Unusual Bodily
Experiences
Floating
In apparent contrast to the feelings of pressure pushing down on the body, a
feeling of floating or flying is often experienced, often by the same people and
at the same time. These floating experiences range from relatively tranquil
experiences, during which one respondent reported, "I feel sort 'wrapped
in cloud'," to (somewhat rarer) violent experiences in which one can
"even feel the blow of wind across me as if traveling in air at high
speed. Horrible sensations of falling or rising at high speed. Like a lift or
driving down a hill. G- acceleration and deceleration. Almost makes you want
to throw up." The floating is usually described as less violent than
this, however. It is often more like "being lifted, by beings
surrounding one time. One time, looking and seeing the ceiling in front of my
face." The floating experiences are perhaps the most dream-like of the
HHEs.
I closed my eyes and felt as
though gravity had been reduced and I bounced to the ceiling.
At times, if I do not wake up I will feel like I am floating up. I cannot see
around me (usually) but at times I float right through the ceiling!
Several times I felt myself floating over my bed and around my room, usually
I don't have control.
Only very occasionally is the floating sensation localized
to a particular part of the body as was typical for the experience of
pressure. "My feet are the ones that get to float. It is an awkward
sensation, like my head is too heavy to let the body float completely. So I
often lay diagonal, my feet floating up and my head resting on the
pillow..." The sensation is probably best described as floating since
that captures the rather passive nature of the experience. The lack of
voluntary movement during the floating is, of course, consistent with the
associated paralysis.
I felt I was floating just
above my body, but couldn't move at will.
It felt more as though I was locked out of my body and I no longer had the
ability to control its function. Another time when I fell asleep on a couch
by a window in our house which looks way out over the sea I felt myself
floating out the window and across the sea at a tremendous speed. It was the
same thing as I could not move my body and I felt locked out. There was no
bad presence this time but I was very alarmed nonetheless.
Floating is the one sensory experience that is sometimes
associated with the relatively rare experience of enjoyment or bliss.
If I get to the floating stage,
I usually perceive the experience as enjoyable (beats the movies and it's
free!)
I am more likely to feel weightless Like I do not own a body. I was getting
terrified, the room became pitch I felt like I was going up an escalator then
images of hands started grabbing for me I prayed to god and heard a voice
" LOVE, HONOR, and OBEY and He will come into your heart to stay."
I looked at my feet then it felt like going down an elevator really fast
where your stomach ends up in your throat and I was back.
I often feel, especially intensely toward the beginning of these episodes a
sensation that I am being flown around in a circle at intense speed. It feels
like the sensation that I feel when I ride fast carnival rides that have an
intense pull to them. Often after the initial phases of these episodes I have
visual and tactile sensations that I am flying but the force pulling on me
that I described above is usually still present during this.
It always seems that the [reason] I can't move is because I am floating or
vibrating away (only slightly) from my body.
Sometimes the floating sensation is acc ompanied by the
sensed presence. "On two occasions have I ever felt a sensation of
levitating? One time I felt as if I was levitated above my bed. The other
included the feeling of a presence in my room, which appeared over my feet
and the feeling of my whole bed being levitated and spinning. I also saw
objects being thrown around my room." The evil qualities of the presence
may persist in generating images of being abducted by demons or
witches.
A few times, I felt like I was
with the devil (I always think it is the devil). He is usually behind me and
I feel like we are flying through the air at warp speed and I actually see
the view of the room as I am moving and passing by everything.
Out-of-Body Experiences
The floating is sometimes associated with out-of-body experiences (OBE)
although many of the respondents are somewhat uncertain what an out-of-body
experience really means.
I thought that I was floating
above my bed...like an out of body experience. A common report suggesting an
out-of-body experience is that of autoscopy associated with separation from
one's body. " I've actually been floating above myself, and seeing
myself in the bed... it was quite disturbing." Even here the sensation
of floating seems very common.
One time, I had the experience of watching my SP "from above" my
body...as a witness.
In one experience I felt like I left my body. I was hovering right above my
sleeping form.
