Clear as Quartz

The out-of-body experience recreated in the lab

There is a very interesting news story today on the BBC website about the out-of-body experience recreated - in a lab. Basically, research volunteers have experienced seeing themselves from outside their bodies through the help of science - using virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking that the body was located elsewhere.

Clearly, the research will make us ask a whole lot of questions around whether the out-of-body phenomenon is a spiritual one or a physical one - nothing but an illusion in the brain, or a near-death experience related to a separation of the soul from the body.

The Lammas Games

I'm disappearing down to Oxfordshire this weekend - Braziers Park in Ipsden, to be precise, to attend the Pagan festival of the Lammas Games and find out what goes on at such gatherings. I've never been to anything of a Pagan orientation before and I'm quite looking forward to exploring the ideas of this faith with the followers.

I have just written an article 'Teepee Time' for easyJet's inflight magazine which is about Druidry and Paganism, and highlights some of the celebrations that will be taking place over this 'Lammas' period (Lammas or Lughnasadh being the first of three harvest festivals on the Pagan calendar, beginning on 1 August).

Lovebites from an octopus?

Not as dubious as it sounds, but I've been cupped! And yesterday, Soul Coach Alison Levesley was the person responsible for introducing to me to this ancient Chinese therapy involving the placement of what look like little glass fishbowls over my back, to try and break down some of the tensions in the tissues.

Now, because of my work as a journalist and within PR, I tend to spend a lot of time sat at my desk on a computer. As anyone knows, too much of a bad thing is not very good. The upshot is that I end up with rock solid shoulders, sometimes in great pain, and as Alison noticed, even a tendency to hunch over to my left side because there was is much tension pulling me that way.