Why is it important not to wake a sleepwalker?

The only peril would probably be that you might startle the person. If gently done, there shouldn’t be any danger. It seems to be no more than the usual urban myth, passed down generations.

You should wake a sleepwalker so they don’t hurt themselves. they are asleep the same as if they were in bed, but they might be disoriented at first.

We had a long discussion on this in acting class. Our teacher was too tired from sleepwalking to teach so we discussed sleepwalking instead. To answer your question my teacher says not to wake a sleepwalker because sleepwalking can be very disorienting and it’s just better to lead the walker safely to bed

In my psychology class we discussed this, and according to the professor it’s not true that waking sleepwalkers is dangerous or harmful.

In fact, waking sleepwalkers might stop them from doing something horrible, like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_somnambulism

So, although them might be puzzled or annoyed, waking them up is definitely not a bad idea, and might actually prevent them from doing something silly at the very least.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari!

:)

As a sleepwalker, I agree that waking up mid-walk is very disorienting. If they’re going to do something dumb, by all means wake them up if you can’t convince them in their sleep to go back to bed or redirect them. Once in my sleep I thought I had to feed my neighbors cats, so I left my house and almost broke into their house (they were all home and asleep). Luckily there was enough weird stuff that woke me up.

Basically it’s very disorienting, cause you make a different situation out of reality. For me, I always remember my episodes, if I wake up during them or not, so I’m always semi-conscious.

It is my understanding that the idea that waking up sleepwalkers is somehow dangerous is not true. It is pleasanter to the sleepwalker, as already pointed out, if you can just guide them back to bed without forcing them to wake up, but if you can’t, just wake them up before they hurt themselves.