's dreaming and then starts making little barking noises. Pretty funny stuff.

Does anyone have dreams where they die?

I have those a lot. I've heard them (I don't really know who "them" are) say that if you die in a dream you die for real. I'm hear to say that isn't true. I also dream in color.

I also have dreams where I am fighting satan or some demons and then have those jerky reactions and wake myself up.

my ex girlfriend is a psych major and we talked about this. her professor claimed that it is an ingrained reflex from when we were still tree-dwellers.

monkeys which didn't have the reflex to wake up like that would fall from the trees and die. (darwinism)

i'm not saying whether or not i believe it, because it seems kind of strange taht that reflex would be kicking in when you're in bed...

Yes I've had the 'jerk' reflex when falling asleep. Usually I'm running on some roadway (for an unknown reason) and running at 0.0002 mph (as if I'm running through molasses) and I trip. I wake up before I do a faceplant with a big jolt.


I've only died once or twice in my dreams. A variation to this is that if you are falling and 'hit bottom', you die in real life.

99% of the time I 'catch' myself before I fall and jolt awake. One time, however, I remember falling out a window (I think it's rather funny now) and I fall to my death. What an awkward experience.

i'm not usually falling in my dream when i hav the fall syndrome even......

it's almost as if i'm being plucked like a rubber band