Yesterday, I was browsing for OBE related videos and found the following series:

Lucidology 101 - How To Trick Your Body Into Falling AsleepTo Have Your First Lucid Dreams & OBEs Tonight
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E3E88DE0B45599E3

This was from a video channel corresponding to a commercial web site. I must admit that the video is quite well done and very convincing. I watched all the videos in one setting, and couldn't wait to try their method, which involves getting up early in the morning, and then go to practice, tricking your body into falling asleep while waking up your mind every few minutes with a timer.

In my eagerness, I disregarded two handicaps: I currently have a bad cold and my desk is covered with used paper tissues, and I don't have anything to listen to mp3 with at home nor do I have other necessary equipment (not even a simple cooking timer). So I decided to sleep in the office even though I knew I wouldn't be as comfortable as in my own bed and relaxing and falling asleep would be more difficult, especially with a running nose!

I settled to sleep after 22:00 but got up again later because I couldn't sleep. I finally found sleep after midnight. I had programmed my computer first to play one of my usual relaxation hemi-sync CDs, then buffer that with 275 minutes of silent mp3's, and then a beeper sound that would wake me up after 4:30. I stayed up for 40 minutes and went back to "bed". Again, I played a 30 min relaxation CD before programming the 6 minute base napping timer ramp provided by the site aforementioned.

My cold and the difficult conditions made it so that I couldn't properly relax. In addition, I was quite tired and hadn't programmed the timer to be loud enough to wake me up every time. Because of that, the experiment was not completely successful. I slept thus on and off until 9:00am.

Yet, this first try was not a complete failure. Shortly after I went back to sleep in the early morning, I had a false awakening: I was sleeping in the office and was woken up by a client who had managed to let herself in into the office. I was still feeling a bit sleepy, and apologized to her while tidying away what I had used as a mattress to sleep... only to wake up again, this time for real.

Also around that time, I woke up once to find out I could see through my closed eyelids. I knew of the phenomenon because I have experienced it many times. However I do not experience this very often so I take it as a sign that despite the difficult conditions, the practice did deliver some results, so that I can't wait to try again.

Tonight, I shall go home to sleep, but I'll try to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to come to the office and do my practice here, lying by the computer.

I really need to get organized and purchase what I need to practice at home!