[Dkavtbek]

I think perhaps your mistake is that you expect the projection to happen without any break in consciousness... While in theory it is possible, it probably won't happen until you gain some serious experience... You should at least "drop" once into unconsciousness before you suddenly realize that you're in trance.

Try your best to drop all expectations, and focus solely on falling asleep while doing the rope technique continuously -- ensure that once your body goes to sleep, your mind will keep on doing it by itself. At first, you'll probably fall asleep and only remember that the last thing you did before falling asleep was the rope. When you manage to do this, it means you're comfortable enough to project using the technique, but unfortunately you might need some extra development to actually witness what happens once you doze off.

What I recommend is using alarms so that you get woken up shortly after you doze off (i.e. set it for 30 minutes or an hour, start doing the technique, let yourself drift wherever it takes you, and when you get woken up by the alarm, see if you remember anything).

It's important to do this several times in a row during the same attempt (i.e. do it 3 times in a 1.5 hour period), it'll be much more valuable than if you just do it once, sleep 8 hours, and then try again the next day.

Eventually, you should obtain a new skill that will allow you to witness what happens when you've just entered the sleep state, and from the rope technique, you'll be able to attain trance relatively easily to reach the correct state of mind for a lucid dream or a projection.

When the process is as simple as falling asleep, you'll most likely not have anymore trouble with tense muscles, because face it, you probably don't have that problem when you fall asleep normally.

I also recommend looking into breathing exercises, like taking an in breath for 6 seconds, holding for 4, and pushing the out breath for 6 seconds... After a few days of this, you can try going further, like 9/6/9. Concentrate particularly on making your entire body go limp during the out breath... It's an excellent way to lose all tense muscle problems.

EDIT: and to expand on what Tom said, physical sensations can seriously "pollute" your OBEs.. I remember having an OBE when I was resting on my arm, and I was actually cutting the blood circulation to it. When I got out of body, my whole side was paralyzed, there was absolutely no way to move it, I was literally dragging around half of me. The people in the projection kept saying "you look sick, should I call a doctor?"