nderf

[…] About my OBE technique: The one that I’ve been practicing each night (most nights at least) is that I will repeat in my mind “Tonight I will dream with conscious awareness” while I’m lying still and letting my body get ready to sleep. Then when I feel sufficiently relaxed, I will keep thinking that statement in the back of my mind, but I begin using visualization. Doing this technique while the body shifts into the hypnagogic state can produce an OBE, either now or will produce one later in the night.

The visualization that I do is pick a place or a scene or daydream, and I will imagine myself going through the motions of doing something in my mind. I usually start off by imagining as realistically as possible, getting up out of the bed and start walking around my bedroom, and while I’m doing this I will visualize from memory what everything looks like. A good thing to do is imagine walking to the opposite side of the bedroom and then turning around to look back at your bed, and to visualize everything realistically. It’s not that you need to actually “see” it in your mind’s eye, it’s just that you need to be thinking about what goes where, where things are, etc. And while you imagine walking, you think about what the floor feels like. When you imagine opening a closed door, think and remember what the doorknob feels like.

These tactile memories really help make you feel like you’re actually doing what your mind is pretending to be doing. So by doing this while falling asleep, you make it easy for your consciousness to “go” do what you’re thinking about.

So after you get comfortable doing this, and after you begin to feel very relaxed and “floating”, then you can change your visualization and imagination to do something else. You may want to be somewhere else or be with a certain person, or just create a comfortable daydream.

What typically happens is that I fall asleep and lose my conscious awareness. But I just keep at it night after night because I know that it’s all good preparatory work. It’s good practice. It’s good to be in the habit because it gets easier to do.

On 28 December 2018 Vicky wrote to me:

[…]
I’m happy to hear you’re trying my OBE technique of imaging walking around. With repetitive practice you become better and better at shifting your attention and awareness to it and it becomes easier to actually move in the house in your imagination.

For example, you know how it’s easy to close your eyes and picture your kitchen in your mind, for example, right? Then if you concentrate on it, you can imagine bringing your body-perception there in your kitchen. It can take practice but it’s pretty easy to do, and it IS good to practice this type of thing. So then when you’re able to do that easily, practice imagining moving (either walking or floating) FROM that vantage point, without allowing your awareness to “pull you back” to the chair you’re physically sitting in while doing this experiment. Does that make sense? I practice this kind of thing quite regularly.