Ecstatic Trance
Ecstatic Trance
In most all my blogs I have mentioned ecstatic trance, the topic of five of my books. It has been a while since I described the nature of this trance. It is trance induced by the rapid stimulation to the nervous system by such activities as the beat of a drum, the shaking of a rattle, or by the energetic dancing as performed by many tribes of people of the Earth.
Felicitis Goodman, who received her PhD in 1971 at Ohio State University recognized that ecstatic trance was akin to speaking in tongues as occurs in the apostolic church. Her research in ecstatic trance thus began with her dissertation research on the speaking in tongues in the Spanish and Mayan speaking Apostolic Churches of Mexico. Her research led her to identify four necessary components to induce the state of trance that produced the speaking in tongues:
• An open mind and relaxed body, along with the expectation of a pleasurable but nonordinary state of reality.
• A sacred space, one separate from the activities of everyday life.
• A meditative technique, such as counting one’s breath, to calm the analytic mind.
• Rhythmic stimulation of the nervous system through rattling or drumming.
These four components were evident in the worship services of the Apostolic Churches with the congregation’s expectation of speaking in tongues, the sacred space of the church, of quieting the mind with prayer and of the rhythmic stimulation of hand clapping.
Goodman then designed a ritual with these four components that separated them from the context of the church. Her ritual begins with a discussion of what to expect from ecstatic trance and the answers to questions, then the sacred space for this ritual is designated by smudging the space and each participant with the smoke of burning herbs, and by calling the spirits of the six directions. Following the litany of calling the spirits, a meditative technique to quiet the mind is offered that entails sitting in silence in a comfortable position while counting one’s breath for five minutes. Then the stimulation of the nervous system with drumming or rattling commences and lasts for 15 minutes. The beat is approximately at a rate of 210 beats per minute.
After receiving her PhD Dr Goodman took a position at Dennison University in Granville, Ohio, a position that lasted until 1979 when she was forced to retire at the age of 65. With her students at Dennison University she experimented with this ritual and found that the students did go into a trance, though she concluded from this experimentation that the trance lacked direction or meaning.
Sometime later Goodman read an article by the Canadian psychologist V. F. Emerson who, in his research with various meditative disciplines, found that different body postures had a specific but different effect on such body functions as heartbeat, breathing, skin moisture and bowel motility. With this discovery, Goodman searched ethnographic journals, books and museums to find what she believed were the body postures used by both contemporary and ancient shamans, body postures that suggested religious ritual activity. She identified approximately fifty such postures that she used in her continued research. Following the ritual that she had already developed she add a body posture, having her students sit, stand or lie in one of these postures while she shook her rattle or beat her drum.
With this addition of a body posture which was held by the participants for the fifteen minutes of drumming or rattling, she found the direction and meaning that was initially missing without the use of these body postures. What she found was that some specific body postures elicit the sensation of bringing a healing or strengthening energy into one’s body. Other postures are for divination, for seeking answers to questions or for looking into the future. Then there are those postures that bring about the sensation of shape-shifting or a metamorphosis in becoming some animal, other living being, or some inanimate substance or feature of the Earth. Some postures are for journeying into the underworld, others for journeying in this world and some for journeying in the upperworld. Then there are the postures that bring about a death-rebirth experience of initiation. Besides these seven ecstatic trance experiences, several other postures were determined to offer a celebration experience or an experience of calling the spirits.
After reading her book, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. I was quite impressed such that in 2007 I offered a workshop using ecstatic trance at the annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. The workshop was offered each of the four mornings of the conference and we used eight of her ecstatic postures. I was astounded by the results that matched the results of the postures as used by Goodman. As a result I returned home to start a group using the postures, a group that at first met weekly, but now meets monthly and has continued for ten years. From the ecstatic experiences of the participants of these group sessions as well as a number of other workshops I have offered around the country, I continue to be very impressed with the power of these ecstatic postures and the power of ecstatic trance.
It is also evident that Felicitas Goodman experienced this same power in the use of the postures and ecstatic trance in that she started what is now the Cuyamungue Institute on the Pojoaque Pueblo north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an institute that has continued to function and grow since her death in 2005.
