Kena Tindih

I was hearing a friend describing seriously regarding her experienced on 'kena tindih', a common condition where people said that a ghost was lying or whatever it do on top of you making you unable to move and breathlessness.

I am hearing this kind of story since i was a kid, from almost everyone, and even myself experienced it occasionally and i do know what does it feel and how distress you are during that attack.

For many years, I was convinced that this is caused by syaitan, ghost and demons. Reciting koranic verses will chase those thing away and will make the problem disappear.

Honestly, I want to ask everyone who read this (muslim), how many times when you recite koranic verses and the problem immediately go away?

It would not. Until you are totally panicked and after a few minutes then it will go away. Why? Do i not believed in the power of koranic verses? No. I do believe. But this is the problem.

KENA TINDIH DOES NOT EXIST OR IT DOES NOT ASSOCIATE WITH DEVIL, GHOST OR DEMONS!

This condition is called sleep paralysis. I've discussed this with my psychiatrist during my psychiatric posting. I was pretty shock about the truth. And i feel awkward looking at the people (especially who are learning medicine) believing in such thing (ghost and demons). Not to say that ghost do not exist, but pretty sure they do not cause sleep paralysis.

Forget Kena tindih, let's have a glance of Sleep paralysis. \

Everything i've said here would be from what i understand after studying physiology. So if you are really believers and want to learn more, try and search sleep paralysis and learn about it yourselves.

1. It happen when you are having REM (random eye movement) phase of sleep. This is when you are really in deep sleep, and you would be having muscle atonia, simply said, paralysis. If this does not happen, then you would be moving around when you are sleeping. Sleep occur in cycles, so this REM does not persist throught out the night. Does not matter, just remember that when you are in REM, there will be muscle atonia.

2. What happen is, during REM, suddenly your brain awake but, your muscle is still paralysis. This would involved more complex mechanism involving brain stem function, motor cortex, so complicated until even no one is certain which part of brain are involved. However, to understand it, just remember that your muscle is paralyse but you are awake.

3. During this time, you would be aware that you are paralyse, unable to move. At this time, your brain will become stimulate. It is like a false alarm. Your brain start to realize that the body is paralyse. At this point, there will be panic symptoms. You will feel breathless, heart rate increase, feeling afraid and scared and it also associated with hallucination (commonly audiotory hallucination, that is why you usually will hear something strange and weird which you would believe that it is ghost or something). Sometimes visual hallucination also occur, this will make you see 'ghost' / something that is not there.

Everything happen because of your brain false stimulation. During this period, your brain will become stimulated, electrical impulse will be shot everywhere in the brain.

4. What you must do is to direct this electrical impulse to be beneficial to make your body move. And this is where your big toe plays and important roles. Why? Because it is the part of the body which is the farthest from the brain, far away from the brain. Guiding your brain to send impulse to big toe, will cause the impulse to move along all level of your spinal cord and this will cause al muscle to be stimulated and wollaaaa.... you are not paralyse anymore.

It was so interesting to understand this condition. It is so beautifully crafted by Gods. How Gods created our brain and muscle and nerve and by understanding this problem, you would understand how beautiful god creates our body.

sadly...

Most people believe in ghost more than gods. Believe that this is the deed of a ghost, hantu raya. So sad if someone who learn medicine (the knowledge from God), but believe more on ghost and demons.

So, everytime you all 'kena himpit', don't be afraid. The 'ghost' would not kill you. In fact, there is no ghost around. It is just your brain who are failed to stimulate your muscle during REM phase of sleep which supposely you are in deep sleep.

Brain said " You are in deep sleep, not supposed to wake up" but you did...

p/s: I was curious about this problem since in secondary school. What happen is... I was having multiple sleep paralysis within a month. I was really believe in ghost and demons at that times but after reciting multiple times koranic verse, it does not go away. So when i enter medicine, i understand why Koranic verses does not have effect on this. Because there is nothing to be chase away except yourself who are panic on that time.

p/s: I do believe in ghost, i've seen it twice. But i do not believe ghost cause sleep paralysis. There is some thing that ghost may be involved, but i was positive that this one does not.