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The Out of Body Experience
Getting nowhere with the exercises? I would recommend giving the ideas outlined here a go. Try something along these lines.
Wait until you have some leave from work (or better still, do a sickie). Instead of going to bed at your usual hour, stay up all night! It dosen't have to be as bad as all that. As long as you keep your mind occupied and DON'T dose. By the following day you will obviously be very tired, but don't give in. Force yourself to go about your normal routine until around 11am.
Now sit on your favourite chair or sofa and sleep.
Don't lie down and don't cover yourself up.
Don't set the alarm clock
And don't tell me you can't do this either. If you can't do it then you aren't tired. I can usually drop off in this position in less than ten minutes, because I tend to do with the minimum sleep anyway and when I am awake I am always doing something, often till I feel I will surely collapse if I don't sleep soon. You should wake up anything between fifteen minutes and two hours later. This happens because you are in a seated position and your mind will not switch out as many lights as usual because of the confusion it will feel regarding what you are doing. It knows you do not normally go to sleep in a seated position in the middle of the day! It also fears you will fall forward and hurt yourself on the coffee table etc.
After this little nap, continue as you normally would for the rest of the day. It is probably best to avoid mini-cabbing, flying a hang glider or operating a reactor core in a nuclear power station (especially if you are employed within a thirty mile radius of South London.)
Retire to bed at whatever time your normal bedtime would be, preferably alone. If your partner generally goes to bed at 1am then go at 11pm. If they go to bed early then stay up until the early hours. This is probably best because you will already be nicely irritable and uptight by the time bedtime comes. Go to bed and cover yourself up as you normally would. If you have a few niggly worries here then so much the better. By niggly I mean, you feel too hot, your stomach is rumbling, you know you will have to pee within the next twelve minutes!
NIGGLY does not mean you've just seen one of the curtains your grannie gave you on her deathbed drop onto the two bar electric fire blazing away in the corner or your two year old leaning right out of the window. Any major problem or potential major problem in the background will be spotted by your conscious mind long before you receive the information in the form of a thought and it will put an instant block on any kind of non-bodily movements until the danger has passed. Something like a loathed dental appointment the next day or an interview with little Johnny's behavioural specialist concerning his obsession with putting iron bedsteads on the main Euston to Glasgow line will be ideal. As usual don't force things. A furrowed brow and tight stomach muscles may help you in the London Marathon, it will not aid you here. RELAX. You are supposed to be getting to sleep after all!
The first thing you may become aware of is most commonly:
The Paralysis Stage
You will get no prior inkling that anything is 'about to happen' and the lockdown will be on you like a homeless ninja on payday. When you notice it, don't panic. Incrediblly easy to say, incredibly hard to accomplish. This is good. Because even if nothing else happens, this paralysis proves that things are working. You should never even be aware in your waking state that paralysis occurs usually. So we are doing something right.
Blowing
No, let's not go there...do try to pay attention.....
The blowing state is often, but not always the next stage in the chain of events. I know I am not the only one saying this because of all the letters I've had, mainly from the USA, telling me that many people are experiencing identical things. You will have a strong feeling of an air current passing over your head and neck or something that feels like a mild electrical current passing up your spine towards the head from the area in the small of the back. It is interesting to note that this breeze or electrical charge, never operates in the opposite direction, ie from head down to the base of the spine. More on this later. This sensation will usually (in my case) last less than a minute.
Snatching
Next comes this odd snatching sensation. I call it snatching because I don't know what else to call it and it occurs right after the spinal electricity . This is a very odd sensation and I get it a lot more now than I used to. If you can imagine a tight rubber hat, like a woman's swim hat tight over the top of your head being pulled off again and again at two second intervals, the sensation is like that. You can actually feel your hair being bristled by it. It is as if the hair is physically being ruffled, although I doubt that it is. It is almost like something is attempting to pump through the top of your skull and again while it all appears very violent to the poor soul experiencing it, any casual observer in your bedroom would say "Mmmmm, so and so's a bit restless tonight. Must be dreaming."
This whole process can be likened to the launch of the old space rockets. Something is being manouvered into launch position ready for takeoff with the strobe lights running up the side to warn people to stay well clear. It tavels up your spine, like the long journey from the hanger to the launch site, your own head. Once there it starts to fuel or whatever it's doing, ready for take off. The snatching sensation, the rocket motors starting to fire up!
ready to blast you out into the ether.
This snatching will increase in tempo and this is where you are most likely to freak out as it really is a nauseating sensation, almost as if you are on some kind of drug that is threatening to completely wreck your mind. It reminds me of how someone would feel if they were drowning. Not that I know this for sure and have no desire to know. If you can relax here and I know any notion of relaxation probably sounds quite ridiculous, the snatching will get quicker and pass quicker. If you start to panic, even have a panic thought, it will slow down to around one every half a minute or so until you either pack it in or relax again until the spinal electricity begins again.
From here I always seem to appear outside of my body. I am no longer away and off flying around the room as in the early days. It's as if that part has been edited out for some reason and I appear, usually in one of the rooms in the flat or just outside.
If any of the signals mentioned above is reached you can regard it as an unqualified success even if you simply wake up as normal a few minutes later. At least you will be half convinced of the reality of what I'm saying and it will reinforce in your mind that you know what's been going on all these years and you really don't mind a bit.
