The Power of Ecstatic Trance
3-31-21 THE POWER OF ECSTATIC TRANCE
Ecstatic or Shamanic Trance opens the door to the world beyond ourselves, the world of the spirits that was so important to our hunting-gathering ancestors for giving them direction in living. There are many ways to access this world of the spirits as seen in the indigenous traditions around the world with their trance inducing dances, chants, and drumming. One way is the ritual of ecstatic trance as developed by the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, the founder of the Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico. I discovered the work of Felicitas Goodman and became a certified instructor of ecstatic trance in 2011 after 40 years of using hypnotic trance as a psychologist.
Felicitas was born in Hungary and educated as a linguist in Germany. Upon coming to the United States she settled in Columbus, Ohio where she became valued as a translator of scientific literature on the Ohio State University Campus. She knew an estimated twenty languages. In 1965 at the age of 51 she met the O.S.U. anthropologist Erika Bourguignon who was studying ecstatic trance in 486 small indigenous cultures around the world. Professor Bourguignon became Felicitas’s advisor when she decided to pursue her doctorate in anthropology. In this pursuit Felicitas realized that the speaking in tongues as experienced in the Apostolic Churches was a form of ecstatic trance, so she went to Mexico where she studied what brought some of those in the congregations of the Mayan and Spanish speaking churches to this trance experience. She concluded that there were four factors, the belief that speaking in tongues was a pleasant and normal experience; that it happened in a sacred space, i.e. the church; that the mind was quieted through prayer; and that the stimulation of rapid hand clapping to the nervous system brought about the state of trance.
Returning to her students at Denison University where she was then teaching, she created a more indigenous ritual that included these four factors, first a discussion of the pleasant nature of a trance experience, second, the sacred space was created by smudging and calling the spirits from each direction; the mind was then quieted by following one’s breathing for five minutes, and finally the nervous system was stimulated through rapid drumming or rattling at approximately 210 beats per minute. With this ritual she found that the students went into trance but the trance was without direction. In the church the belief that speaking in tongues was being moved by the Holy Spirit gave the parishioners direction. Sometime later she read an article by the Canadian Psychologist, V. F. Emerson, who was studying the effect of body postures on the meditative experience and found that the meditative posture had a direct effect on such physiological factors as breathing rate, heart rate and bowel motility. This led Goodman to search libraries and museums to find what she believed were postures used by shamans of the hunting-gathering cultures. She found approximately 50 such postures that she brought back to her students at Denison. Using the ritual she had previously developed, she added these postures during the period of drumming or rattling and found they gave direction to the trance experience. Some postures brought healing and strengthening energy into the body, while others were for divination to find answers to some question. Some were for metamorphosis or shape-shifting, and others postures were for spirit journeying into the three worlds, the underworld, the middle world or the upper world. Then there were the initiation or death-rebirth postures that provided experiences of the death of some unhealthy part of the individual with rebirth into greater health.
These postures with the direction they provide are effective in individual healing as well as in going beyond the individual to journey with the ancestors, the Earth spirits, and give direction in healing the Earth as reflected in each of my books. My book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance: Practices for Healing, Spiritual Growth, and Accessing the Universal Mind, introduces the use of ecstatic trance for healing, for spiritual growth, and for journeying into the New Age, the Time-Free Transparent Era of Consciousness. On the cover of this book is an image of a Jama Coaque Posture from Ecuador, a divination posture.
Ecstatic or Shamanic Trance opens the door to the world beyond ourselves, the world of the spirits that was so important to our hunting-gathering ancestors for giving them direction in living. There are many ways to access this world of the spirits as seen in the indigenous traditions around the world with their trance inducing dances, chants, and drumming. One way is the ritual of ecstatic trance as developed by the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, the founder of the Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico. I discovered the work of Felicitas Goodman and became a certified instructor of ecstatic trance in 2011 after 40 years of using hypnotic trance as a psychologist.
Felicitas was born in Hungary and educated as a linguist in Germany. Upon coming to the United States she settled in Columbus, Ohio where she became valued as a translator of scientific literature on the Ohio State University Campus. She knew an estimated twenty languages. In 1965 at the age of 51 she met the O.S.U. anthropologist Erika Bourguignon who was studying ecstatic trance in 486 small indigenous cultures around the world. Professor Bourguignon became Felicitas’s advisor when she decided to pursue her doctorate in anthropology. In this pursuit Felicitas realized that the speaking in tongues as experienced in the Apostolic Churches was a form of ecstatic trance, so she went to Mexico where she studied what brought some of those in the congregations of the Mayan and Spanish speaking churches to this trance experience. She concluded that there were four factors, the belief that speaking in tongues was a pleasant and normal experience; that it happened in a sacred space, i.e. the church; that the mind was quieted through prayer; and that the stimulation of rapid hand clapping to the nervous system brought about the state of trance.
Returning to her students at Denison University where she was then teaching, she created a more indigenous ritual that included these four factors, first a discussion of the pleasant nature of a trance experience, second, the sacred space was created by smudging and calling the spirits from each direction; the mind was then quieted by following one’s breathing for five minutes, and finally the nervous system was stimulated through rapid drumming or rattling at approximately 210 beats per minute. With this ritual she found that the students went into trance but the trance was without direction. In the church the belief that speaking in tongues was being moved by the Holy Spirit gave the parishioners direction. Sometime later she read an article by the Canadian Psychologist, V. F. Emerson, who was studying the effect of body postures on the meditative experience and found that the meditative posture had a direct effect on such physiological factors as breathing rate, heart rate and bowel motility. This led Goodman to search libraries and museums to find what she believed were postures used by shamans of the hunting-gathering cultures. She found approximately 50 such postures that she brought back to her students at Denison. Using the ritual she had previously developed, she added these postures during the period of drumming or rattling and found they gave direction to the trance experience. Some postures brought healing and strengthening energy into the body, while others were for divination to find answers to some question. Some were for metamorphosis or shape-shifting, and others postures were for spirit journeying into the three worlds, the underworld, the middle world or the upper world. Then there were the initiation or death-rebirth postures that provided experiences of the death of some unhealthy part of the individual with rebirth into greater health.
These postures with the direction they provide are effective in individual healing as well as in going beyond the individual to journey with the ancestors, the Earth spirits, and give direction in healing the Earth as reflected in each of my books. My book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance: Practices for Healing, Spiritual Growth, and Accessing the Universal Mind, introduces the use of ecstatic trance for healing, for spiritual growth, and for journeying into the New Age, the Time-Free Transparent Era of Consciousness. On the cover of this book is an image of a Jama Coaque Posture from Ecuador, a divination posture.
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