I discovered this years ago but I don’t remember why I was flat on my back in an empty field.
Sometimes we discover that the way things appear to us is restricted or prejudiced. This is an experiment to see if you have an open mind and are capable of altering your concept of reality. Dig it man.
Find an open space, preferably where your field of vision doesn’t include trees or buildings etc. On a clear night, lie on your back with your arms and legs slightly spread. Look up at the stars. Now start thinking about gravity, and think about the Earth as a sphere floating through space. Feel the contact of your back and arms and entire body with the Earth. Concentrate on the concept of gravity…
Eventually you will feel a transformation. Instead of the sensation that you are lying on the ground looking up…you will begin to get the sensation that you are magnetized to the bottom of a sphere and looking down! You will feel that you are suspended at a terrific height over an abyss, and that the only thing keeping you from an endless fall through the spangled depth is the feeling of magnetism where your body contacts the ground.
If it works for you, you may never be so sure of your assumed point of view again. Groove on cats.
Hmm, I think I’ve experienced something similar. Sometimes when I lay down at night with my eyes closed my brain will interpret the darkness as a vast open chamber and I’m very, very high up. Like the one that Slartibartfart took Arthur into. And along with it comes a strange pulling sensation like every cell in my body is being pulled seperately.
They kinda remind me of some of those visual illusions where you can see things in two different ways, like a vase or two faces. Once you get your mind to see it another way it kicks off all these weird sensations. I’ve never tried to get my mind to see what you’ve seen but I have experienced what can only be described as an odd rushing sensation while lying in a wide open field at night looking at the stars.
Unrelated but this made me think of when we were kids. We found this thing : go in a crouched position, inhale/exhale deeply 30 times, then quickly stand up, close your mouth, pinch your nose and blow very hard. Then you pass out!
That was very funny until one of us finished with a gash in the back of his head when he fell back flat on the tarmac.
I may have blown up a couple of neurones but, hell, I replaced them by beer
I’ve done things like this before. It’s just a case of altering your perception. I am sat on a chair on a ball that is spinning at 65000 mph.
Sometimes I can alter my perception so that it feels like the essence of meness (me-ness) is restricted to my head or eyes. I can make myself feel like my body is not part of me, like it is as much a part of me as the floor or the tv.
Who needs all the scenery for that? I’ve been doing that since I was a kid when I couldn’t fall asleep at night just be staring at the ceiling of my room.
As someone mentioned, spinning very quickly in a rotating chair also makes you feel like it is not you who is spinning, but it’s the world which is whipping around you. … that is if you can stomach it, perception tricks are not for the nauseous.
And one word of advice (spoken from experience, trust me). Don’t try to invent these sort of things while driving.
Sometimes if I concentrate with my eyes closed when I’m on my back someplace I can kinda feel, very lightly, like my entire body is rolling over and over in random directions… Sometimes like I’m flipping forwards, sometimes backwards… I have no idea why but I have to really concentrate and be in the right frame of mind to do it. Anyone else experience anything like this?
Every so often I’ll be falling asleep, when suddenly I’ll feel myself tilting backwards or falling forwards, and jolt awake. It’s very weird to feel yourself falling forwards and suddenly “land” backwards on the bed.
I get this a lot too. I’m usually lying on my stomach and then I feel like I’m falling, but only for a split second when I “land” on the bed, my arms and legs tense as if from the shock of hitting the ground. Only for a split second, and I never know when it’s going to happen.
Another weird perception dealie I have is that I’ll be lying in bed with my eyes closed, and my perception of body proportions goes all out of whack. In other words, I’ll picture my head as being HUGE when compared with the rest of my body, or maybe my arms and hands will feel really tiny or something like that. It’s really odd. Not scary or anything, just really an odd feeling.
I totally feel this a lot.
Yes, its not a falling jolt awake.
It’s like you are in a centerfugue thingy the astronauts used.
You know, over up left down right under etc…
Its neat.
I wonder what causes it.
I do the “home user” version of this too, have done for years. Sometimes as I am slipping off to sleep I end up thinking the bed has rotated, and I am facing down but floating so my back is pressed against the matress, a reverse gravity.
Go to a stream. Wade out far enough to not get washed away. Look down at your feet and block out the shore if you have to. Look at nothing but where your legs contact the water.
Now imagine that instead of standing still, you’re actually moving upstream like a jet boat, and the water is leaving trails behind you.
Last year I was waiting for my bags at an airport and it was taking a very long time and I had been in the same place for such a long time looking at the moving thingy that instead of it looking like the bag thing was moving it was like we were on a moving platform going the other way. I think i nearly fell over about 3 times and people started to look at me like i was unsafe.
I used to do this on the swingset when I was in middle school. It’s pretty freaky to see the sky as a giant abyss that you’re liable to fall into as you swing back and forth. After doing that, I would jump off at the highest point in my arc to feel the brief split-second of weightlessness before plummeting down and spraying sand into the face of the annoying girl who wouldn’t get out of the way. Ah, the joys of childhood.
This works best the first time, try it on friends. Don’t explain it to them.
Lay on your back on the ground, have a friend pull your legs up as high as they will go. Close your eyes, and keep them that way. Now have him let them down very, very slowly. This might take a while, patience. You will have an idea of where your legs are, and you will likely think they’re lower than they really are. At a certain point, they’ll feel like they’re going right through the floor, and your body feels completely unsupported. Very queer feeling.
I haven’t done that probably since I was ten, should try again.
I used to do that as a kid myself, except I’d get on the merry-go-round in such a way that all I could see was the sky,(think it’s also known as a roundabout) push myself with my feet till I was going steadily at a slow pace, and look up at the sky. Vertigo is a very good descriptive word for it. Heh, it was fun. Memories…
