What Is Trance Mediumship? Inside a Deeper State of Spirit Communication
Updated: Oct 9
Trance mediumship can be difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
The term itself can create all kinds of images, a medium unconscious in a chair, a spirit taking control of someone's body, or something dramatic and mysterious happening while the medium is completely powerless.
That isn't how I experience it.
For me, trance mediumship begins with intention.
I sit with the intention of moving into a deeper state of awareness and joining what I experience as the spirit world. I calm my mind. My breathing slows. And somewhere within that process, the ordinary awareness I have of myself begins to disappear.
The closest description I can give is the feeling of peacefully drifting away.
I become weightless.
There is no sense of having a physical body. No awareness of the room around me. My conscious mind seems to move into the background until even the awareness that I have entered trance is gone.
What remains feels like energy. Consciousness.
And an extraordinary sense of euphoria.
I struggle to find human language that accurately describes it because the experience doesn't feel comparable to anything in my ordinary physical life. The boundaries that normally define where I am, what my body is doing and even my awareness of myself no longer seem relevant.
I don't experience myself sitting here attempting to communicate with spirit.
I experience myself as being there with them.
The transition can be so seamless that I don't realise it has happened until I eventually return to ordinary awareness.
This has always been a natural ability for me. Long before I met other mediums or attended any classes, I assumed this was simply how everyone experienced mediumship.
It wasn't until later that I understood just how individual trance mediumship can be.
So what actually is trance mediumship? What happens to the medium's awareness? Do they lose control? Can they hear what is being communicated? And do they remember what happened afterward?
The answers aren't necessarily the same for every trance medium.
What I can share is what happens in mine.
What Is Trance Mediumship?
Trance mediumship is generally used to describe a form of mediumship in which the medium enters an altered state of awareness while communication with spirit takes place.
The depth of that altered state can vary considerably.
Some trance mediums may retain awareness of their physical surroundings and of what is being communicated. Others may describe a much deeper shift in awareness, with little or no memory of parts of the experience afterward.
The way the communication itself is expressed can also differ. Some mediums may speak while in trance, while others may experience communication internally or work with trance in other ways.
This is one reason I am cautious about describing trance mediumship as though there is a single process every trance medium follows.
There is no one trance state that every medium must enter and no one depth that makes someone's experience valid.
My own trance state can become extremely deep.
At that depth, I have no awareness of my physical environment or even the sense that I physically exist. My conscious awareness has moved so completely away from ordinary waking experience that, from my perspective at the time, I am simply existing within the experience unfolding around me.
It can feel almost like living another life in another dimension.
I may communicate with spirit, hear voices and experience what is happening around me without simultaneously thinking, I'm in trance right now. This is what is happening.
I am simply there.
What Does Entering Trance Feel Like?
I enter trance deliberately.
I begin by settling myself, calming my mind and slowing my breathing, with the intention of moving into that deeper state and joining spirit.
But there isn't necessarily a dramatic moment where I consciously think, Now I have entered trance.
Sometimes I am partially aware of moving into that euphoric state. At other times, the transition happens so naturally that I have no awareness of crossing from one state into another.
I simply drift.
My sense of physical weight begins to disappear. I can feel light as a feather, eventually reaching a point where I don't experience myself as having a physical body at all.
The conscious mind takes a back seat.
And then even the awareness of that change can disappear.
For me, it is an extraordinarily peaceful and euphoric state. I experience no sense of fear or struggle. I am a willing participant in what is happening and enter the state because I choose to.
When I eventually return to ordinary awareness, the transition can feel similar to waking from a very deep sleep.
Sometimes that is the moment I realise just how deeply I had gone.
The strange part is that while entering trance involves intention, the deepest part of the experience can involve completely forgetting that there was ever a physical “me” sitting there in the first place.
Are There Different Depths of Trance?
Trance isn't necessarily experienced at one fixed depth.
Mediums may describe different degrees of awareness during trance, ranging from states where they remain relatively aware of themselves and their surroundings to much deeper experiences where ordinary physical awareness becomes greatly reduced.
