Breaking the Trance: Meditation as Liberation Practice
Much of our suffering does not arise because something is wrong with us. It arises because our nervous systems and minds have learned patterns of perception and reaction that once made sense, and no longer serve. Buddhist mindfulness and concentration practices were never meant to be stress-reduction or self-optimization techniques. At their core, they are liberation practices: ways of interrupting conditioned perception so that choice, flexibility, and responsiveness can return.
This course is an invitation to understand how negative trance states form, how they take hold through the nervous system and lived history, and how embodied awareness can begin to loosen their grip. Not through force or fixing, but through practices that restore clarity, agency, and the capacity for choice.
What do I mean by trance?
The way I am using the term 'trance' here is to describe any patterned state of perception that is causing us suffering and convinces us it is the only reality available.
Trance can show up as:
- Chronic rumination or looping thoughts
- Catastrophizing and fear-based future-casting
- Habitual emotional patterns shaped by early relational learning
- Conditioned nervous system responses that narrow range and choice
These patterns are not personal failures. They are learned adaptations. The work of meditation, as it is taught here, is not about eliminating these states, but about learning to recognize when we are inside them, and restoring enough awareness and embodiment that other responses become possible.
How we’ll work together
Breaking the Trance is a six-week embodied mindfulness course that approaches meditation as a somatic practice. The work is grounded in the body, informed by trauma awareness, and rooted in Buddhist insight teachings.
We use sensation, breath, sensory awareness & movement as stabilizing supports for awareness, learning to recognize when we’ve left embodied presence and how to return, building stability, flexibility, and clarity over time.
In this course, we’ll explore:
- How conditioning forms through repetition, attachment, and survival
- How the nervous system participates in habit and perception
- How to create space between thoughts, emotions, and experience
- How embodied presence supports clarity without dissociation
- How to work skillfully with rumination and anxiety, without suppression
What this course offers
Breaking the Trance is a six-week embodied mindfulness course that explores meditation as a practice of liberation, grounded in the body, informed by trauma awareness, and rooted in Buddhist insight teachings.
We will work with:
- How conditioning forms through repetition, attachment, and survival
- How the nervous system participates in habit and perception
- How to create space between thoughts, emotions, and experience
- How embodied presence supports clarity without dissociation
- How to meet rumination and anxiety skillfully, without suppression
Course structure
This course meets once per week for 75 minutes. Each class includes teaching, guided practice, and time for conversation and reflection. The sequence moves from understanding how conditioned patterns form, to recognizing how they operate and sustain themselves, to learning how they loosen and give way to greater freedom and choice.
Week 1: Becoming Spellbound: How Conditioning Shapes Perception
An orientation to how experience is shaped through habit, neuroplasticity, early relational learning, and social conditioning. The week introduces foundational practices of embodied presence that support learning to feel and sense experience before interpreting it.
Week 2: The Body as Ally: Stabilizing Awareness Through Embodiment
We explore attention as a nervous system process and learn how sensation, movement, sensory awareness, and breath support stability and presence. Emphasis is placed on trauma-informed pacing, bottom-up regulation, and embodied concentration as the ground for insight.
Week 3: Creating Space: Differentiation and Decentering
This week focuses on practices that help differentiate thoughts, emotions, and sensations from identity, allowing experience to be met without collapse or avoidance. We work with decentering and externalization in ways that maintain contact while restoring choice and perspective.
Week 4: Working with Rumination: Loops, Repetition, and Mental Habits
Rumination is explored as a trance state, one that feels like thinking, but is actually repetition without presence. We examine how mental loops form and sustain themselves, and learn ways to interrupt them through awareness, embodiment, and differentiation.
Week 5: Working with Anxiety: Future-Casting and Fear-Based Projection
Anxiety is approached as a future-oriented trance shaped by threat memory and nervous system activation. This week explores fear-based projection, anticipatory thinking, and safety-seeking habits, while practicing ways of restoring contact with present-moment experience and embodied safety.
Week 6: Integration: Living with Greater Freedom and Choice
The final week brings the practices together, focusing on recognizing trance states as they arise and responding with awareness rather than reflex. We explore how these skills support greater flexibility, clarity, and choice in daily life, and how to continue the practice beyond the course.
Who its for & how it’s held
This course may be supportive if you:
- Are interested in mindfulness as a liberation practice rather than self-improvement
- Experience rumination, anxiety, or mental overactivity
- Have explored meditation and want to deepen it somatically
- Want tools for working with habit and conditioning without force or bypass
- Appreciate trauma-informed, relational, and embodied approaches
How the course is held:
- Enrollment is intentionally capped to support the experiential and relational nature of the work
- The course is educational and contemplative in scope and is not psychotherapy
- Practices emphasize choice, pacing, and nervous system safety
- Participants are encouraged to work at their own pace and seek additional support if strong material arises
This course may not be a fit if you’re looking for quick fixes, peak experiences, or purely cognitive strategies.
Course Details
Dates: Thursdays, March 19 – April 23, 2026
Duration: 6 weeks · 75 minutes per class
Time: Thursdays, 9:00–10:15 am PST
Format: Live online sessions via Zoom
Access: All sessions are recorded and shared with participants
Platform: Recordings and course materials are housed on Teachable
Pricing
This course is offered on a sliding scale to support accessibility and sustainability. Please choose the rate that best reflects your circumstances at the time of registration.
$225 CAD (Supported) · $250 CAD (Sustaining) · $275 CAD (Supporting)
All registrations are flat-rate payments.
Who Am I?
My name is Natalie, and I am a Relational Somatic Inquiry Practitioner with over 25 years of experience facilitating yoga and teaching embodied mindfulness informed by Buddhist contemplative traditions.
My scope of practice is grounded in relational care, somatic awareness, and experiential learning.
I emphasize nervous system safety, choice, and embodied presence, and I am committed to creating learning spaces that are compassionate, well-held, and attentive to how personal experience unfolds in relationship to self, others, and the wider world.
