Sleep paralysis has no cure.
It has a pattern.
One tap on the Lock Screen widget opens the log. You mark the time, the position, the fear, and what you saw and tried. A few weeks in, the pattern shows.
Available now on the App Store.
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calling it out
The advice? Sleep more. Change position. See a specialist. None of it told you what your own episodes were doing.
7.6% lifetime prevalence in the general population. You are not a rare case. Sharpless & Barber 2011, Sleep Medicine Reviews.
"Get 7 to 8 hours of sleep nightly." It be easier if I wasn't being woken up in the middle of the night with sleep paralysis.
YouTube · 4.3K likes
"Don't sleep on your back." Pretty much every other doctor: "Sleep on your back, it is good for your posture."
YouTube · 10K likes
I started having sleep paralysis even when on sideways or front-facing the bed. It's like adapting.
YouTube commenter
See the pattern your episodes follow.
Sleep paralysis is REM atonia that outlasts the dream. There's no preventing that. So the moment you wake, you get the episode down before it fades. One entry is a bad night on record. A few weeks of them, and the random starts to line up. It's the only record of your sleep paralysis that exists, because no one else is keeping one.
The record no one else is keeping
Tap the Lock Screen widget the moment you wake and the log opens. You tap chips for the time, the position, the fear, what you saw, and what you tried, then go back to sleep. Entry by entry, the patterns surface: when episodes cluster, which positions line up with what you saw.
The pattern you couldn't see one night at a time
It surfaces the perceptions that keep recurring and the sleep position your worst nights share, and it tracks your average fear from one entry to the next. The app calls this observational, not a diagnosis. It's your own data in one place for the first time.
When you're ready, the practice
Four guided sessions. Each runs over a binaural bed tuned to what the session is for: theta to settle and focus, delta to carry you to sleep.
Grounding
For when you're anxious or overwhelmed. Extended-exhale breathing settles the nervous system, over a theta binaural bed. The safety tool the rest is built on.
Stillness
Quiet the mind. Breath observation and open awareness, over a theta binaural bed. Plain mental training for staying with relaxed attention.
Body Scan
A guided scan through the body. One of the better ways to calm the nervous system after an episode and rebuild body awareness. Theta binaural underneath.
Lucid Dream
Set the intention, close your eyes, and delta binaural audio carries you toward sleep.
Binaural: a moderate average effect across 22 studies (Garcia-Argibay 2019); delta-range beats roughly halved time-to-sleep in one trial (Lee 2024). Breathing: Gerritsen & Band 2018; Balban et al. 2023.
"I realized the less I fought it, the easier it was to fall asleep... my conscious turns on and I say to myself, it's okay, this happens, we just need to sleep, it'll be okay. This took practice."
Reddit commenter, 29, sleep paralysis since age 8
The state you keep waking up in is the one lucid dreamers train for
Your mind is awake while your body is in REM sleep. That's both sleep paralysis and a lucid dream. The difference is fear. Once you've logged enough episodes to see they follow a shape, the fear has less to hold onto, and what's left is a state you can actually look around in.
People who've had sleep paralysis for years figure this out on their own. They stop fighting it and the fear fades. Some of them start crossing into lucid dreaming. In community forums, the ones who get there describe it the same way: "a few times," "sometimes," no technique. It took them years.
Mainieri et al. 2023 on the shared sleep-paralysis and lucid-dreaming mechanisms. Stumbrys et al. 2020 (n=528) on dream recall as the strongest predictor of lucid induction success. Umbral does not promise lucidity.
Lucid Dream sessions
For when you wake at 3am and want to fall back asleep with intention instead of dread. One tap from the Lock Screen starts it. Spoken affirmations set the lucid dreaming intention while delta binaural audio settles you back to sleep.
A dream journal you speak
Wake from a dream, open the recorder in one tap, and say it eyes-closed. The screen stays dim, so a bright phone never wakes you all the way up. It transcribes as you talk, saves even if you drift back off, and is waiting to read in the morning. The more dreams you keep, the more recall you build.
Common questions
Is there an app for sleep paralysis?
Yes. Umbral is a free iOS app built for people who experience sleep paralysis. It centers on structured SP episode tracking that reveals patterns over weeks, with a voice-first journal you open from a Lock Screen widget at 3am, and four guided session types with binaural audio (Grounding, Stillness, Body Scan, and Lucid Dream) for when you want them.
What does Umbral do?
Umbral is built around logging your sleep paralysis episodes. A Lock Screen widget opens the log the moment you wake, where you mark position, time, what you perceived, and fear level, and the patterns surface over weeks. A separate voice journal captures dreams: you speak them eyes-closed on a dimmed screen, so a bright screen never wakes you all the way up, and it transcribes itself while you fall back asleep. For when you want them, grounding sessions train the acute breathing response through vagus nerve activation, stillness sessions lower your baseline stress, body scan rebuilds body awareness after episodes, and lucid dream sessions use delta binaural audio and spoken affirmations for people ready to work with the SP state instead of just surviving it.
Can you track sleep paralysis episodes?
Yes. A Lock Screen widget opens the log the moment you wake, and you mark the time, sleep position, fear level, what you perceived, and what you tried. Over a few weeks the entries reveal patterns, like which nights episodes cluster and which sleep positions line up with which perceptions. It is the one record of your own sleep paralysis, because no one else is keeping one.
Is Umbral free?
Umbral is free to download, with no account required and no signup wall. You can start logging episodes and using the guided sessions the moment you install it.
Does grounding help with sleep paralysis?
Extended exhale breathing activates the vagus nerve, shifting the nervous system from fight-or-flight to rest-and-recover. Practiced daily between episodes, this trained response becomes available during episodes at 3am. Research by Baland Jalal on Meditation-Relaxation therapy for sleep paralysis found that cognitive reappraisal combined with relaxation techniques reduces both distress and episode frequency.
Log the next episode the moment you wake.
Open the log in one tap the moment you wake, mark what you saw and what you tried, and go back to sleep. The patterns build over the following weeks. Grounding and lucid dream sessions when you want them.
No credit card. No signup wall.
Your journal stays yours. No account required.