The Daily Trance

Have you ever found yourself standing in some room in your house and you couldn’t remember why you went there? It’s as if you’ve come back to consciousness after having passed through some mental nevernever-land.You struggle to re-orient yourself.You’ve lost continuity—the normal sense of the connectedness and progression of experiences from one to another. Although substance abusers and people with cognitive impairment experience this state of mind fairly often, mentally healthy people also do. It’s a normal feature of the way your biocomputer operates. The simplest description of your experience is that you went into a trance. Unfortunately, the word “trance” tends to conjure up ideas and images of strange and supernatural experiences. Folk myths about hypnosis, often perpetuated by the popular media and the antics of stage hypnotists, tend to color the meaning of the term. The simple fact is that we all slip into and out of trance states many times in a typical day. So, if trances are merely one particular kind of normal mind-state, we can learn to understand and demystify them. We all have a general sense of what a trance, or a trance-like state, is. Yet psychologists and neuroscientists cannot seem to agree on a working definition.There seem to be a variety of trance states, ranging from the specialized state of hypnosis to the kinds of religious and ritualistic trances experienced by various native cultures, to various meditative experiences that are different from “normal”waking consciousness. Aside from the normal “daily trance,” as we might label it, trance states can be caused by a number of experiences. Hypnosis, of course, is the deliberate induction of a trance state by means of hyper-focused concentration. Meditation and prayer can also induce trance-like states. People in some cultures chant, sing, and dance to put themselves into trance states. But accidental, momentary trances are also quite common. A magic trick, or almost any similar astonishing experience, will cause most minds to go into a fixated state, at least for a matter of seconds. Sudden fear, extreme anxiety, and other pathological states can also cause trance. A more mundane example of the daily trance is the experience of watching television. After about five minutes, a person watching TV typically slips into a light trance state. One key characteristic of virtually all trance states, including the normal daily trance, is a condition psychologists refer to as dissociation. In our normal waking mental processes, our mind—or minds—are continually weaving our perceptions and our thoughts into coherent patterns.These associative patterns are what we store away in our memories, and they’re what we recall when we access any element of an experience. In a condition of dissociation, however, the associating process temporarily stops. The brain no longer waves the elements of perception together. The effect of dissociation could explain to some extent the repressed memory syndrome, in which victims of trauma cannot access certain parts of the experience that caused the trauma.The conventional psychological explanation is “ego defense,” the notion that one of our minds is protecting us from the unbearable experience of recalling the unpleasant material. But another explanation, based on dissociation, is that the information became dis-integrated, or unpatterned, and the memory elements have lost their associative connections. Typically, a trained therapist can help a person retrieve these lost memories by a process of guided recall, in which they are brought to consciousness and then properly reassociated, after which they can indeed be remembered. The daily trances we slip into and out of many times in a typical day seem to be a normal and necessary part of the biocomputer’s operation. Neuroscientists aren’t sure why they happen, or exactly what their function is. It’s conceivable, although by no means proven, that we could learn to manage our mental energies and emerge from the typical microtrance by a conscious procedure. Presuming that the biocomputer What Is Practical Intelligence? typically gets as much trance time as it needs over the course of a day or so, can we recapture our attention and redirect it toward the mental activities we prefer and the things we want to accomplish? Here’s a method you can use to bring your mind back to a conscious state and focus your attention more clearly. It involves three steps or attentional “scans”:
• The Body Scan.When you become aware that your mind has been wandering—which implies that it has stopped wandering for a moment—bring your attention to your body. Close your eyes if you like, and tune in to as many signals as you can detect that are coming from your body. Feel the sensation of your clothes on your skin. Does anything itch or tickle? Can you feel any activity in your stomach or digestive tract? What’s your overall energy level? Can you feel the pressure of the chair, couch, bed, floor, or whatever you’re sitting or lying on? Rub your fingertips against your thumbs and feel the sensation. Move your head around and feel the sensation of movement. Get messages from as many parts of your body as you can.
• The “Bubble” Scan. Next, extend your attention to your immediate physical environment—the imaginary bubble that extends about three to five feet outward from your body.What’s there? Is anyone close enough to you to make physical contact? What are the movements, colors,textures, and patterns you can sense? What do you hear? What are you doing with your hands? What are you holding, if anything? What are the various things around you: a pen and some index cards; your computer keyboard, mouse, or display; papers and other items on your desk; if you’re in a car, the arrangement of the compartment you’re sitting in; if you’re on a plane, the people, seats, and other items around you.Tune in as intently as possible as you scan your close-in environment.
• The “Field” Scan. Next, extend your attention outward to the larger environment around you.Who and what do you see? What are people doing? What sounds do you hear, and where are they coming from? If you’re outdoors, how far can you see and what do you see? Can you feel and smell a breeze? What does the sky look like? Can you feel the sun? What colors and patterns do you become aware of? If you’re indoors, study the arrangement of the room or the space you’re in. How is it designed? How do people move around in it? What materials, textures, and patterns do you see? Tune in to the “meaning” of what’s going on in the extended space around you. With this simple three-step scan, all you’ve done, basically, is to activate your sensory system.You’ve coaxed your biocomputer out of its dissociated, trance-like reverie state and given it a job to do. If you make a habit of this three-scan method, using it occasionally during a day, you may find that you feel more focused, more present, more mentally clear, and more connected to what you’re doing. You can use it in any number of situations.While you’re waiting for someone; sitting in your car waiting for a traffic light to change; while shopping or taking care of routine errands; you can do a quick “triplescan” and bring your mind back to consciousness. Of course, it’s probably not advisable to try to avoid the daily micro-trances altogether, even if we could. Most likely, your biocomputer will find the trance time it requires, and you can make use of the rest as you see fit.