In Keeper of Light and Dust*, my heroine ''steps out'' and visits a mystical place called The Retreat. This is where she comes to practice the centuries old ritual of Fa gung and recharges her own energy - chi - to pass on to her charges.
"The Retreat was bathed in moonlight. There was a satisfying sense of solidity to the thick walls and the low sweeping eaves of the roof.
The slab of stone surrounding the door was etched with symbols: earth, fire, water, metal and wood - the five gogyo symbols, which the Keeper shared with practitioners
of Ninjitsu."
From: Keeper of Light and Dust* by Natasha Mostert
"Stepping out" is my own term for an out-of-body experience. The sensation of leaving your body behind, travelling through a modified reality and then returning, is an old one: reports of OBEs go back thousands of years. But science only became interested in the phenomenon after Celia Green's first extensive scientific studies on the subject in 1968.
Since then, neurologists, using binaural beats to elicit theta brain wave frequencies or using sinusoidal wave pulses, have tried to induce OBE-like experiences on command. The Swiss researcher Olaf Blanke managed to elicit OBE states by stimulating the right temporal-parietal junction of the brain. But it wasn't until 2007 that Henrik Ehrsson performed the first experimental method that fitted a three-point definition of an OBE, inducing an out-of-body experience in healthy participants at the Institute of Neurology at the University College of London.
*Title used for the US edition. UK edition is titled The Keeper.