Falling Method Shifting: Steps, 3 Versions and What to Feel

Falling method shifting is a visualization method where you open a door in a quiet hall and let yourself fall through the dark to a second door, which opens onto your desired reality (DR). Step through it, and you either open your eyes in your DR or drift off to sleep and wake up there. The drop is the heart of the method, and it is also the part most likely to jolt you awake (more on that below).

CR is short for your current reality, and if shifting itself is unfamiliar, what reality shifting is covers the basics. You can also weigh this one against other shifting methods, and it is wise to read about the risks of reality shifting before your first fall.

What Is the Falling Method for Shifting?

Most shifting methods give you one way out of your CR. The falling method gives you two in a row: a door you choose to open, and a drop you choose to take. You let go of the edge, and you land somewhere new.

Nobody knows who first wrote it down.

The oldest dated version we could find is a Wattpad guide by a writer called wtvshame, posted on November 28, 2020. It tells the method quite differently from the version most sites share today, so we compare the two further down.

It is a visualization method, so it suits people who enjoy building a scene in their head. It is also flexible about how it ends. You can open your eyes in your DR, as in an awake method, or fall asleep there, as in a sleep method.

How to Do the Falling Method, Step by Step

Get ready first. Let go of whatever the day left on your mind, and loosen up completely, from your jaw down to your toes. Our shifting tips have more ways to settle in.

Before you lie down, write a few lines about your DR and choose a safe word that brings you home whenever you say it. A ready-made script template makes the writing quick, and how to come back from shifting has tips for picking the word.

1. Use the bathroom and drink a little water. Nothing pulls you back up out of a fall faster than needing to pee.
2. Silence your phone and leave it across the room. One buzz at the wrong moment and the whole scene falls apart.
3. Lie on your side or your stomach. Choose whatever lets your body go heavy. If you have ever had sleep paralysis, stay off your back (the safety section explains why).
4. Breathe slowly with your eyes closed. Make each breath out a little longer than the breath in, until your shoulders sink into the bed.
5. Picture yourself alone in a long, quiet hall. Make it yours: cool marble, creaky wooden boards or an empty school corridor at night. Feel the floor under your feet and notice the door at the far end.
6. Walk slowly toward the door, affirming as you go. One affirmation per step works well, and you will find some below.
7. Open the door and step into the dark. There is no floor, so you fall. Let it be slow, like a leaf drifting down, and notice how light and free your body feels.
8. Land softly and look for the second door. It stands just a few steps ahead of you. Take a moment before you open it.
9. Open the second door onto your DR. Fill it with detail. Perhaps it opens onto your room at a ballet academy in Paris, with rain on the window, pointe shoes by the bed and a friend calling your name from the hallway.
10. Open your eyes in your DR, or let sleep carry you off there. The old version of this guide called this “opening the eyes of your essence”, which simply means waking up as your DR self.

○ Sleep Method or Awake Method?

It can be both, which is why the steps you find online seem to disagree. Decide on your ending before you start, because it changes when you should try.

For the awake ending, try in the evening while you feel relaxed but not yet sleepy, so you reach the second door with a clear head. If you open your eyes and you are still in your CR, that is fine. Our roundup of awake shifting methods has more methods that end this way.

For the sleep ending, try at your normal bedtime. When you reach your DR, stay there, keep repeating one affirmation and let sleep take you, intending to wake up in your DR. A little tiredness helps here, and it puts the falling method among the sleep shifting methods.

We think anyone who usually falls asleep fast should pick the sleep ending. Fighting sleep only turns a gentle fall into hard work.

○ What to Say as You Fall

Say your affirmations in your head or in a soft whisper. A loud voice keeps you alert, and this method needs you calm and heavy. Many shifters say the feeling behind the words matters far more than the volume.

• Every step brings me closer to the door.
• I let go, and I land in my DR.
• The fall is slow, soft and safe.
• Behind the next door, my DR is waiting.
• I am already there.
• My safe word brings me home whenever I want.

Keep the one that sounds most like you, and borrow more from our list of affirmations for shifting.

○ A Short Script to Read or Record

Some people would rather be talked through the fall than remember every step. If that is you, read the script below into your phone’s voice recorder, slowly and quietly, pausing between paragraphs. Then play it in bed with your eyes closed.

