true nature of these images was only rediscovered 30 years ago by anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, in part as an outcome of her research into glossolalia (‘speaking in tongues’). Goodman found that statues, carvings, and paintings from a number of different ancient cultures, most of which had had little or no contact with each other, nevertheless featured images of people in postures with which similar or identical to each other. Goodman’s hypothesis, therefore, was that these postures represented coded instructions on how to produce consistent trance-like effects. Her studies led her to many countries, and to trying out these body positions practically with hundreds of participants worldwide. Her findings suggest that the figures represented in the sort of artwork that Gore describes are, in fact, ritual body postures which enable ordinary people to enter non-ordinary consciousness and experience the inner (or spirit) world.
These postures produce a common effect, according to Goodman, because they all share one thing in common: the human body, the basic structure and functioning of which has remained unchanged since the time of our most ancient ancestors. The nervous and endocrine systems are, in fact, all much the same as they were 30,000 years ago, a fact which enables modern city dwellers to enter the ‘other worlds’ as effectively, and through the same neural doorways, as Neolithic medicine women and shamans throughout history.
Goodman identified several prerequisites for a successful trance experience, many of which will be familiar to you from your standard yoga practice:
• The establishment of a sacred space – not necessarily a church, an altar, or other ‘power place’, but a