Astral projection: what it is, how people practice it and what science says

What is astral projection?

People who describe it talk about a very specific sensation. You're lying down, your body feels light or starts to vibrate, and suddenly you're taking in the room from above, sometimes with your own sleeping body there on the bed. In some accounts the person moves through the house, travels somewhere far away, or feels they've entered other planes.

For many spiritual traditions, this happens because there's a subtle body, often called the astral body, that can separate from the physical one. For science, it's an out-of-body experience, something the brain can produce under certain conditions. The two views describe the same experience in different words, and here we set out both with respect.

What isn't in doubt is that the experience itself happens. Lots of people have had it, sometimes just once in their lives, often while falling asleep or waking up, and they remember it as intensely vivid.

A long tradition

The idea of a soul or double that travels while the body sleeps turns up across many cultures and eras: in shamanic stories, in ancient religious texts, and in folk beliefs about the spirit wandering during sleep. It isn't a modern invention.

The phrase "astral projection" spread mainly through Theosophy, the spiritual movement founded in the late nineteenth century by Helena Blavatsky and others, which taught about several subtle bodies and an astral plane. Later occult and esoteric writers took up these ideas and wrote manuals on how to bring the experience about.

In the twentieth century the American Robert Monroe took things in a different direction. A radio executive who began having out-of-body experiences without seeking them, he described them in Journeys Out of the Body (1971), a book that reached a huge readership and helped popularize the term "out-of-body experience", coined by the British researcher G. N. M. Tyrrell in 1943. He later founded the Monroe Institute, which explores states of consciousness with the help of sound.

What science says

Neuroscience hasn't found evidence that anything actually leaves the body. What it has found is that the brain is constantly building your sense of being inside your body, by combining sight, balance, touch and the position of your muscles. It works like a map of the body, and when those signals don't line up, the feeling of "I am here" can shift.

One key region is the temporoparietal junction, where the brain's temporal and parietal lobes meet. In 2002 the neurologist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues reported in Nature the case of a woman with epilepsy who, when the right angular gyrus was electrically stimulated during a medical assessment, felt she was floating and saw herself from above. Later work by this and other groups, using virtual reality, showed that a mild sense of being outside one's own body can be induced in healthy volunteers.

Science also links these experiences to sleep. Many happen on the border between waking and sleeping, when the body is already asleep but the mind is still awake, which is exactly where sleep paralysis lives. Others look a great deal like lucid dreams. From this point of view the experience is real as an experience, even if it doesn't mean consciousness is traveling outside the body.

None of this requires anyone to give up their own understanding of it. Many people find astral projection deeply meaningful, and that has value for them. But it would be dishonest to tell you it has been proven: so far, it hasn't.

How people practice it

If you're curious, these are the guidelines practitioners tend to share. Think of them as a way to explore deep relaxation and the edge of sleep, without fixed expectations.

It's normal for nothing to happen for a long time, or ever. That says nothing bad about you, and the relaxation is a good result in itself.

• Pick a quiet time. Many people prefer the early hours or an afternoon nap, when the body drops off easily.
• Lie on your back and relax your body part by part, from your feet up to your head, breathing slowly.
• Let your body fall asleep while your mind stays alert. This is the hypnagogic state, the moment when loose images, sounds or sensations drift in before sleep.
• If you feel vibrations, a buzzing, heaviness or a floating sensation, which is what many practitioners describe, stay calm and simply notice it without forcing anything.
• Some people imagine rising, rolling over or sliding out of their body. Others just wait.
• Afterwards, write down what you experienced in your journal, as you would a dream.

Staying calm and safe

The thing people most often run into on this path isn't leaving the body but sleep paralysis: you wake up and can't move for a few seconds, sometimes with a sense of a presence in the room or a weight on your chest. It's frightening, but it's harmless. It happens because the muscle relaxation of REM sleep carries on for a moment after the mind wakes, and it always passes on its own.

If it happens to you, remind yourself that it's temporary, breathe slowly and try to move a finger or a toe. Many people find that the less they fight it, the sooner it ends. It's also worth keeping a few limits in mind:

• If fear is costing you sleep or making bedtime hard, stop practicing for a while.
• If sleep paralysis happens very often or distresses you, see a sleep health professional.
• If you have, or have had, mental-health conditions such as dissociation or psychosis, talk to a professional before you practice.
• If you ever feel you're outside your body while awake without trying, or together with fainting, seizures or confusion, see a doctor.

Astral projection and lucid dreaming

The two practices are so alike that many people slip from one into the other without noticing. Some lucid-dreaming researchers, Stephen LaBerge among them, have suggested that many out-of-body experiences are lucid dreams that begin in a very convincing setting: your own bedroom. Many practitioners, on the other hand, hold that they're distinct states.

Whichever view you take, the tools overlap: relaxation, attention at the edge of sleep, a journal and plenty of calm. If that path appeals to you, our article Lucid dreaming: what it is and how to have a lucid dream explains techniques such as reality checks, MILD and wake back to bed, step by step.

In short

Astral projection is a practice with a history and an experience that many people genuinely have. You can approach it with curiosity and respect, without fear, and without needing either to believe or to disbelieve. What matters is that you sleep well, feel safe, and ask for help if anything troubles you.