What does it feel like when you start to astral project?

When do the first sensations come?

At some point in your practice you will find yourself feeling vibrations, hearing sounds or seeing images that have nothing to do with the room you are lying in. This usually happens at the precise moment between wakefulness and sleep, either when you first go to bed or after waking in the middle of the night, which is how it first happened to me. As you fall asleep, physical awareness fades and non-physical awareness grows, and then, all at once, the sensations that belong to astral projection become very loud and very clear.

What do the vibrations feel like?

The vibrations run all over the body. They feel like an earthquake, a tremor, or as if a current were passing through you, though not in a painful way; it is simply intense. On my first night, July 25, 2011, I woke in the middle of my sleep and stayed still, and within a few seconds this trembling began. I had had hundreds of lucid dreams by then, and you don’t feel this in lucid dreaming, so it was entirely new to me.

They don’t always begin the same way. About a year later, on another night, a convulsion rose from my stomach and spread through my whole body, and I vibrated intensely with the sensation of falling or flying at the same time. This energy can often feel like falling, and it is common for people to wake up right there, as if to say: I don’t want to take this on. I have been through that so many times. You have to learn to like the feeling, and when you go into it and merge with it, you find yourself somewhere interesting.

What do you hear and see?

Sound usually comes with it. On my first night it was like white noise, a hurricane in my ears. On the other night it was loud banging, a vibrating, and people speaking. Your vision changes too: colors begin to swirl behind your closed eyelids, something like a television tuning, with static and many colors at once. As I leaned into all of this on that first night, the sounds became more attuned to what was trying to emerge, and the swirling colors slowly turned into an image, and then into a scene.

These perceptions are delicate. On that second night my physical eyes opened by themselves, and the sounds stopped. I relaxed and closed my eyes again, and they came back. If I fixed my attention keenly on them they disappeared, so I let them be, and they grew by themselves until they had taken up my whole awareness.

What does leaving the body feel like?

Everything builds to a kind of crescendo: so many sounds, so much vibration, and the energy felt more and more strongly. That energy is your astral body. By then you are no longer aware of the physical body lying in bed. On my first night it all became so intense that I had an innate sense I could lean into it, and when I did, I came out slowly and intensely. I didn’t roll out or get up; I floated upward, and as I gradually detached I saw my physical body fast asleep beneath me.

I lowered myself to the floor and felt the carpet under my feet. My dark bedroom felt more natural, vivid and alive than I had ever seen it, with a luminous quality in the moonlight coming through the blinds. It all felt so normal that I walked around with the instinct to be careful not to wake anyone in the house. For a moment there was a little apprehension too: wait, I’m separate from my body, how am I going to get back? I dismissed it quickly and carried on.

Watch the talk on YouTubeMy First Astral Projection Experience

Does it always feel like this?

No. Vibrations are just a sensation that can be felt. If they happen, great; if they don’t, that’s fine too. You may be conscious of the whole separation and literally feel yourself coming out of your body, or your awareness may skip all of it and you simply find yourself standing in your room, fully aware. There may be a pause in your consciousness for some moments, and then you are out. It can be different each time, and sometimes there are hardly any sensations at all.

From a lucid dream it feels different again. The content of the dream dissolves before your eyes and you feel a shift in the atmosphere, sometimes with vibrations, images or loud sounds, though it is less direct than leaving from your sleeping body. If you fly upward in the dream, you may feel the vibrations as you rise, and you may see space and stars, then a darkness for a few moments, and then a new place, where the difference in clarity and sensation is astounding. And however you arrive, the first moments can be a little like waking in the morning: groggy, as if in a trance, until your consciousness has fully gathered itself.

Why can it feel frightening?

Many people tell me that a strong fear comes exactly when the vibrations begin, sometimes with voices or strange visuals. I see this as a test that belongs to the beginning of the journey. It fades as you get past it, and I don’t really have that feeling of vibrations and fear anymore. Fear comes from imagining a reality you assume exists. So simply observe it and see it for what it is, without judging it and without being identified with it. Fear is only an energy in the river, and the river is running faster for a while. That’s okay. Just watch.

What should you do when the vibrations come?

• Stay completely still and let the body go. A tense body is a locked door; on my first night the vibrations came because I did not tense against them.
• Don’t panic, don’t get over-excited, and don’t start analyzing. Get comfortable and acquainted with the sensations, and allow them to be.
• Don’t grab at them. Be patient, surrender to them and let them unfold, and they become stronger and louder.
• The right time to rise is usually when everything becomes very intense and seems to reach its peak. Then float up or get up, without thinking about it.
• If the sensations weaken when you try, stop, relax, and carry on being aware of them. After a few moments they should strengthen again, and you can try once more.
• Let your intention reach beyond the vibrations, to where you want to go once you are out.

And if none of this has ever happened to you, don’t go looking for it. You do not need to seek the vibrational stage that is talked about so often, and you don’t need to experience it in order to astral project.

What does it feel like afterwards?

My first experience ended the way most first experiences do. I flew up through my bedroom wall and saw the trees, the stars and the full moon outside, and after five or ten seconds I was so overwhelmed that I woke up. I lay there in shock and didn’t go back to sleep that night, mostly overjoyed. I wrote the whole experience down in my journal, then got up and waved my hands through the moonlight at the window. It just didn’t feel the same; in the physical it was less vibrant. That is one of the most typical experiences: you come out, you get a shock, you go back to the body, and you stay in awe.

What was hard, for me, came after: making it happen again. You get so excited about the experience that you try to replicate it, and you can’t, because it is an entirely new experience every time. It can’t be reached again from memory. So let go of the first one, and allow space for another experience to happen.

If sleep paralysis or strong sensations at night come often or are distressing, or if you are having trouble sleeping, please talk to a doctor. What I share here is my own experience, not medical advice.