Hypnosis, Trance and Ritual: How Humans Have Explored Consciousness Across Cultures
Updated: Oct 15
Long before hypnosis became a subject of psychological research, human beings were finding ways to step outside the ordinary rhythm of everyday awareness. Through rhythmic movement, chanting, music, meditation, and ritual, communities across the world have cultivated experiences that differ from our usual waking state. Some understand these experiences as spiritual encounters. Others approach them through religious devotion, healing traditions or contemplative practice.
Today, we have scientific frameworks for exploring focused attention, suggestion, and hypnosis. But these modern frameworks are not the only ways human beings have understood consciousness, nor do they explain the full meaning of every traditional practice.
What interests me is the question that sits between these worlds:
What can the ways humans have explored consciousness across history teach us about our own minds today?
Before we explore that question, it is worth clarifying what hypnosis actually is.
Hypnosis is commonly described as a state involving focused attention, reduced awareness of surrounding distractions, and an increased responsiveness to suggestion. It is not sleep, unconsciousness or a particular brainwave state. Although researchers have observed changes in brain activity associated with hypnosis, there is no single brainwave pattern that defines the experience.
And while hypnosis and traditional trance practices may share certain features, they should not automatically be treated as the same thing.
The Healing Dance of the Kalahari
In Southern Africa, one fascinating example of ritual and altered states of consciousness can be found in the healing dances of the Juǀ’hoansi, a San community of the Kalahari.
These dances have been documented by anthropologists, including Richard Katz and Megan Biesele, whose research explores the relationship between traditional healing, spirituality and community life. Their work offers us a glimpse into a way of understanding healing that extends beyond the individual and places the community at its heart.
The healing dance traditionally takes place at night, often around a fire. Women sing and clap rhythmic songs while men dance, sometimes for hours. Through the combination of rhythm, movement, song and sustained physical effort, some participants experience a trance state known as !kia.
Within the Juǀ’hoansi understanding of the practice, this experience is connected to nǀom, a healing potency that practitioners describe as becoming heated or reaching a boiling point within the body. Those who enter this state may lay their hands on others as part of the healing ritual.
These experiences belong to a particular spiritual worldview and cannot be fully understood by separating the dance from the beliefs and relationships that give it meaning.
What I find particularly interesting is that this is not simply an individual sitting quietly and turning their attention inward. The experience unfolds through movement, sound, physical sensation, and the presence of other people. Singing and dancing are not merely background elements; they are integral to the ritual itself.
So, where does hypnosis enter this conversation?
Modern hypnosis research explores how focused attention, expectation, imagination, and suggestion can shape our experiences. Researchers have drawn comparisons between hypnotic phenomena and certain features of the Juǀ’hoansi healing dance. However, these comparisons do not mean that the two practices are equivalent, or that the Juǀ’hoansi themselves understand their tradition through the framework of modern hypnosis.
And perhaps that distinction is important
.
We do not need to rename a traditional practice to recognise that it raises fascinating questions about human consciousness. Nor do we need to reduce a spiritual ceremony to its observable effects to appreciate its significance
The healing dance invites us to consider how our experience of ourselves can be shaped by more than thought alone. Our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships with others all contribute to how we experience the world.
For me, this is where the connection to modern hypnosis becomes interesting. In exploring what they might teach us about the many ways human beings experience attention, awareness and change.
In the next part of this series, we'll travel to Korea to explore gut, a traditional shamanic ceremony in which music, movement and ritual hold deep cultural and spiritual significance.
What might this tradition reveal about the many ways human beings have sought to understand themselves and their place in the world?
Xx Pascale
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