Astral Travel: A Careful, Step-by-Step Approach to Out-of-Body Experience

To astral project, you calm your mind, relax your whole body until vibrations appear, then use an exit technique to separate from your body while staying aware. Below are all four stages, eight exit techniques, a safety section, and two journeys of my own.

Picture lying in bed with a body so relaxed it seems to have dissolved, while your mind stays clear and bright. A hum begins to run through you. That moment is the doorway to an out-of-body experience, and it is where most beginners either panic or push through.

I wrote this guide so you know what to expect at every stage and what to do when it gets strange. Where something is my own experience or belief, I say so, because astral projection is a spiritual practice and not something I can prove in a lab.

Astral projection is the deliberate separation of your awareness, in what I call your astral body, from your physical body while you stay fully conscious. An out-of-body experience (OBE) is the wider term for any sense of being outside your body. Astral projection is the version you set out to produce on purpose.

Unlike dreaming, you keep full awareness. In my projections I can look back and see my physical body resting where I left it, which is a very different thing from a dream scene your mind has built.

Here is my understanding. We are more than a physical body. Within it lives our true self, the soul, the driver of the vehicle we call the human body, and its potential is not limited the way the body is. I also believe everyone leaves the body during sleep, mostly without remembering it. Astral projection is learning to stay awake for something that already happens. That is my teaching and my experience, not a scientific finding, and the safety section below says where the evidence stands.

If the line between a lucid dream and a projection still feels blurry, my article on the difference between lucid dreaming and astral projection goes through it in detail. The two can also lead into each other, as you will see further down.

In my practice and understanding, yes. I teach that you always return to your body, that you cannot get lost, and that fear is the real obstacle. I also want you to hear the cautious side honestly, so this section covers both what I believe and what ordinary common sense adds.

The silver cord and the return

My understanding is that your astral body stays connected to your physical body by the silver cord, a tether that brings you back. In my experience, if something unsettles you in the astral, you simply return, and you cannot decide to stay out against that mechanism. I explain the idea in the silver cord and OBE safety and in my article on the sutratma.

Sleep paralysis: the part that scares people

Sleep paralysis is the biggest reason beginners quit, so let me take the fear out of it. Your mind paralyzes your body each time you fall asleep so you do not act out your dreams. If your mind stays awake while the body is asleep, you feel that paralysis consciously. It happens with the WILD lucid-dreaming technique, and it happens with astral projection.

When it arrives, you may feel pressure on your chest, a pulsing or vibrating body, and loud buzzing or roaring in your ears. Do not move. Moving breaks the trance. Take slow, deep breaths and let the sensations run. The buzzing can be intense, but your ears are fine. I tell my students to treat it as a signal that they are close. My article on sleep paralysis shares my own story and more tips.

Frightening images

Sleep paralysis can bring shadowy figures, a sense of presence, or a heavy weight on the chest. In my understanding these are hallucinations produced by a mind caught between sleeping and waking, and they cannot do anything to you. If you ignore them, they fade. If you feel unsafe, visualize white light around you. I often ask my guides to surround me with a bubble of white light before I set out. For my fuller thinking on this topic, read about the lower astral plane and the entities of the lower astral plane, where I explain what is and is not worth worrying about.

What science says

There is currently no way to scientifically measure whether a spirit leaves the body during sleep or meditation. Researchers generally treat OBEs as experiences produced by the brain, related to dreaming or altered states of consciousness, and OBE-type sensations have been linked in medical discussion to conditions such as epilepsy, anxiety and dissociative disorders. I do not agree that this explains everything, but you deserve to know where the research stands before you decide how to approach the practice.

Sensible precautions

• Practice lying down in bed, in a quiet place, never while driving, operating anything or being responsible for someone else.
• Do not use projection to escape pain. If you are in a hard period, look after your body and your heart first.
• Come back deliberately. Move your fingers and toes, take a few breaths, drink some water, and write down what you remember.
• If you have unwanted out-of-body episodes, lose sleep, feel detached from daily life, or feel distressed, please speak with a qualified health professional. This guide is spiritual education and not medical advice.

Fear blocks projection, so releasing it is the first real step. The practical steps follow.

You astral project in four stages: clear your fears, silence your mind, relax your body completely, and exit when the vibrations arrive. Each stage depends on the one before it, so do not skip ahead. Treat this as a skill you build over many sessions, not a trick you master in a couple of nights.

