'Firebird' Trance-Dance is a way of entering into the place where the dance dances the dancer. It is a magical gateway to spiritual states of consciousness

The Trance-Dance has four parts - Induction - Dance - Relaxation - Integration

The Dance Induction

To induce the dance, the dancer closes their eyes and feels the drumbeat and then takes a few deep belly breaths. Next the leader holds their head firmly with one hand behind - important to prevent bending the person's head backwards - and the other hand on their forehead, and then turns their head and upper body around a few times, gently at first and then gradually more until the whole upper body is moving, pivoting from the waist. If possible it is good then to spin them around. A good induction is different for everyone and you have to learn by trial and error what works for different individuals. For some people a period of deep but quick panting breathing can help take them across their barriers, but I prefer to start easy and only increase the depth of induction as people become more experienced.

The Dance Itself

The dancers form a large circle using all the available space. One dancer comes forward to be inducted and four people are set up as ‘minders’ to look after them. Once that person is off into the dance, another dancer can be inducted in another part of the room, and so on until maybe four or five, possibly even as many as six are dancing at once according to the size of room and the number of participants. The drummers watch the dancers and follow where the energy is strongest. Sometimes, especially if they are playing djembes and can strap their drums on, they move around and drum right with the dancers. This is quite wonderful and it is an amazing feeling to be in the energy flow and feel oneself 'drummed' into ecstacy!

The first part of a dance is quite often wild and out of balance and the dancer may have difficulty staying upright. Here the minders help keep the dancer safe and do all they can to help them not to actually fall down as this can break the trance. Gradually the dance stabilises and then the trance can deepen and take the person to new vistas. After some time, fewer minders are needed until maybe just one is sufficient. Some dances go on a long time and others are higher energy and end more quickly. There is no right and wrong, it is best to simply to obey the call of Spirit and let the dance dance you. The dance can take you to the upper world of light and the feeling of being beyond or outside of yourself and your usual boundaries, or it may take you to the lower world where repressed emotions can be expressed and blocked energy released.

Here are the verbatim experiences of some dancers:-

"At the start I felt a huge surge of energy - as if I could take off and fly. I felt the potential for such liberation within me, and freedom of movement and expression. Simultaneously, however, as I began to dance, I felt all my limitations well up to the surface, and I experienced a real struggle inside about letting go. Something inside wouldn't let me and I felt smothered and choked by it. Before I knew it I was on the floor gasping for breath. Leo came over and said 'let it go'. I screamed out my rage, my feelings of being boxed in and unable to express myself. Afterwards, I felt shaken but exhilarated and with a real sense of liberation."

Her next experience: "This time I felt a tremendous freedom and liberation. I was aware and in control and yet it was almost as if the outside world had been shut out of my conscious mind - and even if it was still there, it no longer seemed to matter. I felt free and that I could do anything.
Occasionally I wondered what I must look like and marvelled at how unusual it was for me to be moving in the way I was - but because my focus was centred within myself, what was going on inside of me seemed to take priority over who or what was outside of myself.
I was amazed afterwards how 'out of it' I was - in fact it took about half and hour to feel something like 'normal' again. As soon as I lay on the floor I began to sob because I felt that I was losing something really special in coming back into my normal, limited personality and being .This sadness gave way to anger as I questioned why? I curled up and pondered on the way my life was.
Then it dawned on me that the conditions my life seemed to impose on me were in fact of my own making - and that in fact I could be very much freer than I allowed myself to be. I began to realise with great joy that in reality there is no separation between the place I touched in the dance and my daily life. It just depends on the limitations I impose on myself."

Another dancer writes of her first dance:
"Had the feeling of being taken over. Each time the energy changed, I would fall. Although I was aware of what was going on, I could not stop or change or control the dance or the movement in any way. At the end of the dance, a few seconds before I came back I could feel waves of love moving around and through me, coming from the 4 directions ( her 4 minders). It felt like when one dies and goes to that place where all the loved ones are there waiting . The love was so intense - I felt very fortunate to be dead!!!

