Astral Projection

Astral projection is the practice of deliberately inducing an out-of-body experience, the vivid sense of being outside your physical body, often floating above it or traveling elsewhere. Practitioners understand this in an esoteric frame: a subtle or astral body is said to separate from the physical body and move through other planes. Most people begin with guided relaxation, breath awareness, and visualization, usually lying down, and try to stay aware while the body falls asleep.

The experience itself is well documented. Surveys and clinical studies describe out-of-body experiences as relatively common, arising spontaneously during sleep, relaxation, illness, or surgery as well as through practice. What differs is the explanation. The esoteric view says consciousness travels. Neuroscience explains the experience through how the brain combines signals about body position, balance, and vision, especially in the temporo-parietal junction, and through states at the edge of sleep such as lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis.

No controlled research shows that anything leaves the body. Some people find the practice a source of relaxation, imagination, and meaning. As a practice of relaxation, imagination, and inner exploration, astral projection is generally low risk. It is not a medical or mental health treatment, it can be unsettling for some people, and it should not replace care for sleep or mental health concerns.

Stories of the soul or spirit traveling apart from the body are very old and appear in shamanic, religious, and folk traditions worldwide. The specific idea of an astral body entered Western esoteric thought in the late nineteenth century through Theosophy, founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others, which taught that a person has subtle bodies in addition to the physical one. Writers such as Oliver Fox and Sylvan Muldoon described their own projection experiences in the early twentieth century.

The practice reached a wide audience through the American radio executive Robert Monroe, whose 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term out-of-body experience for self-induced astral travel. Monroe later developed Hemi-Sync, an audio method based on binaural beats, which he first patented in 1975, and the first Gateway residential program at the Monroe Institute in Virginia was held in 1977. Monroe took part in tests supervised by the psychologist Charles Tart in which he was asked to read numbers hidden from view while out of body, and he did not succeed. Scientists meanwhile began to study out-of-body experiences as a brain phenomenon, led by neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues in the 2000s. Today astral projection is taught by independent teachers, books, courses, and online communities, with no governing body or standard training.