Ritual, Physiology, and the Science of Altered States
Revisiting the Ancient Technology of Consciousness
Author – Paul Robear ©2025
I find it interesting that, in the news, there’s often some “latest discovery” in neuroscience about the human capacity to access altered states of consciousness. Let’s step back and get some perspective. Humans have been exploring these states for tens of thousands of years—long before brain scans and scientific terminology gave us new ways to describe them.
For more than 30,000 years, people have sought ways to shift consciousness – to step beyond the boundaries of ordinary awareness into realms of vision, insight, and transformation. Across time and cultures, these altered states have served as vital means of connecting with the sacred, accessing wisdom, and restoring balance to both individual and community life.
At the foundation of these experiences lies a trigger – a specific catalyst that initiates a physiological shift within the body. Modern research confirms what ancient practitioners intuited: changes in brainwave patterns, respiration, heartbeat, and muscle tension can all serve to open the mind to a different mode of perception. These physiological shifts are not merely byproducts of mystical experience; they are the gateways through which such experiences arise.
This understanding stands at the heart of the work of Dr. Felicitas Goodman, anthropologist and founder of the Cuyamungue Institute. Through decades of cross-cultural study, she recognized that the rituals of early humans were not arbitrary ceremonies but carefully designed practices that harnessed the body’s natural capacities to induce trance and deepen awareness. The rhythmic beat of a drum, the posture of the body, with intention – all served as reliable physiological triggers for entering an altered state.
Dr. Goodman’s insight was revolutionary: a shift in consciousness requires a shift in physiology. Our ancestors did not merely pray, chant, or imagine their way into communion with the unseen; they engaged their bodies as instruments of transformation.
One of the oldest and most reliable means of making that shift is ritual. Though rituals vary widely in form and purpose, from rites of passage to healing ceremonies, from mourning to celebration, they share a common thread. Each employs rhythmic, repetitive, and symbolic actions that guide the participant beyond ordinary consciousness.
It may seem surprising to the modern mind that a simple posture, gesture, or sound can unlock the door to profound experiences of connection and revelation. Yet, as Dr. Goodman observed, humankind has an unbroken lineage of success with such methods. Our ancestors understood that ritual, when properly engaged, is both science and art—a precise orchestration of body, mind, and spirit.
Through her studies of ancient hunter-gatherer cultures, Dr. Goodman distilled a set of shared elements across their ritual practices: rhythmic stimulation, focused intention, and specific bodily postures. These commonalities revealed the essence of what she called the ritual that opens the door between the worlds-the passageway from ordinary reality to what she termed the Alternate Reality.
Today, my wife Laura Lee and I continue to build on Dr. Goodman’s foundational work of Ritual Postures at the Cuyamungue Institute. We see ourselves as stewards of this legacy, expanding its reach while staying true to its essence—exploring how the wisdom of ancient ritual and the science of altered states intersect in ways that are profoundly relevant to modern life. Each time we enter ritual, we participate in a lineage stretching back to our earliest ancestors, reaffirming that the body remains our most accessible and sacred instrument of transformation.
In her seminal book Where the Spirits Ride the Wind, Dr. Goodman writes:
“Merely talking, falling into a worshipful mood, feeling ‘transcendent,’ ‘numinous,’ or ‘oceanic,’ or whatever other pompous words are listed in the dictionary, simply will not do. Instead humans, if they have the urgent necessity or desire to squeeze through the chinks in that wall, need to change the very functioning of their bodies in a most radical way.”
Through the discipline of ritual and the wisdom of the body, we rediscover an ancient truth: transformation begins within.
“Each time we enter ritual, we participate in a lineage stretching back to our earliest ancestors.”
The name “CUYA” carries with it both history and vision. Rooted in our origins as the Cuyamungue Institute, it now also serves as an acronym — C.U.Y.A. — a guiding symbol that unites our mission:
C — Consciousness: The field of shared awareness that arises in Collective Presence, where the “We” awakens beyond the “I” – moving from the “Me to the We.”
U — Unity: Our alignment with the Cycles of Nature and the rhythms of the cosmos, reminding us that we are woven into a greater fabric of reality. This sense of unity reminds us that our awareness is the shared consciousness that connects all living beings.
Y — Your Awakening: The inner journey of Embodiment and Wisdom, where through direct experience the body remembers. At the CUYA Institute, this awakening is nurtured through Ritual Body Postures and ecstatic trance, where the body itself becomes the doorway to wisdom, presence, and transformation.
A — Ancestral Wisdom: Roots. Our connection to Sacred Lineage, honoring those who walked before us and rooting us in belonging and continuity. Our founder, anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman looked to some of the oldest, most authentic ancestral records we have — the world’s collection of early and indigenous art — and decoded selected artifacts as embodied “ritual instructions.”
Together, the Four Pathways of C.U.Y.A. — Consciousness, Unity, Your Awakening, and Ancestral Wisdom — form a single tapestry of practice. They remind us that awakening is not an abstract idea but something we live: through the body in Your Awakening, through nature’s cycles in Unity, through community in shared Consciousness, and through the guidance of Ancestral Wisdom.
- …. CONTINUE