I tried to separate upon awakening, but it didn’t work out. I then began the techniques – scrutinizing, swimming, phantom wiggling, and straining the brain – but nothing worked. I tried forced falling asleep, and then attempted to separate right then and there. It looked as if I was crawling out of my body.

I somehow wound up on the floor. I started to palpate both the floor and my wooden desk. I then put my hands together and rubbed them to deepen. When I blew on my hands, it felt like a breeze was coming out of my elbows. I also don’t understand how my sense of sight came to me, but it did. Although it seemed to be not all that vivid, I could see a man standing at the window of the house opposite mine quite well. For some reason, I began to open and close my eyes, hoping that my vision would improve (unwarranted action). The next time I opened my eyes, they opened to what was already the real world (lack of secondary separation from the body).

Basically, the indirect method is simple: wake up, try to separate, and if you are unsuccessful – alternate techniques for 3 to 5 seconds each over the course of a minute; if something works, try to separate. If you are unable to separate, intensify the sensation derived from the technique that is working and try again to separate. If nothing works over the course of a minute, then fall asleep with the desire to catch the next awakening and make another attempt. However, even after spoon-feeding the group this procedure for a good two hours, it might seem that many still do not grasp the simplest and most obvious points. For example, someone might make attempts while falling asleep for the night instead of upon awakening. This is precisely why it’s important to simulate attempts during the lessons and thus avoid such situations as much as possible.

Three purely psychological points are hardest of all to drive home. First, upon awakening to physical movement or what seems to be an alert awakening, your students will often simply forgo making attempts at a time when they could make them and could achieve results. It will seem to them that nothing will work out anyway (“Why try now?… I’ll try next time…”). This alone can reduce the success rate of your lessons by a third! You should therefore strictly forbid any improvisation. If it is written that they need to awaken and try, that means that they really need to do so, no matter what it might seem to them or what they might think.

Second, the effectiveness of employing the techniques upon awakening nearly completely depends on one’s desire to get them to work, one’s belief in their effectiveness, and the aggressiveness in one’s desire to achieve it. If your students don’t get this, they will perform everything sluggishly and passively, which will substantially lower your success rate. Therefore, when teaching theory or leading practice of the techniques, frequently emphasize the importance of internal drive when performing the indirect method.

Third, what’s hardest of all is to get the students to perform the indirect-technique cycling procedure in a step-by-step manner. Most people will try to ignore the rule that the techniques should be alternated for between 30 and 60 seconds, even if they don’t work. Only afterwards may you back go to sleep for your next attempt. Human psychology is what’s at the root of this. After waking up and unsuccessfully going through one cycle of techniques, the student sees no results. It seems to him that nothing will work, even if he keeps up with it. However, the point of cycling is to obtain results when out-of-body experience does not come immediately.

You need to decide upon the event venue and admission price before you start enrolling students. The cost of attending a three-day seminar should average from 5 to 20% the median monthly income in the community. You need to calculate it so that you will still break even if attendance is minimal (location rental + advertising). The admission price for a well-organized event can reach up to a third of the median monthly income and students can number up to several dozen, which means that you can buy a new car or live for a year off of the proceeds from a single seminar. This should provide ample incentive to spread awareness of out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams.

Meanwhile, you’ll need to create a website for the event or simply put up a page on free hosting servers or social networks. You’ll definitely need to put up a description of the seminar on the Internet where people can learn more information or randomly stumble upon it.

As soon as you’ve put up the website and determined the venue and admission price, you can go ahead with recruiting students using some of the simplest methods out there:

– Tell all your friends about the seminar you’re holding (free)

– Put up ads on local websites and forums (free and paid)

– Send out invites via social networks and e-mail (free)

– Run contextual ads on the Internet (paid)

– Put up ads at centers and stores that focus on related topics (paid)

– Paste fliers on lampposts and designated outdoor places (free and paid)

– Take out paid ads in local media (paid)

– Make a deal with people or organizations who have a database of customers from a suitable industry (free and paid)

– Hand out fliers at events with a similar subject matter, like self-actualization seminars (free and paid)

– Ads on local TV (paid)

– Talk to the editors of local newspapers and TV shows and offer them the chance to write or talk about the event and the phenomenon (free)

– Send out press releases about the event to local media and news agencies (free and paid)

The ads should contain the event venue, date, and time, as well as contact information. It’s also preferable to include the internet address (URL) of the website where people can find out more. In order to grab attention, a large part of the ad should feature easily recognizable concepts that are related to the topic in one way or another and will attract an audience to the seminar, e.g. OUT-OF-BODY TRAVEL, LUCID DREAMING, ASTRAL PROJECTION, etc. If space allows, you can briefly list the practical applications of the phenomenon: obtaining information, self-healing, meeting the deceased, travel, creative development, etc. However, the ads should not be too saturated with information or contain lots of text.

A good working relationship with the media should be a priority for the instructor and/or person organizing out-of-body experiences or lucid dreaming lessons. It’s much more effective than simply advertising in mass media. And it’s free. However, it’s also much more difficult to achieve.

The point is that the topic of phase states is extremely interesting for people in practically all forms of mass media. It’s a "scoop" in and of itself. They’ll be happy to fill their columns and airwaves with the interesting interview you give them. That’s how they make their money – people like you are their lifeblood.

So why don’t they chase after you with open arms? The answer’s quite simple. Contrary to popular wisdom, it is not journalists who seek information, but information that seeks journalists. True, sometimes they get an assignment to do something on a certain topic and might then find you on their own. But even if that is the case, they should already have been aware of your existence in the first place! The key thing to realize is that the doors of any editorial office are open to you as someone who teaches an extremely unusual phenomenon. They’re waiting for you. Call and go in and tell them about yourself. Even if they don’t immediately do a story about you, they’ll still remember about you as soon as they have a need for something out-of-the-ordinary or unusual. And this will happen on a regular basis.

Success in any field will get journalists to begin lining up all on their own. But you don’t have to wait for that. You can achieve it on your own and without doing anything especially difficult. Call up the editorial offices of local newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television studios to ask them which editor you could speak with regarding your activities. Call – don’t write. Letters and e-mails usually either won’t make it, will get lost, or will not be taken seriously. Tell them about yourself and about how you can tell them about the phenomenon. Leave your contact information and just wait. Sooner or later, they’ll remember about you and call. By calling all the local editorial offices, you can become a frequent guest on local morning talk shows and the center of feature stories in all kinds of local media. The media attention can’t but have an effect on how many students you have.

It’s important to remember one rule for working with the media and stick to it all your life: keep everybody’s contact information. As you make a new contact at some media outlet, and especially one that has expressed interest in you, save his contact info and store it in a safe place. Such data is pure gold. Especially valuable are the personal contact details of journalists who you can call at any time to propose something that will be of interest.

Send people to both your website and ours for more in-depth information on other methods and practitioner news. Don’t forget to tell people about our forums and yours, where they can get in touch with thousands of other practitioners of all levels. Many keep online journals that are not only interesting to read, but also motivate people to make their own attempts. Your students might also start keeping online journals so that they can share experiences and seek advice from others.