Paralysed
Wanting to move and finding the body unresponsive — will detached from action by something you cannot see.
Being paralysed in a dream is the dream's image of will detached from action. You see what to do, you intend to do it, and the body does not answer. The dream brings the paralysis when something in your life — a decision, a confrontation, a leaving — has moved past the stage of deliberation and reached the stage where the body should have already acted, and the gap between the intention and the movement has become the loudest fact. A paralysis that breaks with one small movement of a finger or a breath is the dream telling you the block is releasable from a very small place. A paralysis that holds through the whole dream is the dream noting that the part of you that executes intention has been overridden long enough that the override now feels like the truth, and the work is to remember which one is actually you.