Unusual
Bodily Experiences
From: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/ube.html 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 travelling 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 accompanied 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 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, 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). |
