ELIF: When you get the “falling feeling” of hypnagogic jerks when falling asleep, how does the body know what falling from a great height feels like if we’ve never done it?

Question

I know the human body understands what it’s like to fall from a small height, or down a flight or stairs, but one could argue that those two things are different.

In: Biology

Answer 1

(I got pushed off the swing I was on when I was seven, and I fell about 20 metres away).
in my early teens, I had extreme insomnia, and the prescribed melatonin had barely any effects. so I deviced this technique where I would imagine i was climbing the ladder that would take me to the top of the building it was connected to.
I would feel each ring under my feet, and the metal under chipped paint on my hands, so that would bore me and I’d fall asleep.

a few years later I started becoming really sad, and slept all the time. I got nightmares every night when I was failing off the I had been climbing and I woke up suddenly because of the falling feeling. and tbh it was just like the time I fell off the swing mid flight.