What does it mean for someone to be in a trance?

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In general, trance means unaware of the outside world. Moving through repeating mental patterns. There’s trance music, which is purposely repetitive, intending to provoke the state. The cognitive mind switches off and you drop out for awhile. Can relieve stress and recharge if that’s what you need.

There’s the general state of “walking through life as in a trance,” which generally means that a person only has a very thin connection to the social world around him. It’s not angry or defensive, they’re not trying to avoid anyone, they’re just not even paying attention.

Then there’s the notion of a hypnotic trance. You place the mind in a suggestible state and so anything you say to them bypasses the thinking rational mind and goes straight to the deeper parts of the brain that interact more closely with the limbic system. You put the person in the mind through slow, repetitive action, grinding the gears of the conscious to a gentle halt.

Finally there’s meditative trance, my favorite kind. This is a kind of trance you put yourself into deliberately, for the purpose of making the experience more vivid. For me it fulfills the role that taking psychedelics does in the sane seeker. The cognitive mind builds up structures that start to affect your everyday experience of reality, and you a way to sweep them out every now and again.

To put yourself in a meditative trance, the best first thing to do is to get good and tired. High intensity interval cardio is great. Stretch everything out. Your body will complain and the distractions will keep the state from deepening past a point. Go to bed early, set an alarm for 4 in the morning. Wake up but stay in bed. Stretch again while you’re in bed, get your body nice and loose.

Regulate your breathing. Take long, deep slow breaths. Focus on breathing. With each breath feel your body getting more relaxed. Start taking mental notes on what your body is doing. Random pains you get, what feels tense. What thoughts spring to mind. Watch them arise and then pass. If you feel the urge to get up or move, realize it’s going to break you out of your trance. You did all that work to get there, just stay put for a little while longer.

Eventually you’ll find you don’t want to get up. That’s when you know you’re in trance, your body and mind are in sync and aligned to a purpose. What purpose? Well that’s up to you to decide. If you can’t think of anything you want to do, this is probably going to happen the first dozen or so times you do this, then just relax and let thoughts come.

Pay attention to your body, because in this state, whatever arises in mind is going to be felt all over the body. It can be coherent visions or just random blobs of ‘stuff’. In this state it can be hard to know whether to try to hold on to stuff or to just let it go. Most of the time it’s better to let things go.

Eventually you’ll start to feel a buildup of physical energy and you’ll get the uncontrollable urge to move. Trance time over.

If that interested you and you start getting serious about trance, you need to be aware of the deeper meditative states, which can be scary if you’re not pre-warned. Best book on this topic is Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram. It’s not generally dangerous but it can be for some, like how some medications do great things for some but are really bad for others.