How To Astral TravelThere are a lot of websites out there offering advice on how to astral travel. It has been called the ultimate spiritual experience, allowing practitioners to develop their intuition, have hyper-realistic lucid dreams, journey to planes where the laws of regular space-time don’t apply, and even tap into universal wisdom. However, what most of these sites don’t mention is that these kinds of adventures take planning and practice—lots of it. Much like lucid dreaming for the first time, when you finally achieve astral projection you probably won’t be able to transition right from your bedroom to Paris or the heart of a dying star. The best way to ensure a fulfilling astral journey is to take the experience in small steps. First, work on getting yourself into the right state for separation. Next time, separate and move a small distance from your body, and so on. This article is going to teach you some basic tips and tricks to help you astral project reliably.

One of the hardest steps in astral projection can be getting yourself into the right state of mental relaxation. During the day, our minds are often buzzing with activity; even if you lie down for that midmorning nap— which many practitioners claim is the ideal time to astral project— it can be hard to calm your mind. Astral travel needs a mind that is alert enough to perform mental tasks, coupled with a body that wants to fall asleep. This is the basis of the proven “4 o’clock in the morning” method: set your alarm for 4 A.M. and go to sleep at your normal time. When the alarm goes off, get up out of bed. This will be difficult, but don’t worry—you only have to stay up and active for about two minutes. Go to bathroom or splash water on your face, then return to bed and lie down on your back. A small dose of activity will wake up your brain, while your body will still want to go back to sleep.

In this state, imagine yourself standing in a corner of your room away from the bed. Picture looking at your body in bed from this detached point of view, and try mentally repeating a simple affirmation like, “I am going to astral travel. I am going to leave my body.” Make sure your new point of view is the last thing in your mind as you drift off. At this point you may experience some of the sensations associated with an impending astral separation, including vibrations in the body, buzzing in the head, changes in weight perception and hypnagogic hallucinations.

Here’s the tricky part: in order to separate from your body, you must ignore these sensations. They are signals that you’re about to astral project, but these sensations can also distract you from the mental task of separating. An effective if not well-known separation technique is the “hanging rope” method: imagine a rope hanging above your head, then imagine the action of reaching up, gripping it with both hands, and using it to climb out of your body. Advocates of this technique stress that it’s not a visualization technique, but a method that hones your ability to imagine tactile sensations and physical movement away from your body. This mental activity can give you something to focus on throughout the distracting sensations which precede an astral projection. It also trains you to shift your bodily awareness to a point in space which is divorced from your physical body.

After you successfully achieve separation, you will probably find yourself in a version of your bedroom. For your first journey, focus on exploring the physical space of your bedroom and seeing if you can affect anything in it (by touching and handling objects, etc). It may be hard to stray very far from your body or stay separated very long the first time, but that’s okay—this is practice. Once you feel comfortable in your astral body, concentrate on returning to your physical one even if you feel like you want to explore more. You may even encounter a guide entity in your room when you first project; in this case, talk to it and tell it you will project again in twenty-four hours. Giving yourself a day or so before you attempt to astral project further will give you time to plan what you want to do, and even more importantly, to process the experience you’ve just had. Especially if you’ve never astral traveled before, it’s a lot for your brain to take in. You risk being overwhelmed if you don’t give yourself time to savor each part of the experience.

Astral journeys take planning and a clear idea of where you’re going to go and/or what you’re going to do once you achieve that state. Furthermore, the more time you spend planning your journey, the less you have to think about it when you’re actually trying to astral project. Clear planning ahead of time will allow you to devote all your mental energy to separating from your body during your actual practice. The best way to get started planning your journey is probably to read up on the astral projection experiences of others to give you an idea of what might appeal to you. You might also want to get the support of people around you who may be able to offer you ideas about what to try out while you’re away from your body. Planning your astral journey, much like planning lucid dreams, is a form of visualization which makes it that much easier to get the most out of your astral travels.