Translator: Andrew Zink Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
I'm going to tell you the story of how fate knocked on my door
and most importantly, how it led me to try to find out
if the shamanic trance is a faculty of the brain or not.
So it begins in 2001, in this region of Mongolia.
I have to do a report for the BBC on shamanism
and Nara, a friend, accompanies me to a shaman's home named Balchir.
He is going to do a ceremony.
The night comes, neighbors arrive.
They have numerous problems,
and some of them want to know why they have them.
What I know about shamanism, at the time,
is that it's a kind of link between the human world and the spirit world.
This spirit world is constituted of entities
who are somehow responsible for maintaining harmony in the world.
Now when you do something that "disharmonizes" the world,
these spirits send you alarms in the form of problems.
So when you really have a lot of problems,
you know that you've upset a spirit but not necessarily why,
and that's where the shaman comes in.
He will enter into trance with the sound of a drum
and will directly ask the spirit world
in order to find out the cause and the reason why they are angry.
So the night falls, the shaman wears his drum.
I set up my equipment for the BBC, and here is what we hear:
(Sound of drum)
The only problem is that this drum's sound
has a peculiar effect on my body: I start to tremble,
I move more and more violently.
I start to howl like a wolf,
I feel like my hands are becoming paws, my nose is becoming a muzzle,
I am transforming into a wolf ...
And the worse is that all this is happening,
but I have absolutely no control over it.
Then the drum stops, the trance stops.
The shaman turns to me, looking angry.
The Mongolian friend who came with me translates as the shaman says,
"Why didn't you tell me that you were a shaman?"
(Laughter)
I say, "There is certainly a mistake, I'm just here to do a documentary.
It's a mistake, you're wrong, Sir."
And he says to me, "No, if the drum had that effect on you,
it means you have the gift,
you have access to trance, and thus to this spirit world.
Well, it's simple, now what we're going to do,
is you're going to stay here with us for three years, at the Siberian border,
and we 're going to teach you this knowledge."
So now, well ...
(Laughing) It wasn't really what I had planned in my career path!
So I say, "But if I refuse, it's not a problem, right?"
He says "You shouldn't say that, if you're here, it's not by chance,
you must have had many problems in your life."
"Yes, my friend passed away, five years with cancer, an absolute hell."
"Well, that's nothing, really,
compared to what will happen in your life and what your life will become
because if you don't do what the spirits have decided for you,
you will encounter a lot more problems."
So I turn to Nara who says to me,
"Listen, this is a very secret knowledge.
It's really interesting and only passed on from shaman to shaman,
and the story of spirits' vengeance is not rubbish down here,
so if I were you, I'd listen."
So I end up asking the shaman, if it would be possible, by any chance,
to go there several months a year.
So I negotiate and he says to me, "No problem,
what's important is that you do what the spirits have decided for you."
That's how I found myself with my shaman trainer,
who is a reindeer herder - she's part of the Tsaatans ethnic group -
and she tells me that yes, indeed, I have powers.
I ask her, "What powers? If I had any, I would know."
And she says to me, "Yes, you're going to discover these powers
by practicing trance."
And so, a drum and a costume are made for me.
Yes, that's me here.
And year after year, I go back to her, on the Siberian border,
to live in a tipi, without water or electricity.
I am taught the rituals, the practice of trance.
And indeed, I transform into a wolf, I howl like a wolf,
I do have visions, yes, but I think, "What is this for?"
I ask so many questions that she ends up giving me a nickname
that is "Chichi cochconok" which means "Little Asshole".
(Laughter)
Now I must admit that I deserve it ...
But anyway, Little Asshole continues
to go there several months a year to learn trance,
until finally, after eight years doing this,
I end up earning and deserving the title of "Udgan"
which is a woman shaman there
and discovering that trance, which they call "powers",
produces changes in my perception.
So what are they, objectively, after eight years?
Well, I loose the notion of space and time.
Now I just saw that it was the psychological notion of time.
My perception of pain is lessened during trance:
at first, I hit myself so many times with the drum, it was a catastrophe,
but being in trance, I didn't feel it, although I did after coming out of it.
The drum weighs about 8 kg and measures 80 cm in diameter.
I can hold this drum at arms length for hours,
for two to three hours, without feeling the slightest difficulty,
so I am stronger than in a normal state.
And I have visions, kind of access to other perceptions.
It's as if, all of a sudden, I'm in a black world,
I have visions, perceptions that are different than what I feel usually,
and above all, I feel I have the ability to perceive
places that are "disharmonious".
The most surprising is when I perceive these disharmonious places,
I start to produce chants, gestures and sounds,
speak in unknown languages,
and I feel that these actions are bringing to this disharmonious space
exactly what it needs in order to regain balance.
Now what is it all about?
Does trance modify the behavior of the brain
and give me other abilities?
