Breath & Energy · “Breath Is the Bridge”
New Energy Ways & the Rope Technique
Raise and circulate body-awareness energy, then trigger a clean out-of-body exit by ‘climbing’ an imaginary rope above the body.
Relax to the edge of sleep. Warm up with NEW: move felt awareness up through the body. Then imagine a rope above you and climb it hand-over-hand with feeling only — no real movement. Push through the dizziness and vibrations until you feel yourself lift out.
What it is
Robert Bruce’s signature contribution is a two-part system. New Energy Ways (NEW) is a method of raising “energy” through the body using tactile imaging — moving felt body-awareness (the kind of attention you’d use to feel a sore tooth without touching it) deliberately through the limbs and energy centres.
The Rope Technique is his best-known out-of-body exit method: once relaxed to the threshold of sleep, you imagine an invisible rope hanging above you and “climb” it hand-over-hand using body awareness alone, building the dizziness and vibrations that, in Bruce’s framing, precede separation.
The Method
Part A — NEW (energy-body preparation).
- Lie down, relax deeply.
- Use tactile imaging: place your felt awareness into a foot and “brush” the sensation back and forth, as if rubbing it from the inside.
- Move this awareness up through legs, torso, arms — “bouncing” and circulating it. Bruce stresses you are working with felt sensation, not visual imagination.
- Open and stimulate the main energy centres this way over repeated sessions to make the body more “projectable.” Part B — The Rope Technique (the exit).
- Relax to the hypnagogic edge of sleep, body asleep but mind awake.
- Imagine a thick rope hanging straight down from the ceiling above you (do not move physical muscles).
- Reach up with imaginary hands and pull yourself up it, hand over hand, using pure body-awareness/feeling.
- As you climb, a wave of dizziness/vertigo builds and vibrations rise — keep climbing through them; do not stop to analyse.
- The intensifying sensation culminates in the felt experience of “popping” out of the body in the direction of the rope.
Source & Lineage
Robert Bruce (b. 1955), Australian author and practitioner, set out NEW and the Rope Technique in Astral Dynamics (1999) and expanded the energy work in Energy Work (2002).
His lineage is the modern Western OBE/energy-body stream (Monroe, Muldoon-Carrington) rather than a formal initiatory tradition; his distinctive move is making the exit a tactile-kinaesthetic act rather than a visual one.
Common refinements
Trying to see the rope instead of feeling it — Bruce’s method is tactile, not visual.
- Moving real muscles to “reach,” which collapses the half-asleep state.
- Stopping at the vibrations out of surprise/fear — they are the cue to continue, not a problem.
- Skipping the NEW groundwork and attempting cold exits; the energy-body practice is the multiplier.
- Over-effort — straining wakes you fully; the climb should be relaxed and rhythmic.