Out of Body Experiences

Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) were one of the first things that really blew my mind. When you are new and just start practicing psionics, you believe in things, but there is still that skeptical side of you that thinks it might be fake. As you continue to learn, you go through stages of belief. Once you have your first true paranormal experience, it blows your mind. Once you have your second true paranormal experience, it blows your mind even more. Over time you get used to weird things happening, but those first couple times are really earth shattering.

When I had my first OBE after six months of training, I was in total shock. I can remember walking downstairs in a state of disbelief, and staring at my parents. I told them what happened, and I don't remember their reaction, but I'm sure it was something along the lines of, "Oh lord, I hope this is just a phase" :-).

While you can blindly train OBEs for a while and eventually get them (like I did), it would be much faster for you to have an understanding of what is going on - and then adjust your practice to target what you need to do. Hopefully my experience will come in handy and you can achieve an OBE in less than six months.
State of Mind

It is possible to have OBEs in random states of mind, but the most common/easiest way to induce them is in a trance. Your mind has to be in this very specific state to achieve an OBE. Here's a crash course in brainwaves and different states of mind.

During the day when you are bouncing around and doing whatever it is you guys do, your brainwaves are really active. Smart scientists have labeled that state as "Beta". So: Beta equals Bouncing around.

When you calm down a little bit, but are still focused and alert, you are in the state "Alpha". Alpha equals Alert and relaxed.

When you slow your mind down a little bit, and start to feel drowsy and tired, your brainwaves slow down too - this state is called "Theta". Theta equals Tired.

And finally, you fall asleep and go into deep sleep. Deep sleep is labeled as "Delta".

Easy to remember, right? Beta - Bouncing around; Alpha - Alert and relaxed; Theta - Tired; Delta - Deep sleep. (Obviously your brain is a LOT more complicated than this, but this is an article on OBEs, not how the brain works :-P).

OBEs are induced by hovering inside of Theta for a while, and fooling your body into thinking it's in Delta. Ok, so what's that mean? It means you shut off your body and put it to sleep, and then chill inside of Theta until you have an OBE.
Putting Your Body to Sleep

It sounds kind of weird that your body can be asleep, and your mind can be completely awake - but it really isn't that hard to accomplish. In fact, I bet you could do it only after a few tries. The absolute key to doing this is to keep your body completely still - no matter what. Do NOT move your body. Just don't do it!

This is a lot harder than it sounds, and you'll have to exercise some will power. You'll have random itches, and you'll want to flop into a different position to feel more comfortable, and your body will yell at you and call you names - you just gotta ignore all of that and stay determined to keep your body completely still. Usually this will take around 10 to 20 minutes.

During this time, you can sit there and think about random stuff, like how much work you have to get done the next day, and whether or not you're going to call that one chick and ask her out, and think about how much that one guy was a dick to you - what an asshole, right? Screw him. If he wanted that DVD so bad, he should have grabbed it before you did! Er yeah :-P.

After some time of this, you might notice that different parts of your body feel numb. A good way to test to see if your body is asleep is to try and convince yourself that a body part is in some strange position. For example, when my body is asleep, I can convince myself that my arms are crossed over my chest (when in reality they are under my pillow). They will feel like they are on my chest, but only because I have no sense of where they really are.

You can have a lot of fun in this state. You can't feel where your body parts are, but you can convince yourself they are somewhere for fun, you can pretend your entire body is flying around in circles, or that your body is flapping in the air like a flag. If you can convince yourself of it, then it will actually feel like it's happening. I'm entertained easily :-). (I know it sounds weird reading it, but once you actually try it out you will notice what I'm talking about).
Progressive Relaxation

Progressive Relaxation is another method of putting your body to sleep. All you do is go to each body part, and command it to fall asleep. Some people get nervous about this, but keep in mind - your body parts fall asleep every night! You are not doing anything unnatural. Don't confuse "sleep" with "turn off". You aren't turning off your lungs, you are just putting them in the sleep state :-P.

As an example, I'll type out a script you might think to yourself to do progressive relaxation:

"Why hello there body, how's it going? Good? Good to hear :-). I'm going to put you to sleep. First, I want to start at the neck. Listen up Mr. Neck - I want you to relax. I know you had a stressful day, but now it's time to chill out and go to sleep. Take it easy - you did a good job today. Just relax and fall asleep.

Hi Face. Face, you need to relax. It is time to fall asleep. Relax all those muscles and go to sleep. Thanks for the hard work today, but now you can relax and go to sleep.

