Phantom Limb and Brain Strain

Yesterday I came across a post about a website called obe4u.com. Though it had a very infomercial quality to it, a small moment of synchronicity convinced me to watch a few of the videos. Long story short, I felt like I came away with some valid techniques to induce out-of-body experiences. All of my OBE's up to this point were, for the most part, unplanned. They were either spontaneous, via a lucid dream, or a result of trying to work through sleep paralysis. Something about these techniques left me with a feeling that they would absolutely work for me. And they did.


I had gotten out of bed around 4 am to let the cat out. I returned to bed and quickly fell back asleep. I found myself in a seemingly endless loop of false awakenings. Frankly it is all a little messy and foggy. However, at some point I woke up and rolled onto my side. I instantly remembered to try the OBE techniques. The first one that I tried was the "brain strain" technique. I could not begin to explain to you how to do this, other than saying to strain your brain. When I heard the phrase "brain strain" on the obe4u.com website, I just somehow knew exactly what it was. Anyway, it worked immediately. I felt vibrations race through my body. I was a bit disappointed because I realized that I had just entered sleep paralysis. I was hoping to skip it. Instead of trying to move a part of my physical body to wake up, I began trying to move my dream body (the phantom limb technique). I have to stop here and point out that I do not think that there is such a thing as an actual dream "body" per say. It is just a metaphor. More on that later. At any rate, we can still put these metaphors to use as tools, and that is just what I did. I made an effort to move my dream arm. It took a while, but I eventually got it to move. As soon as I got it to move, I jumped up out of my body. It was a very groggy and sluggish OBE, but I was no doubt floating around my room. I tried to gain control over the experience, but it remained very foggy. My memory fades as to what happened next.

A few dreams and a few hours later, I woke up again. I immediately remembered to try the techniques. Again "brain strain" worked like a champ. The vibrations came quick. I focused on encouraging the vibrations to increase. I began to hear noises that are typical of my experiences of sleep paralysis. Instead of letting the noises frighten me, I focused on them. This seemed to deepen the state. This exit seemed much more clean or tangible somehow. I was floating around my bedroom (the non-physical version of it anyway). Like the first experience, everything was very groggy and sluggish. I tried to fly up through the ceiling, but kept getting hung up in it. At one point, I looked down at my bed to see if I could see my physical body. The bed was empty except for my cat who was looking up at me with a curious expression. I later realized of course that the cat was outside.

I am coming to realize the my expectations, fears, and beliefs play a major role in these experiences. Such things run deeper than the intellect and are not easy to recognize. It turns out that these things must be worked out through direct experience.