Why when I am in this state
do I feel that l have a different perception of reality?
I thought, "I will meet with scientists."
The first one to whom I told my story said,
"I have a psychiatrist friend, he is very good.
You can consult him, Miss, that would probably be good."
Luckily, they're not all like that and I fall upon Pierre Etevenon,
who is a former Head of research at the INSERM.
At Princeton, he studied
the effects of hallucinogenic substances on vision,
so he knows very well the modified states of consciousness,
or of cognition in the matter of trances.
So he says "Give me a demonstration."
So I take my drum, go into trance, transform into a wolf, etc.
(Laughter)
Then I come out of trance and he says,
"Yes indeed, it's interesting, but there's a problem, your drum.
In order to check if trance modifies brain's function,
we need to do an EEG of your brain.
Well, with such a drum, you'll break everything in a lab,
so find a solution,
either you trigger the trance by sheer willpower or we just stop the research."
At that time, I didn't know if entering trance at will was possible.
In Mongolia, they don't need this kind of research.
So I lay on the ground at home, and since I know the sound of the drum
brings on these tremors which I talked about earlier,
I try to reproduce them.
They may lead me to trance.
After a few attempts, I did indeed succeed.
So not only I am able to enter trance at will,
but I'm able to decide when it should start and when it should end, perfect!
So I go back to see Pierre Etevenon and I say, "Now, I'm ready."
I do another demonstration, and he answers,
"Now it's perfect! I officially appoint you as a lab rat."
Then he puts me in contact with researchers among his colleagues.
They don't all come rushing to study my brain;
only one is interested by this study and it is Professor Flor-Henry.
He's in Canada, in Edmonton,
in a psychiatric hospital - yeah, I finally ended up there!
He is a neuropsychiatrist who leads the hospital's adult psychiatric ward,
and he is also in charge of the research lab's data input.
So I arrive there.
He ask me to do a demonstration
for the neuropsychiatric and psychiatric researchers.
So I give a demonstration, I lay on the ground and so on ...
Then the trance ends, and I hear a voice saying,
"That's a rather violent split of personality ..."
Uh!
... and another saying,
"It may even be a multiple personality disorder,"
and another, "or maybe a limbic encephalitis."
So they come closer to me and say,
"Miss, what's surprising is that you seem to control it
since you came out of this state. Amazing! We'd really like to follow up."
And so do I!
So I enter the lab, electrodes are put on my head.
They take an EEG of my brain in the resting normal state.
You can see here how it looks like, it's pretty calm.
Here is the beginning of the trance.
We can see something is indeed happening.
Here, it's me in the lab with the things on my head.
Just to give you an idea, I will make you listen to the sounds.
(Wolf cries)
Impressive!
(Laughter)
Here we go, I've made a fool of myself for all to see.
So just imagine the assistants
when they heard these sounds in the research lab!
Now here is the EEG during the trance.
You can see that, indeed, something significant happens.
So Professor Flor-Henry studies these results, of course,
and he comes back to me a few months later and tells me,
"Your brain is completely normal, in a normal state.
There is no pathology, it's healthy,
However, during the trance ..."
Pierre Etevenon gives this hypothesis, he says to me,
"Your results make me think of a rabbit on LSD."
Well, that's not a good start, but what follows is even worse
Pierre Flor-Henry compared these trance results to three control groups,
one suffering from intense depression, the other from manic disorders,
and a third for schizophrenia, and then he says to me,
"During the trance, your lines are similar to all three pathologies."
I say, "All three at once?"
He says, "Yes, all three at once."
That's already a rarity for a brain,
but what seems even more unthinkable
and is in his view,a major discovery about brain function,
is that no one thought that a healthy brain could at will
bring about extremely pathological states and come out of them,
just like that, at will, and above all without any damage.
These results led to a first research protocol in neuroscience
on the Mongolian shamanic trance.
Another question is if a brain can go in and out,
it means there is a way to come back from these pathological states.
May not these trance techniques practiced in Mongolia
be a mean of potentially bringing an answer to this kind of pathologies?
Today, there is absolutely no certitude and no answer to this
which is why this protocol is still ongoing.
Professor Flor-Henry will make a few scientific publications on the results.
I wrote the details of this adventure in my last book.
But what does this adventure tell us concretely?
What did it teach me specifically?
Well, I learned how to milk reindeer
by spending eight years with a reindeer herder,
that's better than nothing.
I know that I can induce trance by will,
therefore it must be a capacity of the brain we all have access to
and many people have already developed it before me ;
and it must be that the visions I have in that state,
this different perception of reality as if it was heightened,
this different way of seeing the world
is simply the result of a modification in my brain's behavior.
So we don't know yet why and what purpose this serves,
but we can be sure that what we perceive of the world,
what we see, is not the world,
but truly a model of the world created by our brain.
(Applause)