This introductory chapter examines a variety of phenomena typically labeled as disembodiment, including technologically mediated presence, digital and reproductive technologies, religious practices oriented toward spiritual transcendence, and altered states such as out-of-body experiences. Although diverse, these cases share a common structure: they all involve forms of distancing from the immediate, lived body that are often associated with transcendence, expansion beyond physical limits, or the redistribution of bodily functions across external media. By outlining this shared orientation toward liberation from the body’s immanent constraints, the chapter prepares the contrast with the form of disembodiment that is the focus of the book—one found in psychopathology and in experiences of racialized embodiment, where the disruption of the self–body relation is not transcendent but alienating, distressing, and rooted in a painful intensification rather than a suspension of corporeality.