A Response to James Honeycutt's article: Differences in Ecstatic Trance Postures in terms of Dream Recall, Imagined Interactions and Heart Rate

Abstract

As an anthropologist, Felicitas Goodman examined the effect of what she believed to be the ritual body postures of shamans, both current and ancient, and found that they gave direction to their shamanic journeying. This research of Goodman and now James Honeycutt opens a new door, a new tool that can be an important addition to the tools of psychotherapy. In her research of ecstatic trance, Goodman developed a preparatory ritual for trance induction that first defined a sacred space for the induction ritual and offered a way to quiet the mind before trance was induced through the rapid stimulation of the nervous system by such means as drumming or rattling. To give direction to the trance experience, she found and identified a number of different body postures that she believed were used in the ritualistic activities of the shamans, postures found in literature and museum displays of current and ancient hunter-gathering societies. As also noted by Honeycutt, when Goodman had her students at Dennison University sit, stand, or lay in these postures as she shook her rattle or beat her drum at a rate of approximately 210 beats per minute, she found that the postures gave direction to the ecstatic trance experience. From a collected set of ecstatic experiences collected from a number of participants using a particular posture, she noted a commonality in the set of Imagination, Cognition and Personality: Consciousness in Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice 2018, Vol. 38(1) 49–53 ! The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0276236618793034 journals.sagepub.com/home/ica