Out of body experience facts for kids
An Out of Body Experience (or OBE) is a big feeling of not being where your body is. It hardly ever happens and does not last very long. It feels like you can see and hear and move to different places or even fly, but all the time your body is sleeping in bed. It feels very strange.
When OBEs happen
OBEs happen most when you are waking up or going to sleep. They can happen if you nearly die too. That kind of OBE is a Near Death Experience, or NDE. Some people get OBEs during too much marathon running or mountain climbing.
Parts of an OBE
OBEs often work the same way. When they do, they are "classical" OBEs.
- Before a person has a classical OBE, they have stopped joining in with the world. They have stopped thinking about what their eyes or ears or body tell them. Mostly, this is because they are sleeping or meditating.
- Next, sleep paralysis starts. They can not move at all, and often start to hear strange sounds. Sometimes, they think their eyes are shut, but still feel that they can see. Often, it feels like their body is buzzing all over, or like they are in a storm. Sometimes their heart feels very fast. People can worry during this part because it is so strange.
- After this, they feel that they get up and move away. Their body is still in bed, but the place they want to move to looks closer. They feel a strong pull back to their body, so it is not easy. They only feel pull near their body.
- After the pull has stopped, they can walk or fly anywhere. It feels very easy.
- Soon, they feel they must go back. If they do not, a pull takes them back very quickly, or they wake up or go to sleep.
Some people say they have "phasing" OBEs too. They just stop noticing the world, remember the easy feeling and start seeing. There is no sleep paralysis so they can sometimes talk about it at the same time.
Locales
Most people can see two kinds of place when they have an OBE. Robert Monroe called them Locale I and Locale II, but some people call them the etheric plane and the astral plane.
Locale 1 places look like ordinary places in the world. You might see your bedroom or sleeping body in Locale I. Locale II places are more like dream worlds or heavens.
What OBEs are
Some people think OBEs are just dreams, but other people say OBEs don't feel like that. Some people think that when you have an OBE, you're like a ghost and the things you see are real. People who think that sometimes call them 'astral projections'. Some scientists like Sam Parnia are doing tests with hidden pictures in hospitals, to see if ill people really can see them when they have NDEs.
Images for kids
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A 19th-century illustration of Robert Blair's poem The Grave, depicting the soul leaving the body
See also
In Spanish: Experiencia extracorporal para niños