Her second dance:-
.......felt peaceful, could even feel a gentle smile on my face. Again could not control or change anything. The energy was grateful to be here and was sending love and blessing to all present and lots of praise for the drummers for creating that beautiful space. I felt as if I was in a far distant place , the drums sounded so faint and far away.

3rd dance:-
My throat went very dry. Then suddenly it was very dark. I thought I had become blind and was most frightened. After a few moments, it felt like my eyes were made of light -- they were so full of light that I find it difficult to keep them closed. With my eyes partially open I could see the light at the bottom of my eyes. I don't remember about the dance. I felt wonderful.

You can sense the development as she got accustomed to trust the space of the dance and to let herself be fully in whatever happened. In the third dance her psychic centers are opening and she is getting a sense of her potential.

Here is a another woman dancer's experience:
"For a long time I had felt that I had a very heavy block in my lower abdomen and I felt as if there were depressed emotions locked in my body. Fear of letting them go was present but I prepared myself to have a go.
After the head spinning I felt a bit panicky and that my body was very heavy to move. After a while I started to feel discomfort in my stomach as I was spinning and moving. I started to feel as if I was going to be sick. I knew all the time that I could stop if I wanted to, but something kept me going. It was as if something shifted inside me and I even tasted it in my mouth, as an odour of something old. I was holding my stomach and continued moving. It felt slightly easier but my body felt quite tired. I collapsed on the floor and I was helped to bring up the cry from my stomach. My throat felt very stiff and it was difficult to let all the tension go.
After the dance I felt very quiet and slightly shaken. Next night I slept very deep.

Next dance a few weeks later: This time the experience was very pleasant. I felt very free and felt that I was flying. With my eyes closed there was a lot of light. I completely trusted the people around me
Overcoming the fear of letting go allows me to move my conscious mind aside and tap into another dimension which is filled with light colour, space and the drums. I feel as if the drum beat carries me like a wind. I feel an amazing feeling of freedom and lightness. At times I feel that my body is dancing by itself and yet I am in full control, as One.


Another woman dancer who works as a practising psychic reader had this experience
Dance exhilarating, ecstatic, danced with eyes open - vast movements of energy - lifted - jumping- wanted to fly.
Fell face down - total relaxation couldn't move- taken to mats to lie. Deep, deep, deep relaxation. Felt held in the arms of the Bear of the West
Then found myself in the mouth of enormous cave - hundreds of torch bearers - flaming torches - like a Mayan temple - huge steps leading upward. I was climbing them alone and wondered if I was the sacrifice. Met huge figure with vast Eagle's head. He asked me why I had come and what I wished. I replied 'I wish to dance in the realm of the Gods' He took me to a stone slab where I lay down. My head was chopped off and out of my throat flew bats. These flew off into the darkness of the void and I was one of them. Then from a bat I turned into a crow. Then I was human and crow. Told that my power and energy came from the womb - the void..... Then in a crow-like manner - still flying but in human shape - I saw myself giving birth and out of my vagina was spinning energy that seemed like new stars and galaxies being born, but very much the awareness that I was giving birth to myself. Very powerful!!

Later she said :- "Then I felt myself coming down to re-enter this me. I was floating down to the left side of my larger being. As I came back to this 'me' I felt I brought with me a lot of wholeness and completeness and power of the larger part of the being that is me. It made all the mundane problems of my life dissolve into insignificance.

In a later dance she experienced this:- ..
.........I felt the sound of the drum enter my feet and move upward to my solar plexus. Once there I actually became the sound, there was no separation. I felt moments of bliss and knew that I had become a kind of wave of sound. But while the drums lasted, it was as though I was caught inside them and they wouldn't let me go. Then the sound become very strong inside and was hurting my stomach, like an animal biting at my sides, but I couldn't get away from it. Then the sensation and sound became so overwhelming and so insistent I thought afterwards that had someone not stopped me dancing that I would have just passed out.

