4. Seeing an assortment of colors when your eyes are closed
Have you ever closed your eyes and pressed your palms against your eyes just a little to see the colors on the “insides” of your eyes happen? While nobody should do this too much, it illustrates one of the other symptoms that you are likely to experience during sleep paralysis.
When sleep paralysis happens, the brain is trying to induce a sleep state while the rest of the body tries to adapt to the idea of being asleep: This causes a conflict in whether the brain realizes that it’s awake or asleep – and it leads to experiencing things that make it feel like you’re in a dream state.
One of the first things you might experience after tingling, numbness and the characteristic invisible weight of sleep paralysis is seeing “colors” on the backs of your eyes, almost as though you were pressing into your eyes with your hands even though you aren’t.
It’s your body trying to switch over into “sleep mode” and other symptoms like an increased heart rate are likely to happen with it.