Before you start, set up the basics:

Step 1: Clear your mind of fears and myths

Remind yourself of what you have just read. Projection is safe in my teaching, you always return, and you cannot get lost, possessed or trapped. Read more about astral projection on this blog and in books, so that the unknown stops being unknown. Fear tightens the body, and a tight body will not let go.

Step 2: Silence your mind

You need to quiet your thoughts completely for several minutes. It takes dedication, but it is learnable.

• The post-it exercise. Stick a post-it on a blank wall and focus all your attention on it. When you can hold that, remove it and keep only its image in your mind. Then let go of the image too, and rest in a clear mind. My guide to how to meditate goes into more detail.
• The breath. Focus on your breathing and nothing else, and keep relaxing as you do. Use the post-it exercise first if you find the breath alone too hard.
• Silent mantras. Repeat short phrases in your mind, not out loud, such as “I astral project” or “I am in the astral plane.”
• Know yourself. The more you understand yourself, the deeper your inner peace goes. This article on how to know yourself helps.

Step 3: Relax your physical body completely

You want to forget you have a body, so go deeper than ordinary relaxation. Guided meditations are a good aid here. Then work through your body in order, from the bottom up: feet, knees and lower legs, upper legs, waist, lower belly, lower back, upper chest, upper back, hands, elbows, shoulders, neck, face, forehead, your whole head, and the space just above the crown. Take a deep breath for each area, and as you exhale, visualize it relaxing deeply or vanishing. Do pairs, such as both feet, together.

Step 4: When the vibrations come, pull out

Once the first three steps are in place and you have stayed in that state for a while, you will eventually start to vibrate. If you ignore the vibrations, you will usually drift into a lucid dream. If you focus on them and visualize floating, you are out. That is where an exit technique comes in, and there are eight to choose from in the next section.

If you lose the trance, you may be dreaming or have had a false awakening, which is a dream of waking up. You can still have a good time, or even try projecting from the dream. My article on types of dreams helps you work out which state you are in.

A faster method once you have a few projections

Do not start here. After you have had several projections, you can shorten the process using your memory of the feeling:

1. Use a breathing technique while you clear your mind.
2. Visualize each area in order, one at a time: soles of the feet, knees, entire legs, root chakra to heart chakra, hands, elbows, arms, then throat chakra to third eye chakra. Take a deep breath for each while you recall the feeling of a prior projection.
3. Focus on the crown chakra and take a deeper breath. Visualize your astral body pulsating strongly, as if about to eject. Do this even if you feel no vibrations. Exhale a little faster than usual, without straining your lungs, and visualize your astral body leaving your physical body.

With enough practice, some people can use this version within minutes from almost anywhere. It helps to know your energy centers, so my guide to the meaning of the chakras is a useful companion.

The best OBE technique is the one that feels natural to you, and I teach eight. Each is a way to give your attention something to do at the moment of vibration, so that your astral body has room to separate. Pick one and stay with it for four weeks before you judge it. Switching every night only resets your progress.

1. The hanging rope

Visualize a rope hanging just above you. Reach for it with your astral arms (imagine them if you cannot yet see them) and pull yourself up it, without moving your physical body. Feel the pressure and strength in your arms. If you notice tremors or a floating sensation, keep going until you feel far from your body.

2. Rolling out

Visualize yourself rolling backward and to the left until your astral body is suddenly ejected from the physical one.

3. Floating out

This is my favorite. Visualize the sensation of floating, more and more, and feel it spread around your entire being until you find yourself in the astral body.

4. Freefall

With your eyes closed, visualize your body descending gently through space. Feel the air moving around you, the gradual pull downward, and the surrender of control. When the falling feels real, you may find yourself drifting free.

5. Third eye focus

Place all your awareness on the point between your eyebrows and imagine energy gathering there as a warm pulse of light. Tingling may start, or faint patterns of light. Hold your concentration until the vibrations build and you separate. This suits people who already meditate regularly. In my own first projection (below), a white light at the third eye was my anchor.

6. Tunnel visualization

Imagine a long, dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. As you move toward it, sense your energy speeding up until you pass into the light without effort.

7. Looking into the dark

This one is simple and still deep. With your eyes closed, watch the darkness behind your eyelids and notice any lights, shapes or colors. As you stay still, these patterns tend to become dreamlike images. Ignore the images and keep looking at the void. A sudden lightness may follow, and you may find yourself out.

