Paralysed, but in my dreams I can run again

Paddy Slattery, 40, is a single film director from Offaly in Ireland.

PADDY SAYS: When I was 17, I sustained a spinal injury in a car crash and suddenly found myself facing a lifetime of paralysis.

Once I began to get over the shock and trauma, all I wanted was to defy the medics and walk again. I spent a year in hospital, but despite my best efforts I left in a wheelchair.

According to the world around me, I was no longer considered capable of achieving much. But I refused to believe it.

I began reading everything I could online about the power of the mind and spiritual healing.

I refer to this as the moment my body switched off and my imagination switched on. I wanted to walk so badly that I spent countless hours lying in bed with my eyes closed in a meditative state, imagining every single detail of what it would take to go for a run around the village where I lived, in the hope that this exercise would heal my damaged spinal cord.

My memory provided the geographic detail and my imagination provided the emotional authenticity.

Essentially, what I was learning was that my imagination could give me every psychological experience I felt I was missing out on in my ‘real’ life.

After months of this mental exercise, I’d ‘wake’ after a psychological jog around the village, feeling out of breath with burning cramps in my legs. It felt as real as if I had actually done it in reality!

Eventually my dream process changed. I would provide my imagination with a plethora of exciting scenarios then fall into a sleep state and suddenly these fantastical opportunities presented themselves to me in ultra HD lucidity!

It was only later that I discovered what I was doing was called ‘lucid dreaming’. What’s more, I felt like I was no longer constrained by paralysis. I was free to do what I wanted — go where I wanted.

No, I didn’t discover the ability to walk again, but I did discover the ability to fly.

At the end of the day, everything we see, feel and taste in life is nothing more than a series of psychological responses.

What’s even more exciting is that we don’t need mobile devices to access it.