“Psytrance music is not ordinary music… don’t try to assess or judge it with your concept of good music… psytrance is an auditive psychosis… it’s a type of therapy” I tell my friend… a musician.
He looks at me sceptically.
“Most people misunderstand psychosis…. most types of psychosis are an important healing state for humans. It is chaos… anarchy… and if people go through this psychosis – the non-paranoid one – the new emerges.”
He looks puzzled at me.
“One of my main teacher – Stanislav Grof – called it spiritual emergency… it is an emergency, but at the same time your true spirituality emerges. Grof was one of the main researcher of LSD therapy. Initially LSD was used for psychiatrists to understand the state of psychosic patients as it was believed that LSD simulates the psychotic state of mind. And then they found out that it actually has healing effects.” I pause…
“You know how psytrance is defined in in the German Wikipedia?”
He shakes his head.
“Psytrance tries to simulate the LSD experience through music!”
I laugh…
“And it really works. After LSD was made illegal Grof developed Holotropic breathwork as he had observed that many people hyperventilate while on LSD. Through hyperventilation you can have similar experiences like on LSD they say… so from my perspective the mother of breathwork and psytrance is LSD!”
He goes and dances…
The next morning he asks: “I start to understand what you are talking about. But most people I saw dancing last night were just high on ecstasy. Do people generally see it like you?”
I shake my head: “I don’t know. You see, I’ve done scientific research on holotropic breathwork for my masters and was trained in the method for four years. During my first festival at OZORA in 2016 I relized that you can use psytrance festivals with the holoropic breathwork framework as a ritual for your healing. But still, I’m sure many people intuitively understand it like this – I guess something like 20%. And the rest, at big psytrance festivals like Boom and OZORA, I would say about 20% of people are just tourists – people that don’t know or understand the psytrance spirit. I guess another 60% are just non-stop high.”
The next day we do the second healing ritual, going into trance through breathwork.
My friend is in deep pain. His back hurts again. And he tells me that he wants a massage.
“Go to the main stage and use your trance…” I tell him “let the music evoke the movement that becomes your healing massage from inside!”
Again, he is sceptical. This guy has backpain for years now so bad, that he almost committed suicide. He had almost 1.000 massages in his lifetime and saw the best doctors in the world to heal him… and they couldn’t. So now a psytrance dance should help?!
“Go in…” I tell him “I will see you tomorrow!”
The next day when he sees me he hugs me “My backpain got considerably better through my dance last night… I can’t believe it!”
“That’s psytrance!” I grin.
He goes to play some drums at the drum-shop. When I pay him a visit he hugs me again. “You don’t know what just happend” he says “I play the drums for 20 years now but for the first time I played new rhythems I’ve never played before.”
Again I grin and say “That’s psytrance.”
“And then,” he continues “the owner of the shop comes to me and asks me who I am. He never heard anyone play like me. He wants me to become part of his exclusive musicians network. And he said he has access to all festivals in Portgual and I can perform anywhere I wish!”
“These synchronicities are the true power of psytrance festivals. It’s nothing you can rationally explain to people. You can only experience it” I respond.
The last day my friend “cannot get into it”. We go to the world music stage. I tell him:
“Once you don’t care how you look from the outside how you dance, you are there. This time, you close your eyes and imagine drumming not in 3D but in 5D.” The I go to chill in a hammock for a bit ’cause I’ce been dancing for too much last couple of days. When I head back to the stage, I see my friend dancing like a crazy man in the front row. The musicians were so impressed, that they came down from the stage to perform next to him.
After the concert he comes up to me and says: “I didn’t drum in 5D but in 7D!”
“That’s psytrance!” I grin 😉
Psytrance is much more than music, it is a sacred space, it is a type of holistic therapy, it is love… the syncronicities… the people you meet… the conversations you have… it’s like magic…
For most people psytrance is just horroble music. Once you get inside, it becomes a way of life.
It’s my way of life…
vox