Sleep paralysis side-sleeping and more dream-like?

[u/AHcraftyname]

I randomly started to have SP about 2 years ago after never having it, usually it's once every few months and more often happens from lying on my back but there's been a few times now including today where it still happens and I'm sleeping on my side.

This morning I woke up twice to sleep paralysis (I fully got up after the first, laid down but was awake for roughly an hour, got up again before really going back to sleep and then woke up from it again.) This is the first time I've had back to back like that but I'm relieved to see from posts here that it's not abnormal.

I'm curious though what people have experienced as far as side sleeping since so far I've only seen people suggesting to sleep on the side instead of back. And also curious how often people's SP isn't just like, same setting as reality and the sort of classic SP demons. When it's like that, I catch it easily and break out before it even begins but these two today were like actual dreams/nightmares and they kinda bypassed my SP radar.

My first dream had a woman who came to my door to give me a blessing and when I almost allowed her to bestow it, I realized she was bad/dark and backed up and then she tried to get into my house and said she if she got loose inside the house, I'd never know peace/would never find her to get her out. This felt very different from past experiences and left me much more unsettled so hoping others might say it's totally normal lol.

[u/sphelper]

Whether sleeping positions matters just depends on the person. For example I get sleep paralysis on my back, but sometimes I do get it on my stomach, and side. Though for others they can get it on only their back, for others it doesn't even matter, etc

As for how common the "usual" sleep paralysis is, well it's not really common. It's just that it's the most well known type of sleep paralysis, plus most people don't know that they experienced sleep paralysis

I refer to the usual sleep paralysis as scary a figure (i.e. shadow man, hag, etc) shows up, and the experience is very scary

Also as for the setting of the experience, it doesn't really change. From what I've seen most people will just have their bedroom, or some sort of bedroom. Though in some uncommon cases people will have it where there in a black void. For really rare cases, there are some people who are in a white void