Alright Head - Face and Neck are asleep, so it's your turn. Relax your muscles and go into a sleep state. Head, go to sleep.

Ahhh. Head, Face, and Neck are asleep.

Mr. Shoulders, it's your turn to fall asleep. You did a lot of work today, and I appreciate it - now you get to relax and take a load off. Fall asleep.

Arms, fall asleep. Our Shoulders are already asleep, and now you need to relax and sleep too. Wrists and Hands, fall asleep as well. Relax, and fall asleep. Relax all the muscles, and go into a sleep state.

Chest, relax and fall asleep. Slow down your breathing and relax. Fall asleep.

Abdomen, it's your turn to relax and go to sleep. Relax all those muscles, and slow down. Go to sleep.

Hips and Pelvic, our entire upper body is asleep - now you will fall asleep. Remove all stress from the muscles, and sleep.

Thighs, I know you guys must be tired. Thanks for all your work today, but now you can fall asleep. Relax. Sleep.

Knees, you can fall asleep now too. I don't need you for now, so just relax and fall asleep.

Calves - it's time to fall asleep. Relax the muscles, and go into a state of sleep.

Feet, you're the last ones! You've done great today - now you can relax and fall asleep like the rest of the body. Calm down, relax the muscles, and fall asleep."

There you go! This process will take about 10-20 minutes. I personally use internal dialog to put my body to sleep, but you can use other methods too. You can visualize your body parts relaxing and falling asleep, or you can just use will power. I personally visualize while using internal dialog - I visualize "SLEEP" written in white fluffy blobs floating over the body part, while I tell it to sleep. Some nights I get bored of the same old routine, and just make up a new visualization.

Don't be afraid to spend extra time on some areas. It's not a race or anything. I personally have to spend extra time on my face and neck area, because those places tense up on their own a lot. Sometimes I'll go through half my body, then re-visit my neck and face to get them to relax again.

Just like the previous method, after you put your body to sleep you can convince yourself that your body parts are in different positions. If you do progressive relaxation right, you won't really have to confirm this though - you should be able to feel your body parts go to sleep as you command them, and you will notice a difference between parts that are awake, and parts that are asleep.

After you put your body to sleep (by either sitting still for a long time, or using progressive relaxation), you will be in a pretty cool state of mind. Robert Monroe (a famous OBE researcher) calls this state Focus 10. Your mind is completely awake and aware, but your body is asleep. From here, you move towards a complete trance.
Trancing Out

It's hard to describe what a trance feels like. You don't know it while you're doing it (usually), but you realize you were trancing once you snap out of it. You've been in trances before, they're just like daydreaming. Have you ever been so absorbed in a movie or book that you don't even realize what's going on around you? Those are lighter trances.

I induce the trance in two ways. One way, I just sit there and think of nothing. I clear my mind as much as possible, and think of nothing until I trance out (or fall asleep). It's simple enough to describe, but hard to actually do.

The second method I use it to repeat a sentence over and over again. Usually I will repeat something like "I will have an Out of Body Experience" over and over in my head. When my mind wanders, I bring it back and keep repeating the same sentence. For beginners, I recommend this method.
Falling Asleep

So what happens? You do all this stuff, and it takes forever, then instead of an OBE, you just fall asleep. What the hell, right? Welcome to the wonderful world of training OBEs :-).

Since the OBE state of mind is between awake and asleep, a lot of times you don't have enough control, and just slip into the sleeping state. Or you become impatient and restless, and say, "screw it" and give up on trancing out. Both cases are common, but don't let it get you down. If you keep at it, you will have an OBE- it just might take a few tries :-).
Tips and Tricks

But never fear! I have some handy tips and tricks that will increase the chances of having an OBE by ten-fold. While I have outlined a bare-bones method above, implementing each of these tips will greatly increase the odds of having an OBE, and I recommend taking them seriously.

The major problem is falling asleep. Since that happens 99% of the time, it seems like an important topic to attack.

One trick is to set your alarm for 2-3 hours less sleep than you're used to, then once you wake up, take 10 minutes to go the bathroom and get your body up. THEN lie back down and try to OBE. Your body/mind will have a harder time falling asleep, and you can ease into it more slowly. Also, if you fall asleep by accident, you will wake up after 10 minutes or so, and you can try again. You can keep doing this until you have the right balance to induce an OBE.

Another trick is to take a long nap late in the evening. For example, I usually go to bed at 10pm, so if I take a nap from 6pm to 8pm, then I have a very hard time going back to sleep at 10pm. Taking a long nap before your bedtime will make you restless, and make it a lot easier to have an OBE.

