Which methods to enter trance do you use?

Hello everyone,

So I've recently started being into deep relaxation while meditating. My goal was to achieve what most people call a deep meditative trance.
What worked for me so far seems to be extremely unefficient and it consumes a lot of time, so I've been constantly trying to find new methods with no avail.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to figure out the answer for myself in the future, but I guess asking you won't do any harm :P

My question is the same as stated in the title, which methods do you guys use to get into this trance?

Oh and by the way, I'm mostly talking about meditating while sitting, not while laying down :)

When I meditate I snap into a deep trance that causes rapid eye movement. I don't know if this is a thing, I've tried looking it up but I figured out that for me it's all about the eyes. I can manually dilate my pupil in or out, So for me if I place my eyes..actually it'd be easier if i drew a picture to explain this in paint.
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At the top of the upside down triangle, when I let my eyes focus far in the distance and upwards, meaning my pupils are small focused far I notice I begin to enter sleep, it's hard for me to keep awake when I do this, so eyes up outwards and small pupil. I used this to WILD.

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In the middle of the upside down triangle, when my eyes are looking middle not up or down, and not inwards or out wards in the distance so my pupils are medium dilated whether my eyelids are open or not I notice this keeps me in an awake state. With my eyes like this and I'm by myself this is the position my eyes are in when I day dream, or am lost in thought or memories.

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When I am meaning to meditate, I focus on my phosphenes. After awhile I would go into a trance where I absolutely can not grasp on to any thought memory emotion or anything for more than a split second, I would try to think about thinking and before i could finish thinking it was gone because i passed it, i was zooming to fast onto other things and so on and so on, it's like me zooming in a tunnel past thoughts memories and emotions, like when you're looking directly out the window in a car and the car is going fast and you try to focus on something from the outside but its flown by so fast you keep moving your eyes back and forth but everything you want to focus on just flies by. After staring at my phosphenes for a few minutes my eyes I notice would cross inwards and down and my pupils will dilate because they've been focusing on phosphense that seem to be 3 inches away from my face,everything actually fades out of site and just cloudy lights of phosphenes are there and then my eyes start to rapidly move back and forth still inwards and downwards and that's when the trance happen. If i think before hand to meditate for about ten minutes the trance only lasts for ten minutes and then the phosphene wall fades away from my sight and I come out of it. I can do this with my eyes open or closed, since when the phosphene wall takes over my sight it's like my eyelids are closed anyways, but I do notice the problem of my eyes drying out and I'd have to blink a lot so I do it with my eyelids closed mostly but sometimes my eyelids open a little on their own because they're relaxed.


I don't know if this eye position thing has anything to do with NLP eye patterns stuff. But it's how I manually access different states.
Here's a video on NLP eye patterns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hF5Vh3gvpU
I know somewhat that when people die their eyes focus far up and out also like when I enter sleep. It was this thing I read about this doctor who was present for a beheading back then and he journal'd it. He said after blinking and looking around, the heads eyes began to look up and far and then the doctor yelled the beheaded mans name and the eyes focused and looked at the doctor, and then the eyes began to soften again into the distance and up. I think the doctor called his name loud a few times and the eyes indicated the state of consciousness he was going.

Wow, this is extremely interesting!

I was kinda shocked because I just realized that when I kinda look up like you described, I also fall asleep. This is what I usually do for my WILD or when I just want to sleep as well haha
But it never occurred to me that looking down could also have an effect. Thanks for writing this, I'll experiment a bit with this now :D

Thank you, I'm glad to hear that other People have experienced eye position affecting states also :D & Hey no probby :)

Im quite new to this stuff but i find the above posts really interesting. Thank you very much for sharing!

No problem Crabface, hopefully it'll help you enter trance state with ease :)

Just the other day I sat down to meditate, but then I decided to try self hypnotism - I had recently heard about it. This was my first time, so I probably didn't do it perfectly, but it felt just like meditating to me except it was much faster to reach the "trance" phase. Maybe you could try it out~?

I was visualizing myself slowly descending a flight of stairs. Each step led me deeper into relaxation.
When you reach the bottom, you can meditate or repeat affirmations in your mind.
To finish, slowly ascend the stairs and feel your consciousness return to the surface.

Sit - Breathe in - Breathe out. And make no effort just make the conscious decision to really enjoy breathing. Itching? It's ok. Fell asleep? It's ok. Any disturbing thoughts? It's ok.

Meditation is not about eliminating everything, it's about accepting everything! Let go of your judgements. :)

15-20 min later (usually) or even less, it gets easier with practise -> Peaceful state of mind that gets addicted to this state of presence and carefree mind.

I guess this would be trance, either way it's a very peaceful and relaxing state of mind to be in.

Enjoy! :meditate:

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Originally Posted by Narwhal

When I meditate I snap into a deep trance that causes rapid eye movement. I don't know if this is a thing, I've tried looking it up but I figured out that for me it's all about the eyes. I can manually dilate my pupil in or out, So for me if I place my eyes..actually it'd be easier if i drew a picture to explain this in paint.

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Very nice, I was beginning to think I was weird but it's good to see other people do it too. I normally feel like I am in a different "state" when I leave my eyes looking above.

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Originally Posted by Leol

Very nice, I was beginning to think I was weird but it's good to see other people do it too. I normally feel like I am in a different "state" when I leave my eyes looking above.

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Thanks ^-^, and I wish there was more stuff about this, like scientific studies being done on it. Welp maybe one day :)

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Originally Posted by Katsuno

Wow, this is extremely interesting!

I was kinda shocked because I just realized that when I kinda look up like you described, I also fall asleep. This is what I usually do for my WILD or when I just want to sleep as well haha
But it never occurred to me that looking down could also have an effect. Thanks for writing this, I'll experiment a bit with this now :D

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One time my girlfriend took a nap in my bed and I opened her eye with my hand because I thought she was faking it.
Her eyes were way up and the moment she woke up she rolled them down and focused on my face. So eyes rolling up seems to be a very common thing.
I guess it's because you completely relax your eyeballs during NREM.

My eyes also roll up when I meditate. This sometimes causes a weird feeling between my eyes, kinda ticklish, I can be relaxed in less than 3 minutes if I focus on my breathing and the feeling between my eyes.
But I sometimes try to avoid it, especially when I'm tired, because the relaxation can quickly make you sleepy and unfocused.

To get quickly into light trance, I use a self-hypnosis technique. When I first set up the hypnosis anchor a long while back, I took myself into hypnosis using the countdown method and going down a flight of steps. I did this for the first time. Then I set what is called an anchor. I counted down 3 to 0, then "trance", once I was in the trance state that I was looking for. With the anchor, I was telling my subconscious that every time I say 3,2,1,trance, that i should drop into a light trance. I use this method for the start of all my meditations or WILDs, to set my mind in the right state. I've been doing this for a long while, so my relaxation is just as simple. I just run a relaxing wave from head to foot, and then i start my focusing technique as described in another forum by Xanth, I believe. Using the self-hypnosis to quickly set a relaxed, focused state in seconds was very helpful for me. my two cents.

P.s. you can find much more thorough information on Utube regarding anchors and hooks to set trance states. my statements above were a bit abbreviated so as to not take up too much space.