Getting Out of an OBE Slump Part 2

by Bob Peterson

In my last article, I gave several suggestions on how to break out of an OBE slump or dry spell. These included:

• Adopt Healthy OBE Habits
• Harness unfamiliarity
• Adjust your weight
• Adjust your beliefs
• Adjust your gut microbiome
• Try fasting
• Use the lucid dream portal
• Try broken sleep or WBTB
  

Here are some more things you can try to break out of a slump:

Try my formula for success

This is best explained in my article When All Else Fails: A Formula for OBE Success. Basically, you go to a friend or relative's house, stay up late playing strategy games that require a lot of analytical thinking, then allow yourself to sleep in late. Every time you wake up after six hours of normal sleep, practice your OBE techniques until you're either successful, or fall asleep. If you fall asleep, resume your practice the next time you wake up.

Stay positive

Some authors say that OBEs are nearly impossible if you have "low vibrations" including, but not limited to:

• Being discouraged
• A negative "I can't do this" attitude
• Anger
• Sorrow
• Self-pity
• Sadness
• Depression
  

So do whatever it takes to raise your vibrations. I often find that music is a good way to raise my vibrations. I talked about this in my blog article Raising Your Vibrations.

Eliminate distractions

Some people have a difficult time achieving an out-of-body experience because there are too many distractions: outside noises, lights coming through the windows, cats, dogs or other pets jumping on the bed, self-imposed deadlines.

Try to eliminate these distractions, at least temporarily. For outside noises, use earplugs or noise-canceling headphones. For lights, use a sleep mask that blocks out all the light. Close the door so the pets can't get into your practice room. And practice when you don't have any deadlines.

Reduce your exposure to electronics

Some people claim that electronics, like cell phones, interfere with OBEs. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that when you attend a program at The Monroe Institute, they ask you to shut off all electronic devices, and only use them when necessary. So don't stay up late playing Candy Crush on your phone or iPad before bed, and don't stay up late reading Facebook on your desktop. Remember: this is just temporary until you break your dry spell and induce another OBE. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices.

Do more slow-moving exercises

According to How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, many extraordinary states of consciousness occur when there's a sudden drop of neural activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. One of the best way to ramp up that neural activity is with slow-motion exercises like Tai Chi Chuan, Qi Gong, or Yoga. Consider doing a half-hour to an hour of exercises like these, then lie down and go into a state of deep relaxation. When William Buhlman taught OBE classes at the Monroe Institute, most of the students did yoga stretching before their first morning OBE practice. I went to a different room and practiced Tai Chi, which I prefer.

Avoid music the day before OBE practice

I'm a music lover. I love to listen to music under headphones, and I do it a lot. But one of the helpful hints I penned into my early OBE journals is this: For some unknown reason, I'm much more likely to have an OBE if I stop listening to music the day before. So I'd listen to music Monday through Thursday, then I'd have "Music-Free Friday" and I'd perform my OBE attempts on Saturday morning.

Try a hypnotist

Some people can induce an OBE simply by being hypnotized. That goes for self-hypnosis, hypnosis tapes, or a professional. It's worth a shot.

Boat Time

My favorite OBE techniques start with me imagining that my body is gently being rocked forward and backward or side-to-side. That sense of imagined motion is key to letting go of my body. So sometimes if I'm in a slump I'll spend several hours on a boat. I'll go boating or fishing, or maybe just close my eyes and feel the rocking sensation as the boat is rocked with the waves. When I get back on shore I feel "sea legs": the sensation that I'm still rocking when I'm really not. The next time I lie down to perform my OBE technique it's easier to recall the rocking sensation from memory and imagine I'm still rocking as I relax and focus my mind.

Energy Bouncing

In his astral projection books, Robert Bruce recommend "energy bouncing" to loosen yourself from your physical body. This is not part of an exit technique. It's  just a way to loosen the tight grip you have on your physical body. In a way, these are not too different from "Boat Time" above. For example, he suggests:

• Close your eyes and imagine reaching out with nonphysical hands and touching the wall in front of you, then retract and imagine reaching out and touching the wall behind you. Then imagine touching the walls to your sides, etc.
• He also recommends imagining your non-physical energy (instead of your arms and hands), like chi or Qi, extending away from your body and back. 
• He also recommends an energy exercise much like the "microcosmic" orbit taught in Tai Chi in which you imagine nonphysical energy circulating around your body in a full circle, starting from the "Dan Tien" (chakra just below the belly button) down to the root chakra, then back up the spine to the crown chakra and back down to the Dan Tien again.
  

Eliminate roadblocks

Eliminate the common roadblocks that may be keeping you from success. In my next blog article, I'll talk about eliminating roadblocks.

Bob Peterson
24 Aug 2021

Getting Out of an OBE Slump Part 1

by Bob Peterson

Even the most accomplished out-of-body explorers (myself included) have slumps or dry spells: periods of time where you don't have any OBEs. Slumps can go on for weeks, months, or even years. It can be discouraging or even downright depressing.

One saving grace is that every OBE, no matter how short or insignificant, seems to make it easier to produce the next one, at least for a week or two. So once you're in the zone, you can stay in the zone, at least for a while. The problem is producing that slump-breaker OBE to get back on track.