A week later she was able to interpret the dance :-

"When I was in therapy four years ago and working with my dreams, I had a recurring dream of a man ( an ex boss) and the dreams were very vivid but somehow I couldn't realise what they were trying to tell me, even though we discussed at length how I felt about this person in waking consciousness and what he might symbolise in the dreams. He was always a figure clothed in intrigue and fear. In 'real life' he was a man with a very powerful temper. Following the trance dance I dreamed very vividly of this person. But his time he greeted me and embraced me and was my friend and helper. When I woke I felt very different, a kind of inner peace and calm - and a different quality of being. When I asked myself what it was, I came up with the word 'fierce'. I felt very fierce and 'wolfish'.
Well, during the week I found myself in three situations quite unplanned and unmanouvered by me where I found myself telling three people what I thought of them and where they could go!! Out of my life!
Havng suffered greatly through depression, which is indeed self directed anger in my case, I have not until this time accepted my own anger or known how to express it in a creative way."


Another dancer had this experience of the upper world right at the end of a session.
....the drummer started up a rapid rhythm. It caught me like the wind catches a sail. I flapped my arms to keep balance but already was higher off the ground than a second before. I kept flapping my hands - couldn't help it. An energy ran through my body and moved it so quickly and lightly. I was so excited I didn't know whether I was laughing or crying, but my throat closed and opened all at once. I made excited little sounds, altogether too small for the rush of energy I was feeling, and altogether too inhibited for the odd display of now wildly flapping arms and hands. My throat became sore as if wanting to scream, but my training and conditioning would not allow me. .. I was situated in front of the tray of candles which was in the middle of the room. Never moving my eyes from the flames, the candles all receded far away, as though I had really jumped out of the bounds of gravity, far up and away. Indeed the elevation now in my jump was such that I felt like I was a trampoline - arms still waving madly, throat aching to shout, body as light as a feather, vision now quite blurred, and an excitement rushing through my body which surely a child feels when she is so thrilled she cannot contain herself. ..... It seemed the deeper I breathed, the higher I could jump. .... Lifting myself so high was as easy as breathing deeply, and then suddenly it all went. I remember THINKING. That was the fatal action and I came back to earth with a bump. In an instant I knew I'd thought it impossible to do what I was doing, and so it was!


Responses to the dance are very different as you can see in the above accounts. Its beauty is that it allows Spirit to take the dancer where the dancer needs to go, and it allows Spirit to know best without interference of human know-alls. The facilitator's job is to respond to the needs of the dancer and to make the space as safe as possible both emotionally and physically.

Relaxation

A place for relaxation is required with enough cushions, blankets and the like to make it comfortable for up to perhaps a quarter of the participants at any one time. The relaxation follows when the dancer has quite simply had enough. Some dancers will lie down when exhausted, some collapse in a heap and are carried off, and some gently walk off to the relaxation area. In all cases it is good to have someone stay with them as long as they want, as feelings can come up to the surface and the person may need emotional support, or just something as simple as a glass of water. Once the person is rested, they rejoin the circles of dancers and minders again.

Integration

At the end of the whole session, we might have a period of light dancing, perhaps to something like reggae music - something quite different to the drums, and then sit down and share stories to integrate the experience and see what we learned, and get a sense of how the spirit moved us that day. Sharing stories is a very important part of integration because it helps provide a context for what may otherwise seem quite bizarre experiences.
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I would like to stress that compared to those cultures who have not lost the ability to connect directly with the Spirit World, we are at a beginners level with this work. In his wonderful book 'Sangoma' James Hall recounts his experience of going through a full African training to become a shaman and gain 'Lidlotis', spirits who help him ‘see’, divine, and thus heal. (Highly recommended!) It is to stay humble whatever great visions we might experience, and remember that a vision is not useful until it is brought to earth and grounded in practical results in your life.

Many old cultures on this planet danced nightly. Some, such at the Minianka of Mali, apparently still do. The shaman-drummer 'drums' the dancers into a state of balance and harmony. (Ref: The Healing Drum by Yaya Diallo) Many of us spend our evenings watching TV today and we might think Trance-Dancing nightly an odd thing to do. What I wonder will our long term descendents make of so many of us spending night after night supinely watching TV?