You are lying somewhere safe, and your body is heavy and warm. Breathe out slowly. Now you are standing in a long, quiet hall, and you are alone.

At the far end there is a door. Walk toward it, one slow step at a time, and with each step, tell yourself: I am going home to my DR.

Put your hand on the handle. It feels cool and smooth. Open the door, and look into the soft darkness beyond it.

Step forward and let go. You are falling slowly, like a feather, and nothing can hurt you. The air is calm, and you feel lighter with every breath.

Now your feet touch the ground. Just ahead there is another door, with warm light glowing around its edges.

Walk to it and open it. Your DR is right there, every detail exactly as you wrote it.

Step through. You are home.

Play it only in bed, never while driving or walking around. And keep your safe word in your script, so you always know your way back.

Three Versions of the Falling Method

If you have read about the falling method somewhere else and found different steps, you are not imagining it. At least three versions are shared online, and each one ends in a different place.

• Hall and door. You start in a quiet hall with a door at the end, and you finish by opening your eyes in your DR or falling asleep there. It suits anyone who likes clear steps.
• Dark room and DR bedroom. You start in a dark room, seen through your own eyes, and you finish by hugging your DR self and falling asleep. It suits sleep shifters.
• Cliff and water. You start at the edge of a cliff above the sea, and someone from your DR pulls you out, or you fall asleep. It suits people who like a guided audio.

○ The Hall and Door Version

This is the version in our steps above, and the one most written guides share. Because a door marks both the start and the end, your mind always knows where it is in the scene. We think it is the best place for a first try.

○ The Dark Room and DR Bedroom Version

In wtvshame’s Wattpad guide, you start in a dark room seen in first person and picture yourself falling quickly, with the dark growing lighter as you fall. You arrive in your DR bedroom, where your DR self is asleep on the bed. You slow down, hug your DR self, become them and fall asleep, expecting to wake in your DR.

It is a lovely version if your DR is mostly about the feeling of coming home. wtvshame says to lie on your back or your stomach.

But the NHS advises against sleeping on your back, because it can make sleep paralysis more likely. So if that has ever happened to you, choose your stomach or your side.

○ The Cliff and Water Version

This version lives on YouTube, in a guided meditation by Alunir Meditations. You picture a cliff with the ocean below, run and jump, and let yourself fall. Someone from your DR saves you from the water, and you keep affirming that you are shifting until you feel them pull you up or you fall asleep.

It is the most emotional of the three, and the easiest to follow, because a voice does the work. But skip it if heights make your stomach turn. Alunir’s own description also asks people not to listen while driving or operating machinery.

What You Might Feel During the Fall

Shifters often describe a weightless, peaceful calm during the fall, and sometimes much stronger sensations. In a study of online shifting communities, Eli Somer and his colleagues found people reporting spinning, rocking, falling and twitching, alongside floating and tingling.

The meaning shifters give each one is in our shifting symptoms guide. Two of them matter most for this method.

○ The Jolt That Wakes You Up

Picture this. You are halfway down, the dark feels soft, and suddenly your whole body kicks and you are wide awake in your CR. The Sleep Foundation calls this a hypnic jerk, a sudden twitch as you slip toward sleep that often feels like a jolt or a falling sensation.

It is also very common. According to the Sleep Foundation, hypnic jerks are normal and generally harmless, and up to 70% of people have them at some point. They can even be strong enough to wake you, the Sleep Foundation adds, and they may come more often with stress, tiredness or caffeine.

On Reddit, one shifter summed up the problem with sleep methods: “I wake up because of it”. So if the jolt keeps ending your fall, you have not failed. Your body is simply crossing into sleep with a start, right as your mind pictures a drop.

Stop the method straight away if a jolt leaves you with chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting or dizziness, because those are never signs of shifting. If they come with a pounding or racing heart, MedlinePlus (a health site run by the US National Library of Medicine) says to call 911 or your local emergency number.

○ Spinning, Sinking or Floating

Not every sensation arrives as a jolt. As you drift toward sleep, your brain can also produce brief sensations that feel completely real, and Cleveland Clinic says these hypnagogic hallucinations are common and usually not a cause for concern. Cleveland Clinic adds that about 25% to 44% of them are body feelings, including weightlessness, flying and falling.

