Trance & The Subconscious

So then, how do you access this dominant, this huge and submerged part of yourself? Well, humanity has developed very specific techniques, through the ages, to do just that! Usually these techniques involve some form of a meditation practice, where you drop from the busy beta frequencies in the brain, to the slower regions of alpha consciousness, alpha frequency. This is a practice that’s very well known in spiritual circles, and in my workshops and trainings I usually want to take this just a step further, and to drop a little deeper. Usually when we do this in daily life we fall asleep, and we use lose our consciousness completely, but if you create the right setup, and if you create the right circumstances… and this becomes especially powerful if you utilize things like sensory deprivation, movement, breath and sound… then you can drop from alpha consciousness, into the deeper regions of theta consciousness, without losing your awareness completely. Theta consciousness, or trance, has also been referred to in psychology as the creative zone. It’s a very open and playful state of mind, where children reside in all the time, and where also deep deep learning takes place.

So now, this is where it gets really exciting, because once you do have access to these deeper layers, to these altered states, then the question of course becomes: what are you going to do you? You might have a very strong intention, about wanting to create some change, about rewriting the automated responses in your system. You see, all of our negative and self-sabotaging thoughts, behaviors and attitudes, are not just habits. These were usually born out of some form of a traumatic experience, some negative kind of an experience, that was very powerful, and very overwhelming. So in order to make any kind of a change, you need to create an equally positive experience, equally powerful, and also equally overwhelming! This is one of the reasons why, in our practice of trance dancing, we dance!