Wait until you have some leave from work (or better still, do a sickie). Instead of going to bed at your usual hour, stay up all night! It dosen't have to be as bad as all that. As long as you keep your mind occupied and DON'T dose. By the following day you will obviously be very tired, but don't give in. Force yourself to go about your normal routine until around 11am.
Now sit on your favourite chair or sofa and sleep.
Don't lie down and don't cover yourself up.
Don't set the alarm clock
And don't tell me you can't do this either. If you can't do it then you aren't tired. I can usually drop off in this position in less than ten minutes, because I tend to do with the minimum sleep anyway and when I am awake I am always doing something, often till I feel I will surely collapse if I don't sleep soon. You should wake up anything between fifteen minutes and two hours later. This happens because you are in a seated position and your mind will not switch out as many lights as usual because of the confusion it will feel regarding what you are doing. It knows you do not normally go to sleep in a seated position in the middle of the day! It also fears you will fall forward and hurt yourself on the coffee table etc.
After this little nap, continue as you normally would for the rest of the day. It is probably best to avoid mini-cabbing, flying a hang glider or operating a reactor core in a nuclear power station (especially if you are employed within a thirty mile radius of South London.)
Retire to bed at whatever time your normal bedtime would be, preferably alone. If your partner generally goes to bed at 1am then go at 11pm. If they go to bed early then stay up until the early hours. This is probably best because you will already be nicely irritable and uptight by the time bedtime comes. Go to bed and cover yourself up as you normally would. If you have a few niggly worries here then so much the better. By niggly I mean, you feel too hot, your stomach is rumbling, you know you will have to pee within the next twelve minutes!
NIGGLY does not mean you've just seen one of the curtains your grannie gave you on her deathbed drop onto the two bar electric fire blazing away in the corner or your two year old leaning right out of the window. Any major problem or potential major problem in the background will be spotted by your conscious mind long before you receive the information in the form of a thought and it will put an instant block on any kind of non-bodily movements until the danger has passed. Something like a loathed dental appointment the next day or an interview with little Johnny's behavioural specialist concerning his obsession with putting iron bedsteads on the main Euston to Glasgow line will be ideal. As usual don't force things. A furrowed brow and tight stomach muscles may help you in the London Marathon, it will not aid you here. RELAX. You are supposed to be getting to sleep after all!
The first thing you may become aware of is most commonly:
The Paralysis Stage
You will get no prior inkling that anything is 'about to happen' and the lockdown will be on you like a homeless ninja on payday. When you notice it, don't panic. Incrediblly easy to say, incredibly hard to accomplish. This is good. Because even if nothing else happens, this paralysis proves that things are working. You should never even be aware in your waking state that paralysis occurs usually. So we are doing something right.
Blowing
No, let's not go there...do try to pay attention.....
The blowing state is often, but not always the next stage in the chain of events. I know I am not the only one saying this because of all the letters I've had, mainly from the USA, telling me that many people are experiencing identical things. You will have a strong feeling of an air current passing over your head and neck or something that feels like a mild electrical current passing up your spine towards the head from the area in the small of the back. It is interesting to note that this breeze or electrical charge, never operates in the opposite direction, ie from head down to the base of the spine. More on this later. This sensation will usually (in my case) last less than a minute.
Snatching
Next comes this odd snatching sensation. I call it snatching because I don't know what else to call it and it occurs right after the spinal electricity . This is a very odd sensation and I get it a lot more now than I used to. If you can imagine a tight rubber hat, like a woman's swim hat tight over the top of your head being pulled off again and again at two second intervals, the sensation is like that. You can actually feel your hair being bristled by it. It is as if the hair is physically being ruffled, although I doubt that it is. It is almost like something is attempting to pump through the top of your skull and again while it all appears very violent to the poor soul experiencing it, any casual observer in your bedroom would say "Mmmmm, so and so's a bit restless tonight. Must be dreaming."
This whole process can be likened to the launch of the old space rockets. Something is being manouvered into launch position ready for takeoff with the strobe lights running up the side to warn people to stay well clear. It tavels up your spine, like the long journey from the hanger to the launch site, your own head. Once there it starts to fuel or whatever it's doing, ready for take off. The snatching sensation, the rocket motors starting to fire up!
ready to blast you out into the ether.
This snatching will increase in tempo and this is where you are most likely to freak out as it really is a nauseating sensation, almost as if you are on some kind of drug that is threatening to completely wreck your mind. It reminds me of how someone would feel if they were drowning. Not that I know this for sure and have no desire to know. If you can relax here and I know any notion of relaxation probably sounds quite ridiculous, the snatching will get quicker and pass quicker. If you start to panic, even have a panic thought, it will slow down to around one every half a minute or so until you either pack it in or relax again until the spinal electricity begins again.
From here I always seem to appear outside of my body. I am no longer away and off flying around the room as in the early days. It's as if that part has been edited out for some reason and I appear, usually in one of the rooms in the flat or just outside.
If any of the signals mentioned above is reached you can regard it as an unqualified success even if you simply wake up as normal a few minutes later. At least you will be half convinced of the reality of what I'm saying and it will reinforce in your mind that you know what's been going on all these years and you really don't mind a bit.
How 4
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