From: david@edenroad.demon.co.uk   
      
   On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 20:26:14 -0800, jaheem.hippock wrote:   
      
   If you'd like a less "mystical" take on the events...   
      
   > Several times in my life when I've been in a relaxed or maybe   
   > trance-like state I've sometimes for a brief couple of seconds felt   
   > like parts of my body or objects around become much larger in size, but   
   > they were only sensations.   
      
   It's your proprioceptors - see below. :-)   
      
   >   
   > A while ago I for some reason started to feel very relaxed, I was   
   > reading some humour on the Internet and this was making me feel in high   
   > spirits and quite relaxed. Then, I started having the sensation that   
   > the words on the screen were much bigger, almost like I was staring at   
   > a screen maybe thirty times it's actual size. There was no change to   
   > what I could see, but I kept having the sensation that things were   
   > changing.   
      
   Odd isn't it?  Last time it happened to me I was being given a very strict   
   talking to by an old friend of the family - it was very hard to keep a   
   straight face when talking to someone who seemed to have such a massive   
   head.   
      
   >   
   > This carried on for about 5 minutes, at which time I'd become very   
   > relaxed and was starting to feel the sensation of my hands and head   
   > being much bigger. I guess everything around me felt like it was   
   > becoming bigger and smaller, but I had more of a sensation/awareness of   
   > the "hugeness" of everything around me.   
      
   It's just a glitch in your neurocircuitry - don't worry about it - it   
   doesn't mean anything.   
      
   >   
   > Eventually, I decided to lie down on my bed which is when the real fun   
   > began. For about 15 minutes I felt like I was floating up and down,   
   > like I was lying on a lilo in a pool or in the sea.   
      
   You probably didn't notice; but your eyes were probably panning back and   
   forth - the position of your eyes is connected to your body image, so that   
   your brain can compensate correctly for the changing imagery (essentially   
   to realise that it's your eyes that are moving, and not the rest of the   
   world)   
      
   Sometimes this mechanism goes wrong, especially if the other inputs which   
   stabilise this system - the vestibular systems in your ears and the   
   proprioceptors in your muscles - are missing or not compensated for   
   correctly.  This is one of the reasons why profound relaxation seems to   
   help induce this feeling - the proprioceptors lose 'focus' after about 20   
   minutes of non-activity in the muscles in which they're embedded.   
      
   > I also felt like my   
   > body was trying to float away but it wasn't happening. After about 15   
   > minutes I felt my whole body rise about 2 feet in the air, to say the   
   > least this scared the shit out of me and I instantly opened my eyes in   
   > fright to find myself lying back down on the bed.   
      
   That's the vestibular system again, feeding phantom feelings of   
   acceleration; which make you feel as though you're moving.  More usually,   
   they aren't quite in sync; which makes you feel you're rocking around an   
   axis from your head to your feet.   
      
   As you discovered when you opened your eyes, it's just an illusion.   
      
   >   
   > I'm willing to put this down to my imagination but immediatly after   
   > this happened I felt like there was some kind of presence with me,   
   > waiting for me to leave my body. I guess I felt like this was some kind   
   > of a guide who came down to help, I can't be sure. Has anyone else felt   
   > this?   
      
   Lots of people, it's a very common hallucination.  It's believed to be   
   associated with the Temporal Lobes.  There is a researcher called "Michael   
   Persinger" who can induce feelings like it by magnetically stimulating the   
   temporal lobes.   
      
   It's probably the same phenomenon which is responsible for night   
   time "alien abduction" experiences, since his subjects sometimes report   
   details common to those experiences.   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)