In most all my blogs I have mentioned ecstatic trance, the topic of five of my books. It has been a while since I described the nature of this trance. It is trance induced by the rapid stimulation to the nervous system by such activities as the beat of a drum, the shaking of a rattle, or by the energetic dancing as performed by many tribes of people of the Earth.
Felicitis Goodman, who received her PhD in 1971 at Ohio State University recognized that ecstatic trance was akin to speaking in tongues as occurs in the apostolic church. Her research in ecstatic trance thus began with her dissertation research on the speaking in tongues in the Spanish and Mayan speaking Apostolic Churches of Mexico. Her research led her to identify four necessary components to induce the state of trance that produced the speaking in tongues:
• An open mind and relaxed body, along with the expectation of a pleasurable but nonordinary state of reality.
• A sacred space, one separate from the activities of everyday life.
• A meditative technique, such as counting one’s breath, to calm the analytic mind.
• Rhythmic stimulation of the nervous system through rattling or drumming.
These four components were evident in the worship services of the Apostolic Churches with the congregation’s expectation of speaking in tongues, the sacred space of the church, of quieting the mind with prayer and of the rhythmic stimulation of hand clapping.
Goodman then designed a ritual with these four components that separated them from the context of the church. Her ritual begins with a discussion of what to expect from ecstatic trance and the answers to questions, then the sacred space for this ritual is designated by smudging the space and each participant with the smoke of burning herbs, and by calling the spirits of the six directions. Following the litany of calling the spirits, a meditative technique to quiet the mind is offered that entails sitting in silence in a comfortable position while counting one’s breath for five minutes. Then the stimulation of the nervous system with drumming or rattling commences and lasts for 15 minutes. The beat is approximately at a rate of 210 beats per minute.
After receiving her PhD Dr Goodman took a position at Dennison University in Granville, Ohio, a position that lasted until 1979 when she was forced to retire at the age of 65. With her students at Dennison University she experimented with this ritual and found that the students did go into a trance, though she concluded from this experimentation that the trance lacked direction or meaning.
Sometime later Goodman read an article by the Canadian psychologist V. F. Emerson who, in his research with various meditative disciplines, found that different body postures had a specific but different effect on such body functions as heartbeat, breathing, skin moisture and bowel motility. With this discovery, Goodman searched ethnographic journals, books and museums to find what she believed were the body postures used by both contemporary and ancient shamans, body postures that suggested religious ritual activity. She identified approximately fifty such postures that she used in her continued research. Following the ritual that she had already developed she add a body posture, having her students sit, stand or lie in one of these postures while she shook her rattle or beat her drum.
With this addition of a body posture which was held by the participants for the fifteen minutes of drumming or rattling, she found the direction and meaning that was initially missing without the use of these body postures. What she found was that some specific body postures elicit the sensation of bringing a healing or strengthening energy into one’s body. Other postures are for divination, for seeking answers to questions or for looking into the future. Then there are those postures that bring about the sensation of shape-shifting or a metamorphosis in becoming some animal, other living being, or some inanimate substance or feature of the Earth. Some postures are for journeying into the underworld, others for journeying in this world and some for journeying in the upperworld. Then there are the postures that bring about a death-rebirth experience of initiation. Besides these seven ecstatic trance experiences, several other postures were determined to offer a celebration experience or an experience of calling the spirits.
After reading her book, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. I was quite impressed such that in 2007 I offered a workshop using ecstatic trance at the annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. The workshop was offered each of the four mornings of the conference and we used eight of her ecstatic postures. I was astounded by the results that matched the results of the postures as used by Goodman. As a result I returned home to start a group using the postures, a group that at first met weekly, but now meets monthly and has continued for ten years. From the ecstatic experiences of the participants of these group sessions as well as a number of other workshops I have offered around the country, I continue to be very impressed with the power of these ecstatic postures and the power of ecstatic trance.
It is also evident that Felicitas Goodman experienced this same power in the use of the postures and ecstatic trance in that she started what is now the Cuyamungue Institute on the Pojoaque Pueblo north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an institute that has continued to function and grow since her death in 2005.
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