We all know that time passes at different speeds in different situations. For example, time seems to slow down when we travel to unfamiliar places. A week abroad seems much longer than a week at home.

Time also seems to pass more slowly when we are bored, or in pain. This seems to happen when we are in a state of absorption, such as when we play music or chess, or paint or dance. In general, most people report that time speeds up as time goes on.

However, these variations in time perception are quite mild. Our experience of time can change in a very radical way. i My new bookI describe what I call “time dilation experiences” – in which seconds can stretch into minutes.

The reasons for time speeding up and slowing down are a bit of a mystery. Some researchers, including myself, believe that mild changes in time perception are associated with this. Information processing. As a general rule, the more information – such as impressions, feelings, thoughts – that our minds process, the slower time seems to go. Time passes slowly for the children as they settle into the new world.

New environments add time due to their unfamiliarity. Absorption shrinks time as our focus narrows, and our minds quiet, few thoughts pass. Conversely, boredom increases time because our unfocused minds have too much to think about.

Time dilation experiments

Time dilation experiences (or teases) can occur in an accident or emergency, such as a car accident, fall or assault. In time dilation experiments, time appears to expand by many orders of magnitude. In my research, I have found that about 85% of people have at least one T.

About half of all tees are accidents and emergencies. In such situations, people are often surprised by the amount of time they have to think and act. In fact, many people believe that the time extension saved them from serious injury, or even their lives – because it allowed them to take preventative measures that would normally have been avoided. It will be impossible.

For example, a The woman who reported t. In which he avoided a metal barrier falling on his car, he told me how “the slowness of the moment” allowed him to “decide how to avoid the metal falling on us”.

Tees are also common in sports. For example, one participant described a T that occurred while playing ice hockey, when “the play that had been going on for about ten minutes happened in about eight seconds.” Teases occur in moments of silence and presence, during meditation or even in natural surroundings.

However, some extreme teases are linked to psychedelic substances, such as LSD or ayahuasca. In my collection of tees, about 10% are related to psychedelics. One man told me that, during an LSD experience, he looked at the stopwatch on his phone and “one hundredth of a second was moving as slowly as seconds normally move. It was really intense. There was a stretch of time,” he said.

But why? A theory is that these experiences are associated with the release of noradrenaline (both a hormone and a neurotransmitter) in emergency situations, which is associated with the “fight or flight” mechanism. However, this does not correspond to the quiet health that people generally report in the Tees.

Even though their lives may be in danger, people usually feel strangely calm and relaxed. For example, a woman who had a T when she fell off a horse. told me: “The whole experience lasted minutes. I was extremely calm, unconcerned that the horse had not yet regained its balance and could possibly fall on top of me. The noradrenaline theory is also inconsistent with the fact that many Teases occur in peaceful situations, such as deep meditation or communion with nature.

Another theory I have noticed that tees are an evolutionary adaptation. Our ancestors may have developed the ability to slow down time in emergency situations – such as encounters with deadly wild animals or natural disasters – to improve their chances of survival. However, the above argument applies here as well: it does not fit with non-emergencies when Tees occurs.

A third theory It is that tees are not real experiences, but the illusion of memory. In emergency situations, so the theory goes, our awareness is heightened, so that we gain more insight than usual. These impressions become encoded in our memories, so that when we recall the emergency, additional memories create the impression that time passes more slowly.

However, in many Tees, people believe they had extra time to think and act. Time dilation allowed for complex sequences of thoughts and actions that would have been impossible if time were moving at a normal pace. In a recent (not yet published) poll of 280 Tees, I found that less than 3% of participants believed the experience was an illusion. Some 87% thought it was a real experience that happened in the present, while 10% were undecided.

Altered states of consciousness.

In my view, the key to understanding Tees is surrounded by altered states of consciousness. The sudden shock of an accident can disrupt our normal psychological processes, causing sudden changes in consciousness. In sport, extreme altered states are caused by what I call “super absorption”.

Absorption usually makes time pass quickly – as in flow, when we are absorbed in a task. But when absorption becomes particularly intense, over long periods of constant concentration, the opposite occurs, and time slows down exponentially.

Altered states of consciousness can also affect our sense of identity, and our general sense of separation between us and the world. As a psychologist Mark Whitman As pointed out, our sense of time is closely related to our sense of self.

We usually have a sense of being inside our own mental space, with the world “out there” on the other side. A key feature of acute altered states is that the sense of separation is lost. We no longer feel locked in our own minds but connected to our surroundings.

It means that the boundary between us and the world softens. And in the process, our sense of time expands. We slip out of our normal consciousness, and into a different time world.

(Author: Steve TaylorSenior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University)

(Disclosure: Steve Taylor does not work for, consult with, participate in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has no related affiliations other than his academic appointment. has not expressed affiliation)

This article has been republished. The conversation Under Creative Commons License. Read on Original article.

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