Astral Travel Difficulties

This book will help... It helped me...http://www.cybercauldron.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/William-Buhlman-Adventures-Beyond-The-Body-How-To-Experience-Out-Of-Body-Travel2.pdf

When I reach the vibrational state, I have a method that has worked for me.

Think of the vibrational state as an orgasm. What you'll want to do is think of yourself "pulling out", because you don't want to get the "girl" preggo. It has worked wonders for me when I AP.

I call it "The Pull-Out Method".

I can agree with AnneV's view on the "jerk", and would also like to add this little bit:

In a lot of the common literature, I have also heard that the "jerk" you feel is also the body's way of making sure that you are properly asleep (I included this as another viewpoint, although my own observations support AnneV).

Here's some general purpose tips that may help - treat it as a method, or as helpful tips.

Tips for trying at night (and being able to remember it):

1. Do not do anything that requires a lot of "brightness" (such as watching TV, being on the computer, playing games, etc...) as this will keep the body up longer.

2. An hour or so before the attempt, try to relax the body using any method you find comfortable (such as light reading, meditation, hemi-sync, relaxing music, a small nap, stretches). You want to be slightly sleepy, but not to the point where you are thinking about "how cozy the bed will feel".

NOTE: When I do stretches, it seems to stop the "jerk" from happening, or at least dampens the effects.

The reason you want to be this relaxed is so that you are "thinking" as the projection attempt is occurring - it is so easy to just "go to sleep" and let it happen naturally, but controlling the attempt makes the challenge part of the fun.

3. Focus on the act of breathing, rather than setting the breaths to a pattern (such as breathe in for 3 secs, hold for 2 secs, and release for 3...).

For a long time, I used to use that method, and found that my breathing became ragged (focused to much on the pattern), and therefore became distracted - Try to focus on your chest rising & falling with the breath - if you start to tense up, then use a slower breathing method (deep breaths) until you calm down. Let the breaths happen as you think they should.

4. If the body starts to get numb, this is when you need to stay the most relaxed, because the body is starting to fall asleep. Sometimes you may experience the vibrations, sometimes not.

Tips for trying during the day:

1. Try in the early morning, after being up for around an hour or so. Once again, the main goal is to be in an alert, and yet relaxed state of mind.

For example, get up at 5:00am, do a few stretches, eat a small snack, maybe read a little bit, and be ready to attempt by 6:00am.

Most of the other tips are the same for trying during the night.

Here's a few more general ones:

1. If spit/saliva is giving a problem, or it makes you feel like you are gagging, try to see how long you can stand it before swallowing (I found this happens when lying on the back) - you will not gag, as your body does this anytime you sleep in that position.

2. I've noticed that sometimes people will dream about items they read or saw before bed; Bringing this up because it might help to read some literature about astral projection before bed (in theory, it might cause you to remember to attempt to project, should you forget and start to drift off into sleep).

3. Playing some form of an audio while drifting off to sleep can be enough to focus on to make a projection attempt successful.

NOTE: If audio is played too frequently, then the number of possible successful projections seems to decrease. I suspect this is because the body begins to filter it out as "background noise" (kind of like sleeping through trains when living next to a trainyard, or firetrucks when next to a fire station).

For reference, I did an experiment on myself (long ago on another forum), in which I attempted to astral project using audio as my focus - it gave me 3 successful attempts, but nothing beyond that (I still have the documentation).

Anyway, hope some of this is able to help.
-fossilera

Hi,
You relax yourself through the jerking every night when you go to bed. People treat the astral projection approach as if it's something different than going to bed at night. We all project naturally when we sleep. What's different is that you have to learn how to keep conscious even though your body goes to sleep. No easy feat. I don't know when you are trying but my favorite time is on the weekend when I can sleep in (this was before I got two wonderfully loving puppies that have since made that hard!). If I can get to that groggy state where I feel like I've had too much sleep then that is a good launching point. Trying in the afternoon or evening never works for me because I'm tired and just fall to sleep.

You may also want to give hemi sync a try. That helped me in my early stages.

You can also visit my other sister site where I have a beginner's guide. That's www.astralvoyage.com.

Best to you.
Anne