Hi, Rich here.
A viewer wrote me years ago and asked about something that happens to a lot of people trying to get out of body.
They can get into sleep paralysis.
Their body falls asleep.
They stay awake.
Way to go.
Maybe they can lift their head out of the body, maybe their feet start floating up, maybe part of them feels loose...
but then they get stuck.
At the hips.
At the neck.
At an ankle.
At a wrist.
Whatever.
So what the hell do you do when you’re halfway out and the rest of you didn’t get the memo?
If you’re awake and your physical body is asleep, that’s actually a pretty good place to be.
You’ve made the phase transition.
You’re awake while the physical body is asleep, and now you’re trying to move in a way that isn’t ordinary physical movement.
You may or may not get vibrations.
You may hear things that don’t seem physical.
You may even see something weird in the room.
And yeah, especially when you’re new at it, half the stuff can scare the living shit out of you.
Sometimes it’s scary because it really looks scary.
Sometimes it’s scary because it’s just strange and unusual.
You wake up in a dark room, except somehow you can see.
There’s that weird twilight-looking thing.
And maybe there’s something creepy floating over by the chest of drawers.
Pointy ears.
Weird eyes.
Some freaky-looking thing.
And your first reaction is:
What the fuck is THAT?
That doesn’t necessarily mean the thing is harmful.
Sometimes it just means it’s strange, surprising and completely outside your normal experience.
And that fear can knock you right out of the state.
You go running back for the security of physical reality where things generally don’t float around in the dark scaring the crap out of you.
Let’s say you can lift your upper body but you’re stuck at the hips.
Or your feet float up but the hips stay put.
Here are a few things I’ve tried and thought about over the years.
Before you go into sleep paralysis, lie in bed and imagine the exact movement you want to make.
If you usually get stuck at the hips, imagine your feet floating up...
then imagine the hips unsticking...
then the torso...
then the neck...
then the head.
Just rehearse the whole thing.
You’re basically doing a dry run.
This is one of the classic techniques.
Imagine yourself rolling from side to side like a log.
Not the physical body.
The second body.
Practice the feeling of rocking and rolling out before you fall asleep.
Then if you reach sleep paralysis and feel stuck, you already know the motion you’re trying to make.
I could have made this a three-minute article, by the way.
But apparently I didn’t.
Here’s one of my own theories.
I haven’t found some clear definitive explanation for why people sometimes get stuck at one particular body part.
But I’ve noticed something interesting in my own experiences.
The physical body can feel almost like a magnetic field for the second body.
Sometimes getting out feels like trying to pull through molasses or thick goo.
Really sticky.
But once you get maybe a foot away, the pull gets weaker.
Two feet away, weaker still.
Far enough away and you barely notice it.
Kind of like a magnet.
The closer you are, the stronger the attraction.
So one possibility is that wherever you’re sticking, there’s more “pull” there than there should be.
That brings me to another possibility.
This part is theory.
If you consistently get stuck in the same place, you might experiment with the idea that the energy in that area is cluttered, blocked, or just not flowing very well.
If you’re stuck around the hips, for example, you might work with the root or sex chakra before going to sleep.
Relax.
Focus on the area.
Imagine it clear.
Imagine the energy moving freely.
Flow some love or healing energy into it.
Whether you think of that literally as chakra work or simply as focused visualization, the practical idea is the same:
Work on the place where you keep sticking before you enter the state.
Then see if anything changes.
If you’re getting sleep paralysis and parts of you are already moving out, I wouldn’t look at that as failure.
You’re close.
Really close.
You’ve already done one of the hardest parts:
the body fell asleep and you stayed awake.
Now you’re learning how to move once you get there.
Practice the movement ahead of time.
Try rolling.
Try imagining the stuck area releasing.
Experiment with energy work if that makes sense to you.
And most importantly, don’t panic just because something weird happens.
Weird comes with the territory.
Hope some of that helps.
And if you try any of it, I always like hearing what happened.
— Rich