This (very old and bumped) topic has been cross posted on the same time on many LD’ing and astral forums. Though it may contain useful information, remember it’s spam. Links pointed towards the Saltcube website. It does no more exist. They have been suppressed.
It turns out the synchronization between mind and body isn’t as close as we might expect. The body doesn’t know exactly when your mind has fallen asleep, and for survival reasons would be dangerous for the body to go to sleep before the mind has.
So the what happens is the body tests the mind to see if it’s asleep. If you lay with a silent mind very still for about 25 minutes and are nicely relaxed, your body will eventually send a very strong signal to your mind saying “I’m uncomfortable, please shift your position in bed.”
But this is just a ruse! The body is not really uncomfortable, it’s just testing to see if it can get a response from the mind. If you ignore this signal, your body waits a few seconds and says “Hmm, the mind must have gone to sleep. Time for me to do the same.”
At that point you will literally feel a wave of heaviness come over the body. This wave takes about 5 seconds to complete, and when it’s done your body has fallen asleep. This wave is very odd feeling and distinct, it’s something you can’t miss. Before you get the uncomfortable sensation you may also feel a little dizzy as if there’s a balloon in your upper body and head that’s expanding against the inside of your skull and skin. It’s not very much pressure but it is there.
There will be no doubt that your body has gone to sleep. If you have silicone putty earplugs in it will be easy to listen to your hearing shift from physical hearing into realtime hearing.
So the trick is to lie still until out of nowhere you get a sudden and strong urge to shift your position. It will not be easy to resist it, the body will be somewhat adamant. But if you persist in your deception and fool the body into thinking your mind is asleep then it will follow, and then there you are in mind awake/body asleep!
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Tips:
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You’ll have the best luck with this on somewhat less sleep than you usually get then do your attempt in the morning or during your afternoon REM cycle at about 2:00 or 3:00. The first time I got this to work I had only gotten about 3-4 hours of sleep the night before, maybe half my usual sleep time.
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For the time you’re laying still be completely still, including your eyes. Don’t move your eyes even to look at hypnagogics.
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Follow the tips in the sleep training section ( Spam deleted ) for better results. (See the section on “Watching Your Impressions On The Edge Of Sleep” Spam deleted for more information on hypnagogics.)
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It’s very easy for the mind the fall asleep doing this, you may benefit using a self-repeating timer as a safety net to keep your mind awake. You can use the saltcube timer at Spam deleted for this.
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Successes Using This Method:
I’ll start with one of my journal entries:
“I tried this in the afternoon but missed my body falling asleep and had a false awakening. I was laying here and after a while I realized I was seeing hypnagogic imagery of a person walking I think in my left eye. I opened my eyes and the imagery overlaied on the physical scene, it made it look like I was projecting a movie film of the person walking on my arm.”
“When I started to try to understand what was happening I woke up for real. So pretty much if your mind does fall asleep before you get the ‘reposition’ signal from the body, then you’ve missed the opportunity to test it.”
The AlphaOmega writes:
“Well, to anyone who’s interested, I tried this technique this morning and got incredible results with lucid dreaming. My stomach was killing me this morning so I was up early in pain, took some pepto, and not yet being able asleep I did the technique. I did fall asleep, but then I had an amazing lucid dream in which I was 100% aware. I created everything that I wanted and actually found it quite humorous watching the characters in my dream act accordingly as I was in complete control of their every actions. It was great. More remarkable however is that I woke up a few hours later, and tried it again, and once again had a different and yet still amazing lucid dream. In all I woke up 3 times, tried that technique 3 times, and had 3 great and long lucid dreams. More lucid then I have ever experienced before. In fact in one I remember almost waking up, and because I didn’t want to, I thought “breathe deep and relax”, and my body did, and I continued with my lucid dreaming. One thing that may be of note is that before I became lucid, each dream was kind of a nightmare. It was the hope that the nightmare wasn’t really happening that caused me to look at my hands and watch them become deformed (that’s what happens to me instead of them melting away), and that’s when I realized I was dreaming. Thanks for this post, this technique is now a favorite of mine.”
19 writes:
“the first time I tried it I felt a whole wavy swish feeling go through my lower body, while I was in the border line state.”
The following two reports indicate correctly that being in mind awake/body asleep isn’t enough to exit the body. You also have to use an exit technique such as a conceptualization or gravity-press ( [Spam deleted).
wookiee writes:
“Hello! I am a complete newb when it comes to OBE and AP but I’m trying to learn as much as I can as I find this stuff EXTREMELY interesting…”
“Last night I had to go to bed earlier than usual since I had to get to work extra early in the morning. My body was physically tired but my mind was not ready to go to sleep so I decided to see if I could get this to work. I laid motionless in bed and just began to think about stuff that was going on in my life and time fly by quickly. Twenty minutes soon passed so I just laid there waiting to see if my body would fall asleep. Sure enough, that unmistakable wave went through my body and it went to sleep.”
“I didn’t really know what to do next to get an OBE or at least a lucid dream. I just sat there for about 20 more minutes trying to concentrate on sinking into my bed and out of my body, but nothing seemed to work. When my body was asleep, I almost felt as though it was separate from my mind and that I didn’t really have any limbs. But, once it went to sleep I could open my eyes and even move my fingers without disrupting my body’s sleep (I only tried doing this about 10-15 minutes after my body fell asleep just to test it, like a reality check). I noticed that when my eyes were closed they would sometimes twitch and move around quickly by themselves. I guess my question is what should I have done or can do next time to get an OBE. I know I am just starting at this and haven’t even really read much and I know it takes a lot of practice to get OBEs, so I wasn’t disappointed too much that I didn’t get one. Thanks for the help.”
LordoftheBunnies writes:
“Earlier I got to the point where my body started to try to get me to move. I ignored it, and it got worse until it was quite excruciating, and then the feeling of heaviness set in. By this point my body felt hard to define. However, I wasn’t able to project, I tried doing rope and although I did feel my energy double tug a bit, it didn’t come out. I think I’m still too focused on the physical body when I do this, I need to get to the point where I don’t feel it at all.”
“Someone should make a list of the different levels experienced in focus 10 so they know what would be the best point to try projecting from. Just having the physical body asleep doesn’t seem to do it for me.”
LordoftheBunnies is quite correct in that the ‘reposition’ feeling can be very strong to the point that it is almost painful trying to ignore it. I am personally glad it’s intense because that makes it impossible to miss.
I’ve done some work toward describing the different stages in Focus 10 in the section at Saltcube on Watching Your Impressions On The Edge Of Sleep ( Spam deleted).