Pressure or weight on the chest
Why do people feel something sitting on their chest?
Among the oldest recorded features of this experience and one of the most consistent across cultures: the English "hag" of hag-ridden, the Newfoundland Old Hag, and equivalents documented in many other traditions.
The physiology accounts for it well. During REM, breathing is shallow and largely involuntary, and a sleeper who wakes into atonia cannot take a deliberate deep breath. The sensation of being unable to fill the lungs is real; the weight is the mind supplying a cause.
That is a genuinely good explanation of the sensation. It is a weaker explanation of why the cause supplied is so often a figure, and specifically a figure that is crouching or sitting.
What the reports agree on
Nothing here is dangerous. Breathing continues throughout: what is lost is voluntary control of it, and that returns within seconds to a couple of minutes.
Where they differ, and what to be careful of
Frequent episodes are worth raising with a doctor, because recurrent sleep paralysis is a symptom of some sleep disorders. That is a medical question, not an archive one.
Worth recording if this was yours
Could I breathe, even shallowly? Was the weight localised, or general?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
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