I always lay on my stomach to sleep, so when I OBE, I lay on my back. It's slightly uncomfortable for me, so it keeps me a little more awake than normal. Change your body position into something slightly uncomfortable to keep yourself more awake.

When just starting out, you might need something a little more aggressive to keep you awake. I used to hold my forearm straight up under the covers - then when I fell asleep, my arm would fall and wake me back up. This is another great trick to catch yourself from falling asleep.

One last trick, which might be the best one of them all: instead of watching yourself fall asleep (which is the method I presented in this article), watch yourself wake up. This sounds a little strange. When you wake up in the morning, DO NOT MOVE. It's hard to remember since you're all disorientated, but force yourself to remember. Just lay still.
Leaving Your Body

Ok, so you've memorized the method and tried all the tricks, but how do you know when you're ready to leave your body? I mean you're just lying there - how can you tell when it's time to leave? And how do you actually LEAVE when it's time?!

The simple answer is: you'll just know.

But that's not completely true.

When I first started my OBE training, I used to read about it constantly, search the Internet for as many methods as I could find, and then try each method over and over again. I did this for 6 months straight, practicing every night and some mornings, without a break. Finally my motivation wore off one night, and I decided to take a break. That next morning I had my first OBE.

I can remember dreaming that I was on the side of a road. I started to wake up from the dream, and my vision went from normal dream vision, to myself lying in bed. As I was lying in bed, I was very relaxed and bored. I started playing with my arm - it would float up, then I would pull it back down. Then it would float back up, and I would pull it back down. After about 30 seconds of this, I realized that my arm shouldn't be floating upwards! I was shocked. Immediately, my consciousness snapped out of my body for about three seconds, then snapped back in. I was too excited to think logically and experiment - I finished the OBE and jumped out of bed thrilled.

Future OBEs also followed the same pattern - I would be lying in bed doing something bizarre, but I wouldn't realize I was out of body for a while. My second OBE I stuck my hands through the bottom of my bed, and realized that I shouldn't be able to do that. My third OBE I rocked back in forth in bed weightlessly, then later realized that it wasn't normal.

After a few OBEs I started to actually recognize them I started to develop a feel for them. But the first couple were shocking, and it took some time before I even realized I had left my body.

Roy (aka Daimajin) recalls how natural it felt when he had his first OBE (a few weeks ago):

"I was never really a big fan of OBE's because the idea of leaving my body seemed uncomfortable to me. Therefore, I never made any effort to try and have one. Since irony is a pervasive factor in life, I unintentionally OBE'ed one afternoon while trying to put myself in a trance. I did so because I wanted to see if I could brainstorm for potential plot ideas in a story I was writing. I laid flat on my back, with my covers on, closed my eyes, relaxed, and let thoughts flow freely through my consciousness. A friend of mine was in the room with a pen and paper ready to record anything I blurted out, just in case I wouldn't remember any of it upon waking.

Some pretty good ideas were flowing through my mind, most of which I vocalized for my friend to record, but soon after, the ideas stop flowing and my mind became very "quiet". I use the term "quiet" to denote the lack of thoughts I had. It soon came to my awareness that I could see my room, as if I had my eyes open. I couldn't see in color, but instead saw everything in shades of gray. I didn't pay much attention to this, it just seemed natural to me and I remained relaxed and in the trance. I stopped seeing it for a little while, until it returned again. I watched my friend get up from his chair, and leave the room only to return a minute later. It had suddenly dawned on me that my eyes were not open!

Once I realized this, I snapped myself out of it and sat in bed reflecting on what had happened. The most unusual thing about it, besides the actual OBE itself, was how natural it felt. It was as if I was laying there in a normal manner with my eyes open. I got up and told my friend about the experience, who also admitted that this has happened to him on several occasions. I got the same response from my brother, who has also had random OBE's. Having felt how comfortable it can be, I am no longer nervous about having an OBE, and since then, I have been trying to repeat the occurrence."

Since OBEs have a "natural" feel to them, you may not realize you're having an OBE until you are in the middle of it, or even until after you experience it. I've fallen out of body, and thought I actually fell out of bed - only to wake back up in bed, confused, until I realized it was an OBE.

If you've never had an OBE, my advice would be to be relaxed enough and open enough to stray from the path and have fun, but also be aware of what you're doing. You might find yourself out of body.
Conclusion

The goal of this article is to simply get you out of body. Once you are out, there are a lot of problems (which you are free to discover on your own :-)). Getting out is the first step, and I hope this article has provided you with enough information to accomplish it.

Good luck in your psionics endeavors!