Shifters often take these feelings as a sign they are close, and you are free to believe that. They also turn up on ordinary nights for people who have never heard of shifting. If you caught a flash of your DR and snapped back, our page on mini shifts looks at that.

If these sensations frighten you or leave you anxious, take a break from the method. Cleveland Clinic advises talking to a healthcare provider when they cause distress.

When the Falling Method Doesn’t Work

Most nights, the second door stays shut and you wake up in your own bed. Here are the problems falling shifters run into, and what to change.

○ “I Keep Jolting Awake”

Slow the fall down.

Picture yourself drifting like a feather, sliding down a soft slope or sinking through warm water instead of plunging. You can also shorten the fall, landing almost as soon as you step through the first door.

Then look at your day. The Sleep Foundation suggests having your last cup of coffee at least eight hours before bed. Count energy drinks, cola and strong tea too, since they carry caffeine as well.

One more thing. On Reddit, a shifter said they hold their breath or wiggle part of their body to snap out of the falling feeling. Please skip the breath holding, because opening your eyes or moving your fingers is all it takes.

○ “I Fall Asleep Before the Door”

You are far from the only one.

Try earlier in the evening, before you are properly tired, or sit up against a couple of pillows so your body does not settle straight into sleep. You can also skip the walk and start right at the door.

Or stop fighting it. Switch to the sleep ending, and let the hall and the fall be the last things on your mind as you drift off.

○ “The Falling Feeling Scares Me”

Then change the fall. Float down slowly, or picture a long staircase leading down into the dark instead of an open drop.

If the drop itself is the problem, try a gentler method. The melting method has you sink slowly through your bed, and the cloud method lowers you softly from a cloud. And if you love the idea of a long fall into a story, the Alice in Wonderland method sends you tumbling down a rabbit hole.

No method is worth dreading bedtime. If you feel tense just thinking about it, choose something else.

○ “Nothing Happened”

Opening your eyes in your CR is normal, and it does not mean you did the steps wrong. Give it a few relaxed evenings, change one thing at a time (the ending, the speed of the fall or your script), and then take a proper break.

For more ideas on what to change, see why you can’t shift. Trying harder rarely helps, because a straining mind stays wide awake.

Is the Falling Method Still Worth Trying?

Honestly, the falling method has faded.

On Reddit, a shifter once asked whether anyone had tried it and whether it worked, and no shifter replied at all, only the forum’s automatic moderator. These days the bigger conversations are about the void state, the law of assumption and shifting with no method.

There is also no evidence that any method moves a person into another reality. The same researchers, Eli Somer and his team, describe shifting as “a deliberate, absorptive, and rewarding alteration of consciousness”. In plain words, it is a deep, vivid kind of imagining, and many people value it.

So here is our view.

The falling method is worth a few relaxed evenings if you love building scenes in your head, and the hall and door version is the one to start with. If the drop keeps waking you or scaring you, let it go without guilt and try one of the gentler methods above.

Is the Falling Method Safe?

The fall only happens in your imagination, so the method itself cannot hurt you. What can hurt is what grows around it: lost sleep, worry and losing track of your real life.

Protect your sleep before anything else. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises 8 to 10 hours out of every 24 for teens between 13 and 18, night after night. Keep the method to your usual bedtime, with no alarms and no late extra tries.

You may also run into sleep paralysis. For a few moments as you wake or drop off, your body will not move and no words come out. According to the NHS, it is frightening but does no harm.

Lying on your back makes it more likely, the NHS adds. See a GP when it keeps happening and you dread going to bed or feel worn out all the time.

Last, check in with yourself during the day. Feeling cut off from yourself and from everything around you is one of the signs of a dissociative disorder that the NHS describes.

If that feeling hangs around, or shifting starts eating into your sleep, schoolwork or meals, put the method down for a while and tell a parent, your doctor or a teacher you feel safe with.

For the other signs worth watching, read staying safe while shifting. Your second door will still be there tomorrow night, so fall slowly and land softly. Happy shifting!

Falling Method Shifting: Frequently Asked Questions