I wish I could travel/dream consciously like you. But I don't really remember my dreams and, like you, am not into astral projection. I agree that it's intense and like being ripped out of your body. I've had quite a few experiences of that. I've never tried to induce it, although I did experiment at one time with binaural beats to try and learn to control it......but if you're not fully prepared for an astral episode, they can be unpleasant. I've had to "think myself back into my body" several times. I'm in my 50s so research will have moved on since I was getting these episodes but my impression has been that there is a lot of glamourisation of astral travel when it's not really that nice, not in my rather boring experience anyway. Although there have been a couple of episodes that have been amazing and can only be described as "celestial" so I find it all rather confusing (hence, I guess, the term "astral", generally used by some to mean "not with the real world").