ABSTRACT
Ecstatic trance is shamanic trance that is induced by rapid stimulation to the nervous system through drumming or rattling while using a specific body posture to give direction to the experience. The anthropological research of Felicitas Goodman described five necessary ingredients to induce trance: The belief that the experience is normal and healthy, defining the ritual space with smudging and calling the spirits, and counting one’s breaths to quiet the mind before stimulating the nervous system while enacting a specific body posture from those she found in the artwork of hunter-gatherer cultures. She found that certain body postures promote healing energy, others for journeying into the under world, middle world, or the upper world, some for divination, others for shape-shifting, and some provided a death-rebirth experience. Eleven of these postures are presented in this book. Though foreign to the traditional psychotherapy session, this trance can be effective in carrying a person beyond into the universal mind. How this ritual can be modified to make it acceptable in a psychotherapy session is provided.
