These can be split into two categories: spontaneous and induced. Sleep : Spontaneous OBEs are most commonly reported as occurring just before falling asleep or just prior to waking.
They are more likely to occur when sleep is not particularly deep — due to noise, stress , or illness, for example. Physical effort : OBEs have also been reported following or during extreme exertion. Other spontaneous OBEs have been reported during meditation, non-life-threatening accidents, anesthesia, hypnosis, child birth, when suffocating, after being shot, while dancing or talking, or, as one year-old police officer relates, during her first night at work.
I promptly went out of my body and up into the air maybe 20 feet above the scene. I remained there, extremely calm, while I watched the entire procedure — including watching myself do exactly what I had been trained to do.
They include:. Sensory deprivation or overload : Either too little sensory information floatation tanks or listening to white noise or too much torture can also trigger them. For instance, when extreme G-forces are encountered, blood can partially drain from certain parts of the brain. This, it seems, has the power to induce an OBE. I was floating. I was looking at myself from outside of myself. It is not only extreme G-forces that can spark OBEs in pilots. Even during standard flights, pilots can endure odd sensory experiences, which are referred to collectively as spatial disorientation SD.
SD is considered one of the most common factors contributing to aviation accidents. Fatigue , stress, drugs, low light levels, and sensory overload or deprivation are among the factors potentially involved. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of OBEs is veridical perception, which is the claim that during an OBE, the viewer is able to literally float out of their body and witness something or someone that they could not have otherwise seen. A well-known example is the case of Pam Reynolds , a brain surgery patient who underwent a highly invasive operation to remove a brain tumor.
Following surgery, Reynolds was able to describe aspects of the procedure that had happened at a time when she was clinically dead. She claimed to have surveyed the scene during an OBE. Some of these stories are intriguing and compelling. But at this stage, they are nothing more than unverifiable stories.
The study addressed the possibility of veridical perception during OBEs. The research involved multiple hospitals and hundreds of interviews with cardiac arrest survivors.
To investigate whether any individuals had genuinely floated above themselves and viewed their surroundings, researchers placed pictures on shelves that would only be viewable from above. In this way, they could test whether people experiencing OBEs really could leave their bodies. Although there were only two veridical OBEs during the study, neither could accurately relate the images from the shelves.
In , a Canadian neurosurgeon called Wilder Penfield electrically stimulated the brains of people with epilepsy. And rather than traveling, your consciousness is said to simply float or hover above your physical body.
OBEs — or at least the sensations of them — are largely recognized within the medical community and have been the subject of many studies. Astral projection, however, is considered to be a spiritual practice. A study tried to explore this by looking at cognitive awareness in people who had survived cardiac arrest.
The authors found that 13 percent of the participants felt a separation from their body during resuscitation. In addition, two participants reported having both visual and auditory experiences while in cardiac arrest.
Only one was well enough to follow up, but he gave an accurate, detailed description of what took place for about three minutes of his resuscitation from cardiac arrest. The study discussed above did try to test this by placing images on shelves that could only be seen from a higher vantage point. But the majority of the cardiac arrests, including the event involving the participant who had specific memories of his resuscitation, took place in rooms without the shelves. This suggests that OBEs could occur as a way to cope with trauma, but more research is needed on this link.
Dissociative disorders, particularly depersonalization-derealization disorder , can involve frequent feelings or episodes where you seem to be observing yourself from outside your body. Sleep paralysis , a temporary state of waking paralysis that occurs during REM sleep and often involves hallucinations, has also been noted as a possible cause of OBEs.
Research suggests many people who have OBEs with a near-death experience also experience sleep paralysis. In addition, research suggests sleep-wake disturbances may contribute to dissociative symptoms, which can include a feeling of leaving your body.
Other substances, including marijuana , ketamine , or hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD , can also be a factor. In some cases, you might feel a bit dizzy or disoriented after. You might feel confused over what happened or wonder if you have a brain issue or mental health condition.
You might also not like the sensation of an OBE and worry about it happening again. You may have this experience once just before drifting off to sleep, for example, and never again.
They may be able to help by ruling out serious conditions or offering some reassurance. But for centuries, many people have reported similar sensations of their consciousness leaving their body. OBEs appear to be more common with some conditions, including certain dissociative disorders and epilepsy. The results indicated that people who reported spontaneous OBEs did not commonly have a distinct sense of floating out of their body.
But those people who had claimed to predominantly induce their own out-of-body experiences also reported sensing a distinct physical sensation of separation from their body. Induced experiences can be defined as those in which a person wilfully brings about an OBE. These can be produced via meditation, self-hypnosis, visualisation and other techniques involving body perception.
Induced OBEs can also be triggered in a laboratory, including with the aid of perceptual illusions or clinical hypnosis. For our research, we were more interested in autonomously-induced experiences — that is, OBEs participants reported bringing on themselves.
I believe research along these lines is important as it differentiates between types or qualities of OBEs. If you have ever had such an experience, you might recall particular features of your own body perception and aspects of the environment during the experience.
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