In Turkey, what we commonly call “ağırlık basması” (literally “a weight pressing down on you”) often refers to experiences that occur during sleep or at the boundary between sleep and wakefulness. People describe a sensation of intense pressure on the chest, an inability to move, and vivid perceptions such as seeing figures in the room, feeling as if they are flying, or observing themselves from outside their own body. I have personally experienced this kind of “weight pressing” in dreams, and I know it as a psychological and psychiatric phenomenon that can respond to simple medication, similar to a mild psychotropic drug rather than a strong sedative.

From a clinical perspective, these experiences resemble sleep paralysis and REM sleep intrusion, where the brain is partly awake but the body remains in the muscle-atonia state of REM sleep, leading to a mismatch between conscious awareness and bodily immobility.[1][2][3][4][5][6] This mismatch can generate intense feelings of suffocation or pressure, along with complex visual and kinesthetic hallucinations (such as flying or seeing oneself from another person’s point of view).

A comparable sense of “heaviness” may also appear during near-drowning or other life-threatening situations, where real physiological factors—shortness of breath, hypoxia, cardiovascular strain—produce chest tightness and a feeling of being pressed down.[7][8][9][10][11] In such moments, the brain’s stress and oxygen deprivation can distort time and perception, sometimes creating scenes that people later describe as “my whole life passed before my eyes.” However, many individuals, including athletes such as swimmers and skiers in open environments, may confuse REM-related “weight-pressing” experiences or sleep-disordered breathing (for example, obstructive sleep apnea) with a true near-death life review. In these cases, what is lived and remembered is very real at the subjective level, but it does not necessarily mean that a genuine, medically defined near-death state was reached.[12][13][14][15][16]

Bu metni makalene kültürel-psikiyatrik bir alt bölüm olarak doğrudan kullanabilirsin; istersen bir sonraki adımda buna uygun bir alt başlık da önerebilirim (örneğin “Weight-Pressing Experiences (‘Ağırlık Basması’) in Turkish Culture and Their Relation to Sleep Paralysis and NDEs”).