# Out of Body Experience



## MobiusX (Jul 27, 2010)

A lot of people I heard they say that with DP they feel like they are out of their bodies, but what does this really mean? In near death experiences, out of body experiences means they are above their bodies and seeing their own bodies and everything that is going on in the room. So with DP, do people see their own bodies? Or is it just a feeling of being out of their bodies?


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## PositiveThinking! (Mar 5, 2010)

MobiusX said:


> A lot of people I heard they say that with DP they feel like they are out of their bodies, but what does this really mean? In near death experiences, out of body experiences means they are above their bodies and seeing their own bodies and everything that is going on in the room. So with DP, do people see their own bodies? Or is it just a feeling of being out of their bodies?


I don't feel literally out of my body, I just feel like something's not right, my body doesn't feel right, like I'm half separated from it


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## insaticiable (Feb 23, 2010)

MobiusX said:


> So with DP, do people see their own bodies? Or is it just a feeling of being out of their bodies?


Feeling. For me at least...


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## babybowrain (Aug 24, 2010)

I actually never really experienced this if I remember correctly...


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## Kellysmom (Sep 23, 2010)

I feel like I am standing very close behind my body. I can't actually see my body, but
I see what is going on and what my body is doing like an observer....(like I said) standing
behind myself.


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## Guest (Oct 2, 2010)

Can't say I've ever experienced OBE, either. It is "I'm out of synch with myself." And worse, that the world is flat, two dimensional (and at my worst) that it is not real (or rather it is something I made up in my head). (Though I know that it is.) I haven't had a terrible episode like that in a while. One bad one about a year ago, but there were about 5 reasons why that happened.

All I know is, when surgery is performed on individuals for tumors or epilepsy, etc. MANY strange sensations including DP/DR can be produced by poking in one place or another. There are stories of individuals feeling that "someone is lying underneath them" on the operating table, or that "my legs are flying up against my face." Wish I could find all of these articles, have a lot of them.

One which fascinated me was of a man who had chronic tinnitus (ringing/banging) in his ears that was unbearable. They attempted surgery -- electrical stimulation? -- and during the procedure the man was repeatedly bothered by a sense that he had "moved to the left of himself." His SELF had sort of shifted out of his body in one direction. He found the feeling intolerable.

Unfortunately the surgery never cured the poor guy's tinnitus. I also have an article on OBE created in students.

I have a firm belief that DP/DR are perceptual distortions like these. They have to do with "brain wiring" ... who knows. Very complex.


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## Guest (Oct 2, 2010)

*Out of Body Experience Created in Labs*
_*Two separate studies explore consciousness using virtual-reality goggles to create sensory illusions.*_

*By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 24, 2007*

"Exploring the connection between our mental and physical perceptions of ourselves, scientists on Thursday said they used virtual-reality goggles to induce out-of-body sensations in healthy volunteers.

In simple experiments carried out by teams in Switzerland and England, test subjects looking at video images of themselves projected through the goggles reacted as if their own bodies had been touched when their virtual selves were stroked or poked.

*Tricked by the illusion, participants reported feeling that their consciousness had drifted from their real bodies into their virtual ones.*

The research helps explain the odd sense of floating outside the body, which people sometimes experience after such traumatic events as car accidents. Out-of-body experiences have also been reported in cases in which a critical area of the brain is damaged, such as from stroke, epilepsy or cancer.

The studies, published in the journal Science, "call into question the axiom that everything you are is anchored in your body," said Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, director of UC San Diego's Center for Brain and Cognition, who was not involved in the current research.

Instead, Ramachandran said, "what you regard as you is really a transient construct created by the brain from multiple sensory sources."

*When visual, tactile or other inputs don't line up, he said, the boundaries of self-perception shift.*

In England, Dr. H. Henrik Ehrsson of University College London, asked 12 volunteers to wear virtual-reality goggles while they sat in an empty room. A camera behind each participant projected an image of their backs. Thus, the participants viewed their own backs from the perspective of someone sitting behind them.

Ehrsson stroked each participant's chest with a stick, carefully keeping his arm and the stick out of the camera's view. At the same time, he moved his other arm in front of the camera then dropped it down as if moving to rub the subject's virtual chest.

The subjects could see nothing happening to the images of themselves projected in the goggles. Yet, they could feel the stick on their own bodies. The result was a disorienting mismatch between the subject's tactile and visual senses.

_*When touched, participants reported they had the experience of drifting outside their own bodies toward the direction of the camera and viewing themselves from behind.*_

To test the illusion further, Ehrsson wielded a hammer, swinging it in front of the camera.

Even though the participants felt nothing, they flinched and registered fear through sensors attached to their skin.

In the Swiss experiment, Dr. Olaf Blanke of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne asked seven subjects to wear virtual-reality goggles while standing in an empty room. A camera behind each person projected three-dimensional images in front of them. Thus, participants felt as if they were standing behind themselves.
_*
When their backs were stroked in sync with the virtual image, participants reported feeling that their consciousness had been transported to the virtual body in front of them.*_

The experiment was repeated with a virtual image of a human dummy and a large rectangular object. Participants' sense of self floated into the dummy, but not into the object.

Blanke and colleagues said future experiments would look at the effect of disturbing a broader range of sensory perceptions, such as a sense of body position and balance.

The studies "allow us to understand how consciousness works," said Susana Martinez-Conde, a scientist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, who had no connection to the latest research. "It is what makes us who we are, what makes us human."

[email protected]

Sorry, no link, but you could search for this in the L.A. Times. Date, author, title, etc. Fascinating.


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## EverDream (Dec 15, 2006)

I think I had sort of OOBE. It happened only one time during the 5 years of DP. It's different from feeling like an observer of yourself, looking at yourself from some mental self (not sure how to call it). Anyway, what I think was sort of OOBE happened in the first few months of my DP, which was then very severe and included severe anxiety. I was walking somewhere very crowded and my anxiety got worse and worse... Then I felt like some part of my body *physically* stand behind me. I saw myself walking from behind (from the right side, a bit upward). Everything looked hazy and in kind of slow motion. That was a very frightening experience.


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## Kellysmom (Sep 23, 2010)

EverDream said:


> I think I had sort of OOBE. It happened only one time during the 5 years of DP. It's different from feeling like an observer of yourself, looking at yourself from some mental self (not sure how to call it). Anyway, what I think was sort of OOBE happened in the first few months of my DP, which was then very severe and included severe anxiety. I was walking somewhere very crowded and my anxiety got worse and worse... Then I felt like some part of my body *physically* stand behind me. I saw myself walking from behind (from the right side, a bit upward). Everything looked hazy and in kind of slow motion. That was a very frightening experience.


Wow...I imagine that was terrifying. I hope it doesn't happen to you again.


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