I have fallen off a bed once or twice, but I have also slept on docks and high spaces without any problems. I know I move a lot in my sleep, so how does my body know when to stop moving in a certain direction?
In: Biology
It isn’t that it knows not to move a certain direction, it is that it is literally unable. Your brain stops talking to your voluntary muscles when you fall asleep in a term called “sleep paralysis”. In a deep sleep, your brain is racing but sleep paralysis keeps all that activity in the brain.
You wake at the end of every sleep cycle, often move a little bit, and then go back to sleep. You forget it like you forget your dreams. If you work on remembering dream or these wakings, you will be there during these wakings and can keep track of each time you move during the night.
Also, sleep paralysis is different from REM atonia. REM atonia happens to stop you from moving while you are asleep and stops you from moving while asleep (it happens to every single person every night) . Sleep paralysis is when this messes up slightly and you wake up, but cannot move, because the chemical is still in your body. It is often accompanied by hallucinations and other dreamlike happenings, even though you can see your actual bedroom, you can see/hear/feel other things as well, and this is one of the things people think is responsible for people thinking that they have had alien abductions.
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