What This Means
This research suggests that unusual bodily experiences (UBEs) — such as feeling like you are floating, flying, or leaving your body — can be reliably induced in a laboratory setting using meditation and light stimulation. In a study of 35 healthy volunteers monitored with brain activity recordings (EEG) overnight in a sleep lab, more than half of participants (20 out of 35) reported experiencing at least one such unusual sensation, with 36 total experiences recorded. These experiences happened not only during waking meditation but also during transitions in and out of sleep, during dream (REM) sleep, and during non-REM sleep. Participants signaled when they were having an experience using a specific eye movement pattern, giving researchers an objective way to study exactly what was happening in the brain at those moments.
This research suggests that UBEs occur at the boundaries between wakefulness and sleep, when the brain is in a kind of mixed or transitional state. During these experiences, brain activity patterns shifted in a specific way: high-frequency brain waves (beta and gamma, associated with active, alert thinking) increased, while low-frequency brain waves (delta and theta, associated with deep sleep) decreased. This pattern — called EEG reactivation — was most pronounced over the temporal regions of the brain, which are known to be involved in how we perceive our own bodies and sense of self.
This research contributes to the scientific understanding of how the brain constructs our sense of having and being in a body, and how that sense can become temporarily disrupted. By showing that these experiences have specific, measurable brain signatures and tend to occur in transitional consciousness states, the study opens new avenues for understanding phenomena reported in meditation, near-sleep states, and certain neurological and psychiatric conditions where distorted body perception occurs.