. . . but have had the sense that I was viewing things from a
perspective that would've been impossible lying down.
In the following case we see something quite different
from autoscopy.
Once was sleeping in bottom
bunk of bunk bead. Floated out of body, hit top bunk, bounced back in.
Also once while floating around near the ceiling, hit head on dining room
door frame & had to check in mirror when I got up to see if I really hit
my head. Also, once floated out of body, looked back to see myself like
you're supposed to, and the bed was empty!
These out-of-body experiences are also somewhat more likely to be associated
with positive emotions: "My OBE was very pleasurable although very
strange." Nonetheless, they may also be very frightening on
occasion.
A couple times only, as I felt I was dying (suffocating) I felt myself “leaving
my body “ and then it ended.
I feel rather that my whole self is being removed from my body against my
will, as if my soul is being trapped.
It always feels like I'm out of my body...usually I am so afraid and so busy
trying to get back that I don't explore this avenue at all especially if I
feel there is something bad near me.
I feel like I am leaving my body through my forehead or top of my
head... I feel that if I let this happen, my body will die and I will
be seeing things that will scare me. So I have not let this happen.
Moreover, the more positive and exhilarating experiences
may sometimes turn sour.
I experienced one 'out of body'
episode where I floated around my bedroom and could clearly see myself
sleeping. When I went back into my body, I felt like I was drifting
down on a parachute. It was slow and pleasant. I re-entered my body abruptly
and couldn't move for several seconds. On a couple of occasions I've
felt that I was being sucked out of my body by my feet and struggled to
resist it. I always try to wake up before it happens to me again.
The various HHEs associated with SP may be categorized
into two or three broad classes of experience. A major set of experiences
consists of a sensed presence closely associated with fear and visual and
auditory hallucinations. This is a very reliable cluster of experiences,
relating to events perceived as external environmental events that has been
consistently found in several independent samples. A second set of
experiences are bodily sensations involving perceived pressure typically on
the torso, most often on the chest, associated with feelings of suffocation,
pain, and fear of dying. A third set of experiences involves feelings of
floating, out-of-body experiences, feelings of tingling or numbness, and,
occasionally, feelings of bliss or joy.
Unusual Bodily Experiences and REM
In the waking state, medial and superior vestibular nuclei contribute, along
with cortical, thalamic, and cerebellar centers, to coordination of head and
eye movements. During REM sleep there are neither head movements nor retinal
images when cells in the pontine tegmentum activate vestibular neurons
(Peterson, Franck, Pitts, & Daunton, 1976; Pompeiano, 1970, 1980). Thus,
according to the activation-synthesis theory, in the absence of correlative
motor pattern generation with corollary discharge or appropriate
proprioceptive feedback, vestibular activation is interpreted as floating or
flying. Such experiences are consistent with sensations of angular and linear
acceleration associated with the vestibular organs (Howard, 1986). Cortical
interpretation of bursts of activation similar to those of REM dreams will be
further complicated during SP if the person opens his/her eyes and receives
contradictory input. We hypothesize that this impossible conflict between
movement and non-movement, between simultaneously floating above, and lying
on, one's bed, is resolved by a splitting of the phenomenal self and the
physical body and sometimes referred to as an out-of-body experience. There
is some evidence that out-of-body experiences in other contexts are sometimes
preceded by, or associated with, feelings of floating (Devinsky, Feldman, Burrowes,
& Bromfield, 1989) and flying (Blackmore, 1988). Out-of-body experiences
have also been indirectly associated with REM states in the context of lucid
dreaming (Irwin, 1988).
In contrast to the experiences centered on sensed presence or pressure,
the unusual bodily sensations do not necessarily imply threatening external
agency. Although out-of-body experiences, when accompanying trauma and/or
seizures, can be associated with fear (Devinsky, Feldman, Burrowes, &
Bromfield, 1989), broader surveys have reported strong associations with
feelings of calm, peace, and joy (Twemlow, Gabbard, & Jones, 1982).
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