8. Levitation

Imagine your body lifting slowly off the bed, getting lighter and lighter. The moment you sense floating energy, trust it and let yourself drift upward.

When and how often should you practice?

Choose a time when your body is deeply relaxed, such as the early morning or just after a short nap. Meditation or gentle music can help set the mood. One approach to try: when you wake in the morning, let yourself drift back into light sleep. When sleep paralysis begins, calmly start your chosen technique, and the rope or levitation methods tend to work well at that point.

Practice every day if you can, keep each session calm, and write down what happens, even if it is only a vibration. That record shows your progress when it does not feel like any.

Yes. You can start a projection from inside a lucid dream, and it is one of the more reliable routes if you already lucid dream. You must be lucid first, which means remembering inside the dream that you are dreaming.

1. Stabilize the dream. It should be at least as clear as life on the physical plane. In a dream you can often see more sharply than in waking life.
2. Fly to a high place. The higher the better, such as the top of a building or a cliff where you cannot see the bottom. The height convinces your subconscious that you will not crash.
3. Fall on your back. Do not fly. Drop, and as you fall, visualize leaving your body while thinking with all your strength that you want to go to the astral plane.
4. Check where you are. You will likely find yourself floating above your physical body in bed. Leave the room quickly so you do not slip back in too early.

If it is not that obvious, do a reality check. You may have appeared in another dream and lost lucidity, or gone directly to a higher astral plane where you no longer see your body. Floating somewhere is a clear sign you are not in waking reality. If you suddenly wake in bed after the fall, do a reality check anyway, because you have most likely had a false awakening. Leave the room, go flying and try again. The worst outcome is that the dream gets wild, which is fun, or that you wake up.

The WILD technique can also be used to make an astral trip at any time of day without needing to sleep, which is why sleep paralysis shows up in both practices. For the full comparison, see the difference between lucid dreaming and astral projection.

An out-of-body experience feels like total freedom. There is no heaviness, no gravity, no physical effort or pain, and a very high happiness. In my experience there is no linear time either, so you do not feel the minutes passing. Your first projection often leaves a very positive mark on your life. Two of my own will show you what it can look like.

One of my first projections

I was lying in bed, very relaxed. I imagined my body melting, fusing with the bed and turning into pure energy. I felt my mind trying to slip into unconsciousness, and I did not allow it. I focused on a white light in the middle of my third eye and kept my awareness on it.

My brain tried to create a new dream, which is easy to do in this state of body asleep and mind awake. I did not want to dream. I wanted to project, so I ignored it and stayed with the white light. After a few moments my body began to vibrate with a lot of energy, like a small earthquake. If you are from California, you will know exactly the feeling. Then I realized it was my soul leaving my physical body.

I began to visualize floating, lighter and lighter, until I could see my body resting in bed below me. I felt a massive rush of bliss, so I asked my guides to surround me with a bubble of white light. My surroundings were pure energy, and so was I. I did reality checks to make sure I was not asleep. Everything felt real, and I could read and do things that would have woken me in a lucid dream. Floating above your own body is proof enough that you are not in waking reality.

Traveling to the Pleiades

This was one of my shorter trips, and it did not start from a lucid dream. I was in bed, already thinking about sleep, and I noticed strong vibrations through my body. I knew I could project, though I had not planned to. It was my first time projecting face-down, since I always go face-up. I visualized my body becoming lighter and began to push my astral body out of the physical one. Moments later I was floating above my body, and I had no difficulty deciding where to go.

I visualized the Pleiades, and at that same moment I could see the Earth moving away. In about three seconds, I was there. The Pleiades are hundreds of light-years away, but there is no distance in the astral. The three seconds are a symbolic number, because I am trying to describe a four-dimensional experience in three-dimensional terms, a bit like fitting a soccer ball into a circle drawn on a sheet of paper.

I found myself floating inside a planet with a reddish sky and orange ground, among natural formations like obelisks and other rocky structures. I decided to mark this as reference point A. It helps to set reference points in lucid dreams and astral travel, because they make the experience easier to remember.

After enjoying it for what felt like a while, I visualized a particular area of the Pleiades and began to float toward it. Then, oops, I ran out of fuel. I appeared in my bed again and, after the usual reality check, saw that I had woken up. The experience lasted about ten minutes. It was short because I had not planned it, and I had not concentrated energy to carry more gas in my astral body.

