Exploration into bizarre yet frequent occurences

I am going to borrow a little of Flaff's philosophy - there's too much personal stuff going round, to add my blogbits to it. Besides, personal details do not quite fit with the whole no-name blogging thing. So, these shall be kept few and far between. Does not mean one shall not write about serious stuff - one does not compete with the Flaffmeister.

So, to today's topic -

Hypnic jerks.

Which, for the unitiated into the jargon of medical mafia, is that point of time when you're just falling asleep, or are asleep, and are dreaming that you're about to fall into a giant pot of honeyed jello after being thrown off the back of a giant flying spider from 6,000 miles in the air - and then wake up with a gasp, shout, sudden random jerking of limbs.

You don't dream that? How odd.

Now, interesting theories abound.

Some suggest that when it happens just while you're falling to sleep through exhaustion, it's because the brain interprets the sudden relaxing of muscles as an indicator that you are actually falling, and so 'jerks' you awake.

Some suggest that when it happens while you're in mid-sleep, then it's usually because you went to sleep stressed, or don't sleep well. And the brain (poor, confused thing) can't figure out whether to relax muscles, or to be wound up. And so decides to give you a good prod, and asks you to please make up your mind, because some of us like clarity of purpose ok? Sheeeeesh!

And some suggest it's caused by the return of the soul into the body, from its peregrinations into the astral plane. The whole "I am now free of my mortal flesh, and will be one with the Aatman, and roam the universe, and ......naaaaaaaaaaaahin, don't take me back, nonononononono....jerk!" experience.

I think I'm going to go with being a regular transcendentalist. It's by far the coolest explanation. (I do wish the damn things would stop though. The last one made my pulse run up to 130)