The Power of Trance
When I’m out and about and am asked about my work, people have all sorts of interesting reactions to:
“I’m a love, sex, and relationship coach.”
It’s a juicy title! Few have ever heard of it. I am met with a lot of really deep curiosity, and sometimes a thrill of recognition,
“I need you!”
“Most people do!” I joke. Truly, sex coach is not high on the list of NEEDs (food, water, shelter, love…) — but a whole lot of people are struggling hard every day with problems that don’t have to be such an exhausting, demoralizing slog.
As the conversation progresses, some of these problems arise. I freely offer information where I can, suggest personal practices to support, and point to relevant reading material. Inevitably, there reaches a point where my conversation partner draws back,
“But now you’re coaching me for free! I don’t want to take advantage…”
“No!” I laugh. “This is information. We’re having a conversation. Coaching is different.”
If you’re in regular, every-day consciousness, we’re not doing somatic coaching. The one thing all my varied tools and processes have in common is that they work best when you’re dropped into a state of trance. Yes, there is deep listening and there are assignments and there is sexual re-education, but the meat of somatic coaching is not analytical. In a conversation, I might tell you what to do in your life. In coaching, I guide you into trance state, and then you tell me what’s true.
This both is and also isn’t as exotic as it sounds. Your trance state is alive and flowing right now, just under the surface of rational consciousness. You may be the kind of person who’s a very good thinker. Very in-your-head. And it serves you well in many areas of your life to be smart and shrewd — but it is also completely exhausting and conducive to anxiety, not pleasure. A run-away brain can be a miserable curse.
My job is to quiet your mind — or to let it run, but find ways around it, underneath it, through it to get to the other side.
Just beneath that hubub is trance state.
Some people take drugs to get there. Psychadelic healing is having a moment right now. Respect to my friends who practice with plant medicine, but that isn’t my offering. I dip you into deeper consciousness right here, with what you’ve got: attention, sensation, breath.
Trance state is a beautiful thing. You probably experience it more than you know. Some ways you might experience trance:
Artistic expression, painting, drawing, dancing
Getting lost in music
Zoning out (as at the beach, to the drone of the waves)
Hiking or walking in nature for a long time
Exercising to exhaustion
Meditating
You know that feeling when the brain winds down and you aren’t really THINKING anymore? That’s trance. And in trance is a well of peace, wisdom, and truths that you just can’t access through thinking harder. In trance, the felt-sense is very present. You’re EMBODIED. That is, you can feel your toes and your heart and your hairs growing out of your scalp. You are all the way in your body.
This is where we work in somatic coaching, and it’s why it’s so hard to talk about. It isn’t thought, it’s FELT.
The difference between KNOWING that safety and FEELING safety is that you can still an anxious, tortured mess even when you KNOW you’re safe, but when you FEEL you’re safe, anxiety dissipates and space opens up. There’s nowhere else to go. You’re already here.
Whether you’re seeking safety or peace or pleasure, try doing something that puts you into flow or zone-out, and then FEEL for it. It’s more powerful than it sounds.
“I feel like I just did ten years of therapy in one session.”
YES. This is how. You can analyze in circles indefinitely for years and years, but you only have to feel expansively peaceful once and the experience is yours forever. This is the magic of somatic work.
So when people call me and decide not to do coaching and I send them a list of books and practices that might help them anyway, just to help them along their own way, they say, “Thank you! This is very generous to give away your work.” I laugh. This isn’t my work. It’s valuable information, of course. That’s why I pass it along. But information shminformation! You can find all the information I learned at coaching school at the library, but you can’t touch the power of it until you drop beneath the hubub of the mind and swim in the depths below.
That’s the magic of this work.
Have a problem you’d like to approach in trance state? Click here to book a free consultation. Let’s go deep.