So how can you break out of an out-of-body slump and get back in the zone? If I knew a secret formula, I wouldn't have slumps myself. However, I have spent a considerable amount of time studying what works and what doesn't, so I thought I'd share some ideas in this article (and the next).

Try some of these things on a temporary basis to induce that ice-breaker OBE to get you back in the zone:

Adopt Healthy OBE Habits

Bad habits hinder your efforts and good habits reward your efforts. So make sure you do the things I recommend in my article The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Astral Travelers, namely:

• Keep a dream journal
• Learn to accept an alternate body schema and "story of experience"
• Meditate Daily
• Eat early and eat light
• Do OBE/Astral Projection affirmations every morning
• Read OBE/Astral Projection narratives before bed
• Practice, practice, practice.
  

Harness unfamiliarity

One of the best slump-breakers I know is unfamiliarity. I wrote about this in my blog article Harnessing Unfamiliarity for OBEs. The most effective is to sleep at an unfamiliar location, like a hotel room. If you can't do that, try these things:

• Practice in a different room
• Practice from a couch or recliner
• Change your environment. For example, change the position or orientation of your bed.
  

Trim up

Try to lose some weight. I've said before that if I get too heavy, like more than 185 pounds (84 kg), my ability to induce OBEs seems diminished. When I get back down to 185 or under, OBEs seem easier.

Adjust your attitude and beliefs

Rick Stack's book Out-of-Body Adventures primarily focused on changing your belief system. It's simple: your OBE ability can be blocked by negative beliefs. If you believe it's difficult to achieve, it will be. Sometimes you just need to get out of your own way. Improve your beliefs to improve your reality. Positive affirmations can help.

Adjust your gut microbiome

The gut microbiome are the trillions of friendly bacteria that live inside our intestines which help us digest food. Thanks to these bacteria, scientists estimate there is more non-human DNA inside our bodies than actual human DNA. Those bacteria are essential to our survival and if they accidentally die (due to radiation or whatever) they need to be replaced: people sometimes need "fecal transplants" to restore a normal microbiome.

Scientists now know the microbiome heavily influences our sleep and dreams. The same goes for lucid dreams and OBEs. Try these hacks:

• Take raw (I repeat: raw, not cooked) potato starch mixed with water to feed your gut bacteria. It will give you more restful sleep and more vivid dreams. Mix it with something flavorful to reduce the chalky flavor.
  
• Reduce (or altogether eliminate) foods that cause constipation, like nuts and cheese. Make sure you eat enough fiber/fibre.
  
• Don't overeat: Eat early and eat light.
  
• Eat pro-biotic foods (like yogurt) or drink pro-biotic drinks (like kefir or lassi) every day.
• Drink lots of water (not soda), but avoid tap water that contains flouride.
• Reduce your intake of artificial sweeteners aspartame (Nutrasweet), sucralose (Splenda), and Saccharin. In my experience, Monk Fruit-based sweeteners are okay. I haven't done much study of the effects of Truvia or Stevia.
• Try eating more wheat gluten unless your body reacts negatively to it. I know this may sound unusual, but I describe why in my article OBEs, Pasta and Wheat Gluten.
  

Try fasting a day or three

Some people insist that short periods of fasting help induce OBEs.

Use the lucid dream portal

In his book Astral Projection, Oliver Fox wrote that when he was young, he used his "Pineal Doorway" technique to astral project, but as he grew older, it stopped working. Luckily, he found another way, and that is to leverage lucid dreams. There are many techniques for lucid dreaming, but the simplest is to first, analyze your dreams (from your dream journal) to find common themes. For example, do you often find yourself in the same situation or setting when you dream? Second, condition yourself to question reality (and whether you're dreaming) whenever you find yourself in that situation. Here are a few examples:

• If you often dream you're back in college, tell yourself whenever you find yourself in college, you'll question whether you're dreaming.
• If you have nightmares, tell yourself that whenever you're afraid, you'll question whether you're dreaming.
  
• Tell yourself whenever you walk through a doorway or threshold, you will question whether you're dreaming. It helps to actually do this in real life. In other words, (1) Tell yourself "Every time I walk through a doorway, I will question whether I'm dreaming." (2) Walk through a doorway, (3) Question whether you're dreaming or actually awake and really give it some thought, then (4) Reaffirm to yourself "Every time I walk through a doorway, I will question whether I'm dreaming."

Third, periodically check whether you're dreaming throughout every day. Fourth, several times throughout the day, think to yourself, "Bring me to awareness!"

Once you find yourself lucid in a dream, learn to dispel or dismiss the dream hallucination and enter the OBE state. I describe this better in my article Turning Lucid Dreams into OBEs.

Try broken sleep or WBTB

Many people find success with both astral projection and lucid dreaming by interrupting their sleep. For example, they use an alarm clock or app to wake them after 4 to 6 hours of sleep, then, after staying awake a short period of time to make sure they're not too sleepy, go back to bed and practice their OBE technique. This is described better in my article Wake Back To Bed Explained. If that's not practical, try taking midday naps. And make sure you get plenty of sleep.

Conclusions

I'm not asking you to change your lifestyle. These are all things to try temporarily, just long enough to break your dry spell. I'll share more ideas for how to break out of an OBE slump in part 2.

Bob Peterson
10 Aug 2021