Clearly, I've failed the ten post challenge. It's alright, it was honestly preventing me from talking about the things I wanted to talk about. 

Note: after reading this a second time, I want to apologize in advance for the possible overuse of parentheses. I have a hard time leaving the irrelevant out of my writings and find my justification in the fact that the brackets/parentheses indicate the lack of direct relevance. Actually, this is my personal blog. I can bracket the entire thing if I wish! [{(Jokes)}]
    
I've been reading a lot about the out of body experience (OBE) lately. Until recently, I didn't believe it to be doable because I associated it with ghosts, spiritual travelling, and the movie Insidious. However, I've been doing much research on the matter and from what I've read, OBE is merely the sensation that one is no longer attached to his or her physical body and the feeling of floating over and looking down on it, whatever the cause. Now, I'm not saying that the phenomenon as explained by the numerous texts I've been consulting disconfirms the notion of astral projection in any way. Little is currently known about the process through which one attains OBE, but the fact that it has been known to occur spontaneously during near-death-experiences (though it can happen in many other instances and can be self-induced) tends to point toward an actual leaving of the physical body.

While I was searching for methods of self-induction, I came across many research papers, experimental reports, and tutorials, nearly all of which stated at one point that sleep paralysis is central to a successful experience. PERFECT!

I know a great deal about sleep paralysis. This is because it's been the source of much panic at an early age. It happens when, at sleep onset or upon waking up, you are fully awake but find yourself unable to open your eyes or move move any part of your body. I actually remember the first time it happened to me, and I recall panicking my way through the following steps at the approximate age of six years old:
  1. I slip out of a dream and into consciousness. My eyes are still closed. I feel my bed underneath me and I can hear everything going on.
  2. I hear the sizzling of a frying pan and I smell bacon; mom's cooking breakfast. I want to get up and go eat!
  3. I realize that I can't get up, move my limbs, or open my eyes. What's going on? I don't like this. I conclude that though I'm awake, my body must still be sleeping.
  4.  I flip out and try to get myself out of it. I violently try and shake my whole body until it starts actually moving. It takes much time and effort. Finally, I free myself. As I will find out later on, the violent panicking actually worsens matters and can extend the state.
I used to think that these entire episodes weren't real, that the fact that I could hear, feel, and smell what was going on was but my senses transcending my dreams, much like a song on a clock radio becoming part of a dream. When I realized there was more to it, I accepted it as something wrong with my body that I just had to deal with. (for some reason, I never sought help or information on any abnormal behaviour or phenomenon I experienced from the time I was a child. I wish I had, for many of my problems could have been assessed, dealt with, and possibly eliminated instead of becoming larger, more serious or inconvenient problems later on. Side note rant over.) Soon, I started learning not to panic, as this was happening more and more often (it still happens, about once every few days, usually on restless nights). I quickly developed my own strategies for coping. If it happened at night, I would just remain calm in my paralyzed state, clear my mind, and let myself fall asleep, at which point I would nearly always lucid dream without doing a reality check. If it was morning, I would wiggle my fingers and toes while rolling from side to side in my mind, until my mental movements became physical movements and I was paralyzed no more.

Little did I know that my curse of sleep paralysis was an aptitude sought after by OBE enthusiasts, as it is the first step to the experience. In the past week, I learnt that to achieve this goal, you need to get yourself to the paralyzed state, but  instead of falling asleep, you must trick your body into sleeping while mentally staying awake. Rather than remaining unable to move in your body, you're supposed to remove yourself from your body using certain specific strategies. I'm trying it sometime this week, so I'll be blogging about the method I used as well as the results yielded. Stay tuned!