5 Body Spasms
When you fall asleep, your body jerks. Every time. As described above, we are usually paralyzed while asleep to protect us from acting out our dreams. However, there is a gray area, a moment when the body is not physically asleep but not awake, either.This is when most people experience what is called a hypnic jerk.
It is believed to be a delay between the brain sending the message to relax and the nervous system getting this message.We do not fully understand how this reaction came to be. Some scientists suggest that it is left over from a primitive reflex that misinterprets falling asleep to falling out of a tree.
Others say that it is just the nerves “misfiring” as they are turned off.Whatever the cause, hypnic jerks are one of the few reminders of the complex processes that occur while asleep that we can actually observe while awake. This is because a hypnic jerk upon falling asleep can be so violent in some cases that it actually wakes a person back up.
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