It's adrenaline. Your sympathetic nervousnsystem kicks in and shoves cortisol and adrenaline through your system. It heightens your reflex time and your mental speed and slows higher consciousness in favor of instinctual response. It is a survival technique. Thats why fighters make the same moves 100000 times. To make it instinct. The more you are in these situations the more you learn how to control the time slow to your advantage.

Twice in my life.

The first time I was 18 or 19 or so. I got very angry (like I wasnt even thinking anymore, just an animal) at something somebody said, I yelled shut up and threw my open hand towards a wall. In that moment, I was inside of a green field of sorts, with points of green light coming into existence and out again all around me. I was suddenly very calm, and watching my hand move through the air. I know it was actually moving fast, but I just watched it slowly and observed without feeling anything. I remember seeing my hand (think karate chop, not fist) move into the wall, pinky first, with a green light around it, I saw the wall separate and the hole become larger, the wood behind the wall gave way just as easily for a few inches, then my hand stopped. I snapped back into regular time and saw the hole in the wall, and didn't feel any pain in my hand. I wasnt angry any more, just calm. Since that happened, I have never been able to stay angry for long, it just kind of happens, then I release it and am fine.

The second time it happened sometime in my 30s, maybe 10 years ago. I was in a drive through with my wife, already ordered and waiting to pay. I saw a big guy pushing a shopping cart full of food through the snow beside the drive through, and then go through an opening in the fence (a shortcut to a nearby street). I thought it was weird, but whatever. Then I saw a 100 lbs girl in a Safeway uniform, no jacket, go running after him. That was was probably 3 times her weight, and I knew if I didn't help, she might end up dead. I told my wife to move the car if she has to and I got out to chase them. As I got out, a guy got out of the car in front of me, we made eye contact, both nodded and ran after them without saying anything. As I ran through the opening into the street, I was suddenly out of my body, 20-30 feet above it and behind. "I" felt nothing, but I could feel everything going on in my body, and controlling it, like it was a device plugged into a computer. I could see everything from my point of view, and a bunch of information came onto my view. While my body was running towards the small lady in a pulling match with the big guy over the shopping cart, I saw all kinds of things: the distance between my body and the target, in meters(I don't know how to estimate that except for 100m for a race) and the number decreasing as I got closer, my speed, icy spots in my path to avoid, highlighted in yellow, then I started seeing hundreds of thousands of different scenarios about how I would approach the situation, and how it would turn out. The images were all overlaid, and I could see them all playing at the same time in a very fast speed, if one failed, it moved down and got smaller. If one had any measure of success, it got larger and moved up. I also began hearing different things I could say, also hundreds of thousands of things at the same time. If something said was going to be successful, it got louder, something failed, and it got quieter. In less than 2 seconds, I saw and heard the solution. The guy was armed with a knife, and he was it yet aware that we were coming up to him, if we got there, he would pull the knife and things would be much more dangerous, so I needed to make our presence known now while he still had time to get away. I snapped back into my body and yelled what I heard the winning combination of words and tone to be: "Hey Fucker.......we're coming for YOUUUUUUUUU". He didnt turn around to see us, or how close we were, he just let go of the cart and ran.

We escorted the lady and the cart back to her car, she had finished her shift when she noticed the guy running away from the store with a cart full of meat, and none of it in bags. She knew they always bagged their meat, and since she was getting into her car, she chased him. The guy that ran with me was a prison guard and also worried for the girl.

The only similarity between the 2 events were extreme feelings, one angry and one the desire to save a life. Why it doesn't happen more often, I don't know.

What ive experienced on multiple occasions under completely different circumstances is hard to describe as in some cases the words dont exist. There is no ‘I’, no awareness of self but there is some other kind of awareness on a more basic level. I think what happens is the higher brain functions shut down leaving other parts to operate at an increased processing rate which in turn makes things appear to occur more slowly. There is more ‘time’ to observe surroundings and make better choices, its also an extremely peaceful state unhindered by any emotional responses.

I dont expect anyone who hasnt experienced to comprehend. If you watch F1 drivers closely on the start line sometimes you will see them start to change. Its not possible to drive at the speeds they do in a normal conscious state.

I read about this once. Slowed time is not actually how you experience it.

During stressfull events your senses are heightened, but the affect is to generate more detailed memories as it happens.

A bit like generating more frames per second on a camera. So it only actually seems like time slowed when you remember it.

My guess it is a mixture of dopamine and adrenaline. Your heart beats much faster slowing the world down.

Have you ever seen a shrew in action? It's heart beats 1000+ times a minute. It makes a scorpion look like it strikes in slow motion.

Same principal.

Not everybody can do that! You must be a robot from the future like me!

Drugs

It's actually kind of easy to slow down time. Simply pay close attention to all the detail of whatever is happening around you on a moment by moment basis. Time will drag on. Similar experience happens when you are watching and waiting for water in a pot to boil.