A well-prepared session with meditation, a calm attitude and a clear intention tends to give you more energy and a more intense projection, and you may reach higher planes and vibrate more. Time ceases to exist in the astral, so a prepared trip does not guarantee a longer one, but it does tend to be richer.

Once you are out, you can go wherever you hold a clear intention to go. In my experience, you visualize the place and you are there. Whatever limits exist are rules of the plane you are in, not distance.

These are the things I explore, and the things my students most often ask about:

• Your own world from above. Fly over your home or your city, which makes a gentle first trip.
• Space. Visit nearby stars such as Orion or the Pleiades, or even another galaxy such as Andromeda, simply by visualizing your destination.
• Beings of light, spirit guides and angelic beings. Many people use the astral to meet their Spirit Guides.
• Other planes. There are many planes of existence beyond the one closest to the physical.
• The Akashic Records. I wrote about the first time I visited my Akashic Records in my dream and astral body.
• Another person. It is possible to project with someone else and compare notes afterward. I explain how in can you meet someone in the astral.

While your astral body explores, your physical body rests in a deep trance. In my understanding, that rest is also when self-healing occurs. A few habits make the tour better. Plan a destination beforehand. Set a reference point as soon as you arrive. Write the experience down right after you return.

Not every part of the astral is the same. The nearest levels can be more chaotic, so I explain them calmly in the lower astral plane and entities of the lower astral plane. Knowing the map takes away most of the fear.

Most people get stuck at the vibrations because of fear, impatience, a wandering mind or sleep, and each one has a fix. Here are the common problems in the order I see them.

• Fear during the vibrations. This is the biggest one. Breathe slowly, remember that sensations are normal, and see the vibration as the doorway. Visualize white light if you need to feel safe.
• Impatience. Results take time. Stay with one technique for four weeks and treat each session as practice.
• A wandering mind. Go back to the silencing exercises in step 2 and spend more time there before you try to exit.
• Excitement that pulls you back. When something finally happens, strong excitement can wake you. Stay calm and let it unfold.
• Drifting off to sleep. This is natural at first. Try practicing in the early morning or after a short nap, when your body is relaxed but your mind is a little more awake.
• Trouble visualizing. If you cannot see images in your mind, you can still use sound, touch and the feeling of movement. See my article on aphantasia and astral travel.

Your energy reflects your thoughts. Calm thoughts bring a calm projection, and each attempt deepens your connection with your astral body, even the ones that seem to fail.

Q: Is it possible to astral project?

Yes, according to my experience and teaching. It is a spiritual practice, and science has no method to confirm that anything leaves the body. Many people report it, and the practice described here is how I do it.

Q: Can I learn to astral project?

I believe everyone can, because I understand it as a natural ability. It takes regular practice, patience and relaxation, and some people progress faster than others.

Q: What are the rules of astral projection?

These are the ones I follow: stay calm, do not move during sleep paralysis, choose one technique at a time, set a clear intention and destination, set a reference point, and write down what happens. Never practice when you should be alert.

Q: How do you astral project to someone?

Agree on it with the other person first, set the same intention, and meet at a place you both visualize. Compare notes afterward. I describe the idea in my article on meeting someone in the astral. Respect other people’s space and consent.

Q: Does astral projection mean out-of-body experience?

They overlap. An OBE can happen spontaneously, and astral projection is the intentional version, where you use meditation and visualization to exit and travel while aware.

Q: Is astral projection dangerous?

In my teaching, no. You stay connected to your body and always return. The more realistic risks are fear and anxiety around sleep paralysis, which I cover above. If it distresses you, speak with a qualified professional.

Q: Can I get stuck outside my body?

No. I teach that the silver cord brings you back, even if you do not want to return yet.

Q: What is the difference between astral projection and remote viewing?

I wrote a separate article on this. Read remote viewing for the comparison.

If you want a guided path through everything above, my video course Astral Projection Mastery goes step by step, and you can ask me questions as you progress. You can also browse my guided meditations for deep relaxation before you practice.

If you would rather start with something free, I will send you a guided meditation when you subscribe here.

Astral projection rewards patience more than talent. Choose one exit technique, keep your sessions calm, and let each attempt teach you something even when you do not leave the body. When it happens, it tends to be unforgettable.

Love & Light,

Rev. Fernando Albert