place of sacred intent, which is entered with the expectation or intention of an experience which is in some way ‘non-ordinary’ (such as a yoga class!)
• A repetitive sound should be used as an auditory cue to the nervous system to shift into non-ordinary reality. The rattle or drum is typically used by shamans, but relaxation CDs, such as those we might play in a yoga class, would work just as well
• A method for silencing inner dialogue and the chattering of the mind is essential. In some of the churches where Goodman did her research, prayer served this purpose, but meditation works just as well. In her experiments, Goodman used a meditative breathing practice like pranayama to focus on the breath and quieten the mind
• The key factor, however, is that people need a shared approach to the exercise, a belief system to be part of, which acts to shape the trance state into a spiritual experience. The use of ritual body postures provided this common thread by overcoming individual and cultural differences to transform the experience into a spiritual one. Trance postures worked for everyone irrespective of their worldview or belief systems. In the words of Belinda Gore: “Agnostic computer programmers could undergo a shamanic [experience] during the fifteen minutes of an ecstatic trance session”.
TRANCE EXPERIMENTS
In my own experiments, I asked students in my shamanic classes to try a few of these ritual postures, selected from the 39 in Belinda Gore’s book, describing only the positions themselves, not the purpose they were supposed to serve, to see what experiences these students had. The ones I chose were:
• The Tattooed Jaguar,