Personal Initiative

At the beginning stages, the simplest, quickest, and most effective way to enroll a group is a word-of-mouth campaign initiated by the instructor or organizer himself. Though there are certain limits to how effective a one-man word-of-mouth campaign will be, it should be of some help with your very first local seminars. After that, it will take on a life of its own.

The idea is to personally get the word out to as many people as possible, be they friends, relatives, acquaintances, co-workers, people from your department, people you know from other seminars, friends of friends, friends of family, family of friends, etc. If you have any database of contact information (especially one related to the topic), you might use it too by personally calling around and informing people of the upcoming event in a way that isn’t pushy. When you let people know about the event, also ask them to pass on the information to other people who might be interested. What you essentially need to do is call all of the people on your contact list one-by-one and do the same with your friends’ contact lists. Throughout the entire period of enrollment for your event, tell everyone you meet everywhere you go about it and personally invite them to come. Hand out your business card and advertising brochure at the first opportunity. To hand out as many as possible, you’ll need to try to go out as often as possible and frequent various mixers and relevant networking events. There will usually be tons of people around who are interested in out-of-body travel and lucid dreams. However, you won’t find out who is until you start telling people about it.

You can go to seminars on kindred topics and tell people about your seminar without coming off as pushy. Seminar leaders usually make good use of such opportunities. After several such visits they will have gotten through to their key target audience – one that is not only interested in the topic, but is also ready to pay for and attend seminars. This is a special type of person, and you need to know where to find him.

If your friends (even ones that aren’t especially close) have any kind of "in" with groups of people potentially interested in your training sessions, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You should take advantage of each and every opportunity. It goes without saying that such work is greatly simplified in today’s world by using online social networks, where it’s easy to find your friends’ friends, their friends, the friends of friends of your friends’ friends, and so on.

If this work is done correctly, you’ll be able to enroll a group for your first training session within one to two weeks and do so without paying a dime or mobilizing more heavy-duty resources, which we will go into later. The idea is to make people talk about you and your enterprise. By starting a kind of rumor about yourself, you will force people to keep it going around in one form or another. The end result is that many times more people than you had personally spoken with will find out about your training session. This is especially relevant for "people people" and those whose life circumstances put them in contact with a large number of people.

Modern Realities

The Internet has an ever-expanding place in each of our lives. This is especially true of the most forward-looking, educated, and affluent socioeconomic brackets. This also makes it possible to promote training in out-of-body travel and lucid dreaming using the Internet. Many instructors and/or organizers of such training sessions operate exclusively over the World Wide Web. This is especially true of distance learning and marketing your own educational materials.

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that one will reach one’s full potential as a teacher in this field while ignoring the Internet. Even after finding out about you from other sources, most people will try to learn as much as they can about you from the Internet before using your services.

There are quite a number of ways to promote your seminars and other training formats online. Use at least a few of the methods discussed below. Ideally, you would use every tool at your disposal.

Forgetting to try to re-enter out-of-body experience after it is over, although doing so greatly helps to increase the number of experiences.

Staying focused on techniques for “maintaining” instead of performing them as background tasks.

Getting distracted by events and dropping phase maintenance techniques instead of continually performing what’s needed to maintain out-of-body experience.

Succumbing to the idea that maintaining is not necessary when out-of-body experience appears very deep and stable, even though these could be false sensations.

Using the necessary techniques too late.

Stopping due to uncertainty about further actions, while there must always be a plan.

Forgetting that it is possible to fall asleep in out-of-body experience without realizing it. Recognizing the risk of falling asleep must be a primary focus.

Getting pulled into events occurring in out-of-body experience instead of observing and controlling them from the outside.

Forgetting that techniques for “maintaining” must always be used to remain in as deep an out-of-body travel as possible, and not just for maintaining any odd state.

Stopping the use of techniques for “maintaining” during contact with living objects, when the techniques must be used constantly.

Counting without the desire to count as high as possible.

Performing imagined rotation instead of real rotation.

Passiveness and calmness instead of constant activity.

Excessive thinking and internal dialogue when these should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Assuming the student does not quickly give up on the lessons (and that will depend on how interesting and high-quality the lessons are), quite a high rate of success can be achieved. However, the success rate for one-on-one lessons may fall behind that of regular lessons due to the lack of numerous examples provided by other students making attempts and the overall positive atmosphere typical of very large groups.

One-on-one lessons can be quite profitable a commercial undertaking thanks to minimal expenses (it is usually not necessary to rent anything) and high pay. Generally speaking, there is no limit to the amount that can be charged for them. Meanwhile, it’s better to collect payment upfront for an entire course or at least several lessons instead of at the end of each lesson. Although a fixed price for all students may be set, it’s better to come to an agreement on pricing for each specific situation, as some clients taking individual lessons are able to express gratitude for good results with truly astronomical and unlimited sums of money. A normal course of one-on-one lessons that lasts until the student achieves success might cost from 50 to 100% the average local monthly salary. In certain cases, your fee might equal several years’ worth of the average salary, as for many millionaires this may be the only thing that can bring new experiences to a life in which every material need is met.

I caught the moment of coming out of sleep and separated by getting up. I began palpating everything. I was at home. I went to the other room (lack of a plan of action). I decided to jump from wall to wall. I was successful (lack of maintaining). I soon came to in my own body without any gaps in my memory (lack of secondary separation from the body).