Hypnic Jerks

Anyone else do that thing where an arm or leg or sometimes even your whole body will do a spasm while you are either asleep or falling to sleep?

I once comically knocked a glass of water across the room doing this.

Mine are often related to a dream e.g. in my dream I trip and my leg will spasm.

I also sometimes ‘hear’ a loud bang in my head that will wake me up and this is apparently part of the same phenomenon.

missus kneed me in the balls with one of these on saturday.

I get them to, might kick her back and say it was one

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that’s her story etc.

Yeh get these fairly frequently, only legs really though. Mostly when falling asleep. Have the occassional one while asleep that will wake me up but thats not so frequent.

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I always get them if i fall asleep on a beach/by a pool. Maybe being outside encourages them - suppose i think I’m in a tree more easily in those conditions (even though i dont think it really is a legacy response to falling out of a tree as apes or whatever but i like that story regardless)

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Who keeps that list of good potential band names?

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All the time - and more recently I have them when I’m not even falling asleep, just randomly while lying down in bed.

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Apparently this Dali painting is about the falling asleep and suddenly feeling like you are falling feeling

The sticks are to stop that happening or something

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All the time - worse when very tired or hungover. Often manifests as a feeling of falling too, which is very unpleasant.

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Same here, probably not a good sign for my stress levels.

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Was it on here that I read recently that it’s the other way round from this – that you spasm then your brain justifies it by introducing a fall into your dream?

How can they know anyway, dream study is an absolute racket.

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yeah, once a week or so.

Also used to get sleep paralysis, fucking terrifying.

and now, here’s The Hypnic Jerks

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that’s interesting as I often have falling dreams - main dreams actually - but I hadn’t really connected them. always wake up at the point of impact and the feeling is very much that stomach churning you’d get on a roller coaster or whatever.

yikes. did you have to see a specialist about this or did they just pass eventually?

They just stopped thankfully, it was during the last couple of years of university which was 7-8 years ago so it could have been stress-induced.

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Often but it’s always that I’m stacking it whilst walking along, which I do when I’m awake a lot anyway.

Sleep related, I record my sleep talking and the other night I woke my husband up about 2am by saying “you’re not gonna be sleeping all night are you?” And he’s like “what?” And I’m like “you’re not just gonna sleep all night are you?!” And he’s like “yeah” and I said “weirdo” and went back off :zzz:

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always called this “restless leg”

best example i ever had was a dream of scoring the winning goal in the Champions League or something, must have made me kick my bedside shelf (was in a bunk bed, so it was very nearby), and my alarm clock (see below) bounced off and hit me full in the face, waking me up

very disconcerting to dream about football then be woken up by a football!

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love it

yes most nights. I spill a glass of water on my bedside table from this about twice a month. really horrible going from basically asleep to panicking about what electronics and important documents might be soaked.

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