Hello Angie:

The rotating body movement you felt could be a sign of preparation. Perhaps your higher self/guidance knows what you have in mind, and is preparing things for you. Some people have out of body experiences for a while before they find out that their spirit guidance has been helping them have such experiences.

Don't underestimate the value of lucid dreams. Often our spirit guidance enables us to have the kind of experiences we need to have. I used to have out of body experiences with all the effects, and now I either have regular dreams, waking dreams, OBEs that start from a lucid dream, and a kind of experience where I am completely awake as I feel myself travel through a realm as I see it. This latter experience seems to be some kind of third eye/mental body experience.

I think one of the easiest ways to learn is to simply be relaxing in bed when you're not overly sleepy and will fall right to sleep, but when you can pay attention to your body becoming very relaxed but your mind stays alert.

Then try to recognize any mental shift of relaxation while you are sill awake and aware.  If you can pay attention to your mental feeling of just being there, without troublesome thoughts or dream-like pictures floating through your mind, then you're in a good state of relaxation but still awake.

Next you just imagine mentally getting up from the bed and walking out of the room.  Think it through slowly, but smoothly, so don't hesitate.  Just go with the flow of imagining getting up and walking, and then walking through the rooms of your house. 

The relaxed state should let your conscious awareness follow these thoughts and with some practice, the next thing you know you find yourself "out". 

What I've noticed with this method is that there can be some amnesia, for instance you feel as if you are actually physically in another room and you're wondering, "What am I doing here?  I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing."  And it may take a minute for you to realize it is an out-of-body experience. 

But it's a simple method and at least you get to practice the feeling of being elsewhere. 

Also--in this kind of relaxed state, pay attention to pictures of doorways or windows that seem to easily pop into your mind like a dream.  If you are used to lucid dreaming, you'll know what I mean by this state.  Where you feel you are awake but you seem to be having dream-like pictures in your mind? 

If you see any doorway or window--go through it!  Just think "I want to pass through" or something like that, and you will immediately be drawn through.  That's a sure sign of transferring to an altered state.  For some reason, the doorway or window symbol symbolizes this--I believe it is one of those universal symbols since I'm not the only person who has had the same OBE benefit of traveling through them when the pop up.

Thanks for all of the replies, everyone.  I haven't had any more luck, but I'll continue to try.

Angie,

Some tips would be to really put some work into getting the body relaxed, before opening up. Also maybe it can be useful to try using the lucid dreams as a springboard into other areas.