There is something to Chris' original posting. I remember when I was a child I used to experience the exact same thing - a sense of "floating" over areas that I knew in my town, but over certain objects (bushes, etc) so I never thought it was dreaming (as surely this would stick to roads, paths, etc - the way I've traversed these routes in the past). It's been some time since I've experienced (or remember) such activity, but I do remember there being a specific action I did throughout... I have a permanent light ringing in my ears (I've always wondered if everyone has it, or whether it's just mild tinnitus - but it hasn't negatively affected my hearing) that I can make very loud by setting my jaw a certain way or doing the childhood "move your ears back and forth" thing, but keeping them back.

Reading the above it looks very weird, but this is exactly what I did - either using the jaw or the ears to increase the ringing - to maintain my nocturnal childhood flotations. Does this sounds familiar to anyone, or shall I save time and call the men in white myself?

I have also had such an experience in my adult life, though I neglected to write it down so have lost the detail forever. Suffice to say it was about 10 years ago, and after I'd pretty much finished uni. Which came as a surprise to me - doing science/engineering should have battered away all remnants of activity in the other half of my brain.

In addition, I have had a conscious OBE without the above "framework" (replacing it with one of Robert's), so it does make me wonder if they're the same thing and whether one is a more natural or evolved form of the other. Either way, I'm sure that if I'd thought to have mentioned this as a child to my mother, then she would have likely encouraged it further. My point being that it just seemed like one of the many "oh, so that's normal" parts of being a child. What certain people see when they close their eyes is another of those things, too.

Matt