Ecstatic Trance Postures
Although I had practiced yoga for a number of years, I did not make much of a connection between the physical asanas as methods for exploring the world of spirit until I began working with indigenous shamans and discovered an ancient and little-known practice where body postures are used to guide what are known as shamanic journeys: special states of trance or meditation through which we can access our inner selves or, as the shamans say, ‘journey to other worlds’.
My own experiences were profound and showed me that there was, indeed, something new and different about these body postures; something I had not discovered in yoga practice, so I began to research these postures, finding just two published works on the subject: Where The Spirits Ride The Wind, by Dr Felicitas Goodman, and Ecstatic Body Postures by her student, Belinda Gore.
With these two sources to guide me, I began conducting experiments of my own and introducing these new asanas to participants on my shamanic workshops, to test the claims of Goodman and Gore that these postures could, indeed, transport people to other worlds. This article is based on my findings.
TRANCE POSTURES
“Great beings who inhabit the realm of spirit that we call the Alternate Reality have been around for thousands of years, helping humans through our journeys here on Earth; and hunter-gatherer and horticultural peoples around the world have documented their presence and preserved the means of access to them through their artwork on cave walls, in totem poles, in delicate gold or silver work, or in simple pottery. Their images have been perpetually in front of our eyes”, says Belinda Gore.
Even so, the