Tips & Tricks for Trance Work
Here are some tips for trance work if you find yourself having a tough go at it. These are some things that helped my former students and you can adapt the advice to find something that works for you.
The first few things are things ingrained in humans from our origin through DNA. Think back to indigenous tribes who used drums and other instruments around a fire with herbs while singing and dancing. They would get so far into trance that they could travel worlds, take on deities, raise the conscious energies of the whole group, just through the experience.
Music: Humans have a deep genetic memory for music and we still respond to it even if we don't realize it. Play around with different frequencies, beats, instruments, genres, etc. until you find one that puts you right into the zone. I find that for me music from my various ethnicities will have the most profound effect if I'm having a difficult day getting into trance or I'm going for a really heavy experience. Sometimes I need a lighter trance or healing experience and chose a corresponding binaural beat with added tones. If you are musically inclined you can do the drumming or singing/chanting yourself to get there.
Movement: Movement based trance are things like dance and repetitive movement. This is as simple as zoning out while cleaning or exercising to the ultimate experience of that transcendental dance like listed above. Things like Tai Qi and Qi Gong even, but they don't take you out of your head if you are concentrating on your movement so you have to go an extra step of letting yourself go to get it into trance work.
Incense: This is multifaceted. Partly it is energetically pulling the Cosmos and plants into making their effect work (all incense is a spell within the smoke), it is also the healing or harming released by the herbs (as happens with the plants on a purely physical level, this is one major reason it's burned around over the centuries to clean the air from bacteria), and certain scents will act upon each of us differently depending upon our make up to help us into our space (another spiritual-Cosmos-energy thing).
*Scent in general can help. Jasmine is amazing to me; I can't stay grounded when I'm around it, live plant, essential oil, or burned as temple incense.
For Visualization help--- This will sound silly but daydreaming an old memory is a good exercise to get used to visualizations. Like get into trance and walk around your childhood home or a park you enjoyed trying to remember and experience all the details like you were there again.
Start with gazing: Have your environment as you need it to meditate (music or quite, scent, dimmed/light, etc). Look at something like a simple image, crystal, or candle. Then hold that image as you stare. Let your physical sight go black, keeping that image the last thing you see. Close your eyes and sit in darkness for awhile. Then bring back that image with as much detail about it as you can remember. How do it look, feel, smell, etc.?
- You can also use gazing as a way in and out of meditation.
Entering Trance: There are a few ways to enter trance and quieting the mind. I combined a couple of them into this serene tree with water.
-- You sit in front of an ancient tree staring at it. All is dark except for this tree. Any thoughts that you may have, see them as the leaves. Those thought laden leaves fall down gently until they hit a river that is flowing off into the distance. As the leaves are carried away, so is your thought. This continues until your mind is calm and in the right space. You get up and follow the river, now illuminated by a moon. It goes through a darkened forest. (then I run through my script for my cleansing and entering scared space).
Sacred Space: This is a construction of a place to go and do your work or have peace. Sit somewhere comfortable for a long meditation. Get into the trance state.
- See an entrance to your space. Is it a forest that begins dark then opens to a lighted clearing? Are you following a river to a beach? Are you walking into the Earth via a tunnel into a geode? Is there a mountain you're climbing? Is there somewhere to cleanse your energy off first?
- Once you're there how does it look? How does it feel there? Do you see an altar there? Is there a garden? Furniture? Are there animals or other people? Is it warm? Summer? Does it look like Earth or is it an alien world? Are there portals to other realms or to communicate with various entities? Are you still you or did you change bodies? Note all the details you can about it.
- When ready, go back out the way you came.
The first few things are things ingrained in humans from our origin through DNA. Think back to indigenous tribes who used drums and other instruments around a fire with herbs while singing and dancing. They would get so far into trance that they could travel worlds, take on deities, raise the conscious energies of the whole group, just through the experience.
Music: Humans have a deep genetic memory for music and we still respond to it even if we don't realize it. Play around with different frequencies, beats, instruments, genres, etc. until you find one that puts you right into the zone. I find that for me music from my various ethnicities will have the most profound effect if I'm having a difficult day getting into trance or I'm going for a really heavy experience. Sometimes I need a lighter trance or healing experience and chose a corresponding binaural beat with added tones. If you are musically inclined you can do the drumming or singing/chanting yourself to get there.
Movement: Movement based trance are things like dance and repetitive movement. This is as simple as zoning out while cleaning or exercising to the ultimate experience of that transcendental dance like listed above. Things like Tai Qi and Qi Gong even, but they don't take you out of your head if you are concentrating on your movement so you have to go an extra step of letting yourself go to get it into trance work.
Incense: This is multifaceted. Partly it is energetically pulling the Cosmos and plants into making their effect work (all incense is a spell within the smoke), it is also the healing or harming released by the herbs (as happens with the plants on a purely physical level, this is one major reason it's burned around over the centuries to clean the air from bacteria), and certain scents will act upon each of us differently depending upon our make up to help us into our space (another spiritual-Cosmos-energy thing).
*Scent in general can help. Jasmine is amazing to me; I can't stay grounded when I'm around it, live plant, essential oil, or burned as temple incense.
For Visualization help--- This will sound silly but daydreaming an old memory is a good exercise to get used to visualizations. Like get into trance and walk around your childhood home or a park you enjoyed trying to remember and experience all the details like you were there again.
Start with gazing: Have your environment as you need it to meditate (music or quite, scent, dimmed/light, etc). Look at something like a simple image, crystal, or candle. Then hold that image as you stare. Let your physical sight go black, keeping that image the last thing you see. Close your eyes and sit in darkness for awhile. Then bring back that image with as much detail about it as you can remember. How do it look, feel, smell, etc.?
- You can also use gazing as a way in and out of meditation.
Entering Trance: There are a few ways to enter trance and quieting the mind. I combined a couple of them into this serene tree with water.
-- You sit in front of an ancient tree staring at it. All is dark except for this tree. Any thoughts that you may have, see them as the leaves. Those thought laden leaves fall down gently until they hit a river that is flowing off into the distance. As the leaves are carried away, so is your thought. This continues until your mind is calm and in the right space. You get up and follow the river, now illuminated by a moon. It goes through a darkened forest. (then I run through my script for my cleansing and entering scared space).
Sacred Space: This is a construction of a place to go and do your work or have peace. Sit somewhere comfortable for a long meditation. Get into the trance state.
- See an entrance to your space. Is it a forest that begins dark then opens to a lighted clearing? Are you following a river to a beach? Are you walking into the Earth via a tunnel into a geode? Is there a mountain you're climbing? Is there somewhere to cleanse your energy off first?
- Once you're there how does it look? How does it feel there? Do you see an altar there? Is there a garden? Furniture? Are there animals or other people? Is it warm? Summer? Does it look like Earth or is it an alien world? Are there portals to other realms or to communicate with various entities? Are you still you or did you change bodies? Note all the details you can about it.
- When ready, go back out the way you came.
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