Remember that Smurfs-inspired movie where a man lost his ability to walk and they gave him an avatar? That kind of survival and sensory experience is not that impossible anymore, is it?
You said you liked sci-fi. And something in this conversation...I think it's the virtual life topic...reminded me of one of my most favorite series of written fiction — A Requiem for Homo Sapiens by David Zindell. A trilogy sequel to his Neverness. You will enjoy a lot of the concepts in there, I am pretty sure. There was even this practice of generating heat to warm one's body by mental control over the processes in one's body — the thing you wrote about yesterday. And a lot of real Earth mythology and philosophy translated many thousands or was it millions of years into the future.
Danlo had three items with him only — his father's pilot ring now his own, his spaceship capable of reaching the farthest places in the universe, and a flute of sorts.