A small study on a drug-free trance technique suggests that auto-induced cognitive trance can dramatically alter how people experience their minds and bodies, producing fewer self-focused thoughts, blurred bodily boundaries and a pronounced sense of oneness, with participants reporting higher inner peace than during a routine meal. The findings, drawn from 17 trained practitioners and published in a neuroscience-focused journal, emphasise that the effects are experiential and do not imply therapy or lasting change.
Auto-induced cognitive trance is described by researchers as a learnable, drug-free state of heightened sensory immersion, with spontaneous body movements and vivid mental imagery. Practitioners enter the trance using personal sounds and gestures rather than external aids.
For about a decade, our research has focused on the link between states of ‘self-transcendence’ (moments when the feeling of being a separate, self-centered individual fades) and the emergence of positive emotions and well-being, said lead researcher Pierre De Oliveira of the Psy-DREPI laboratory at Université Bourgogne Europe in Dijon, France.
“So far, this link has mainly been studied in the context of meditation, a practice grounded in stillness and the attentive observation of one’s own thoughts,” De Oliveira told PsyPost. “We first wanted to know whether a very different route, a self-induced trance practice that is dynamic, bodily and expressive, would also alter the experience of self.”
The researchers interviewed 17 practitioners (13 women and four men, average age 49) who had undergone specialised training in auto-induced cognitive trance. On average, they had trained about 15 months earlier and practised several times a week in 10-minute sessions.
Participants were asked to vividly recall and describe two moments in a random order: an ordinary waking state, specifically the last time they had a meal, and one of their most intense trance episodes. They answered open-ended questions and completed quantitative ratings on various aspects of self-awareness and emotion on a 0 to 100 scale.
There was a striking shift in the narrative self during the trance. Mind wandering dropped from 31.5 per cent in the ordinary state to 2.7 per cent in the trance, while present-focused thoughts fell from 63.5 per cent to 37.0 per cent. One participant said they were “fully present in the trance rather than in the room”.
Participants also reported feeling less like authors of their own thoughts and feelings, with scores dropping from 67.4 to 12.1, although the sense of being an observer of those thoughts remained largely unchanged. Time perception altered markedly: the sense that time was present in the mind fell from 64.3 to 7.0, and 11 of the 17 participants could not estimate how fast time passed during the trance.
The minimal self underwent profound changes as well. The sense of motor agency dropped from 83.8 to 10.4, with movements and vocalisations described as spontaneous or irresistible. Dissociation was described as nonpathological; several participants described their bodies moving or making sounds without a sense of deciding to do so, while a part of themselves watched the scene unfold.
“They felt both like spectators of the experience and carried along by it, in a kind of willing surrender,” De Oliveira said. “For several of them, however, this surrender remained partial. They described this observing part as a kind of brake on whatever might emerge, one that both limited how deep the trance could go and allowed them to keep some degree of control.” He added that, unlike clinical dissociation, this experience was self-induced and participants could exit it whenever they wished.
The boundaries between self and environment also softened. The perceived distinctness of bodily boundaries dropped from 83.8 to 36.5, while feelings of oneness with surroundings rose from 28.4 to 75.9. The sense of being in the centre of the scene and of the body itself did not change significantly, though the overall sense of self became less anchored to a single point (from 85.7 to 50.4).
Well-being was higher during trance than during the meal, particularly on the inner-peace dimension, which rose from 44.3 to 74.7, with happiness increasing from 50.5 to 74.2. While contentment also increased, the rise did not reach statistical significance.
When the team checked whether self-related changes aligned with happiness, only two correlations were statistically significant: those who felt less at the centre of the scene, or whose sense of self was less tied to one specific point, tended to report greater happiness. Other shifts—such as changes to the boundaries or to the narrative self—showed weaker or non-significant links.
The overall pattern—a combination of softened body boundaries and greater well-being—echoes earlier, smaller studies suggesting that immersive experiences that loosen the sense of self can accompany positive emotions. However, the researchers emphasised that the 2023 findings involved immersive exposure to natural environments in virtual reality, whereas this study focused on trained trance practitioners.
The findings also sit with prior work showing that while many people report positive effects after non-drug altered states, some report suffering afterward. The current study, though, involved a small, specialised group and did not establish cause and effect or lasting trait changes.
De Oliveira cautioned against over-interpreting the results. “The main misinterpretation to avoid would be to conclude that trance makes people happier or that it is a form of therapy,” he said. “Our participants were recalling a past experience, and our study can neither establish cause and effect nor tell us whether any such effects carry over into everyday life.” He added that experiences can be stabilising or destabilising, depending on how individuals integrate them.
The study’s limitations include the small, largely female sample, with many participants working in health-related fields, and the reliance on retrospective recall. All participants were trained by the TranceScience Research Institute, which may have shaped expectations about how trance should feel.
“These results should nonetheless be read cautiously,” De Oliveira noted. “This was a pilot study with a small sample, which tends to overestimate the size of effects. In terms of practical significance, our data describe the intensity of a transient nonordinary state of consciousness, not a lasting benefit.”
The researchers emphasise that more work is needed to determine whether regular practice yields lasting changes in everyday well-being and self-perception, and to understand the social and psychological processes behind these experiences.
“Our long-term question concerns regular practice: can these self-transcendent experiences, repeated session after session, have lasting effects on the sense of self?” De Oliveira said. “Our hypothesis, drawn from research on meditation, is that these transient states could gradually loosen the way people perceive themselves. They would come to experience themselves a little less as a fixed, separate entity and a little more as connected to their surroundings.”
“It is genuinely exciting to be able to study, within a scientific framework, practices that remain largely unexplored,” he concluded. “We would also like to thank the participants, who agreed to put into words experiences that are often hard to describe.”
The study, “From the attenuation of self-boundaries to inner peace: how nonordinary states of consciousness modulates self-experience and subjective well-being,” was authored by Pierre De Oliveira, Hélène Meunier, Audrey Breton, and Michael Dambrun.
