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easier to focus instead on the rise and fall of your chest and abdomen. Just close your eyes and focus your awareness on the feeling of your body filling and rising, then emptying and contracting. Focusing on this action helps keep your mind clear. Do not change your breathing rate or depth during this exercise. Do not try to count out breaths to a prescribed rhythm. Simply observe your breathing and use this as a focus of attention to help clear your mind. If your thoughts wander, simply release them and bring your attention back to your breathing. No matter how many times foreign thoughts creep in, push them aside and refocus on your breathing. This takes a little practice, but you will quickly get the hang of it if you persevere. During Week 1, the breath awareness technique is used at the beginning of your daily practice routine, right after deep physical relaxation. This promotes further relaxation and helps quiet the mind for the exercises that follow. However, breath awareness can be done anytime and anywhere. Do it for five minutes; no more time is required. Waiting and travel time are excellent opportunities for practice. Stimulating the Energy Body This week you will also start learning how to stimulate your energy body. Your energy body is a subtle energy counterpart of your physical body. It has many parts, aspects, and functions, including several large primary energy centers and hundreds of smaller ones. Primary energy centers are often called chakras or psychic centers. In essence, these can be thought of as nonphysical organs that are involved with the underlying spiritual, biological, emotional, and mental processes that are associated with the complexities of living. The ability to stimulate, raise, and manipulate your personal energy is invaluable during OBE training. The substance of your projected double is generated by the energy body and is wholly composed of your living energy. So when it comes to having an OBE, the development and manipulation of your personal energy resources is a fundamental skill. Lucidity during an OBE is also dependent upon the flow of personal energy. The exercises in this program rely primarily on the use of body awareness. This is the ability to focus and localize your attention on specific parts of your body. By giving this point of focus movement, it is possible to stimulate your energy body at that location. Combined with other techniques, this enables you to deliberately manipulate the substance of your energy body. This in turn allows