Astral projection

Astral projection is an altered state of consciousness where one experiences the projection of their awareness outside their physical body. One method of astral projection involves maintaining a state of lucidity while falling asleep, resulting in a true of out of body experience. Lucid dreaming, by contrast, classically refers to being consciously aware while dreaming, resulting only in a malleable dreamscape. Astral projection experiences, unlike dreams, share a common set of characteristics usually associated with the astral plane. Projecting to an altered version of the waking world is common, but the practice can also be extended to take place on other planes. Many methods of projection involve using meditation to achieve the same results.

Because astral projection is generally thought to take place on the astral plane, it has strong ties to many metaphysical theories. It is thought that the astral plane is near enough to the physical plane that astral projection can be used to demonstrate otherwise impossible information sharing (e.g. knowing what a friend is doing at 3:00 AM), yielding a potential method to experimentally validate the phenomenon.

Techniques
There are many methods to begin astral projecting, but most fall into two categories:
 * Sleep projection where one attempts to achieve projection through a process similar to lucid dreaming.
 * Mental projection which uses meditation instead to achieve an altered state of mind.