In my own trance mediumship, the depth can vary too.
Sometimes I have a partial awareness that I am beginning to move into that peaceful, euphoric state. I can sense the transition taking place as my ordinary awareness starts to recede.
At other times, I don't realise how deeply I have gone until I return.
There isn't necessarily a moment where I consciously recognise, I've gone deeper now.
I simply move into the experience.
When I eventually return to ordinary awareness, it can feel almost like coming out of a very deep sleep. There is a moment of becoming aware of myself and my physical surroundings again, and only then do I realise just how completely absent that awareness had been.
This is why I don't think of trance as a series of rigid levels that every medium progresses through in exactly the same way.
Depth describes the degree to which my ordinary awareness changes. It isn't a measure of how good or advanced the mediumship is.
What Happens to Your Physical Awareness in Trance?
At the deepest levels of trance I experience, my awareness of my physical body is simple to describe: There isn't any.
I don't experience myself sitting in a chair.
I don't feel the room around me.
I am not consciously aware of my breathing, my body or the fact that I physically exist in that environment.
From my perspective within the trance experience, the physical Michelle isn't something I am thinking about or consciously disconnected from.
She simply isn't part of my awareness.
What I experience instead is consciousness.
I can be with spirit communicators, hear them, communicate with them and experience environments or scenes surrounding the communication. It can feel as though I am living another existence somewhere entirely different.
This is difficult to translate into ordinary language because even saying “I forget about my body” isn't quite accurate.
Forgetting something still implies that you were aware of it in the first place.
In deep trance, I can reach a state where there is no conscious awareness that a physical body exists to be forgotten.
Then, as I return from trance, ordinary physical awareness gradually becomes relevant again.
It is only when I come back that I realise how completely I had gone.
Can You Hear What Spirit Is Saying During Trance?
This is where trance can sound contradictory.
I can have no awareness of my physical body or surroundings and yet still experience communication very clearly within the trance state.
I hear spirit communicators speaking to me much as I would hear different people speaking in ordinary life.
Their voices can sound distinct. I may experience differences in tone, age, accent and the individual quality of the voice. From within the experience, I am not analysing those differences or consciously thinking about the mechanics of what is happening.
I am simply communicating with them.
I can also communicate back.
The closest way I can describe it is telepathic conversation, although while I am in trance I am not consciously thinking, I'm communicating telepathically now.
It is simply how the conversation is occurring within the experience.
What makes this particularly interesting in my own trance mediumship is that I have learned to speak aloud what I am experiencing and what I hear being communicated.
I audio-record my trance sessions for this reason.
My physical voice may be speaking the communication aloud, but within the trance experience I am not consciously aware that I am sitting somewhere physically saying those words.
From my perspective, I am with them, listening and communicating.
Do Trance Mediums Remember What Happened?
Memory during trance can vary between mediums and can also vary between different trance experiences.
In my own deeper trance states, I remember very little afterward.
I would estimate that I don't consciously remember around 95–99% of what occurred.
Occasionally, something remains.
A fragment of a conversation. An image. A feeling. A scene.
But even those memories can feel distant, almost like trying to remember a dream after waking.
This is another reason I record my sessions.
I can listen afterward and hear myself speaking words that I have no conscious memory of saying.
That doesn't mean every trance medium will experience memory in the same way. Some may remember considerably more of their trance communication, particularly at different depths of awareness.
For me, the recording becomes a bridge between an experience I lived through in trance and the conscious mind that returns afterward.
Does Spirit Take Control of the Medium?
One of the oldest misconceptions surrounding trance mediumship is the idea that the medium becomes powerless while spirit takes control of their body.
That language has never reflected how I experience trance.
I am a willing participant.
I choose to enter the trance state. I sit with the intention of joining spirit, and I willingly allow my ordinary conscious awareness to move into the background as the experience deepens.
I don't experience this as something being done to me.
I experience it as something I am participating in.
There is trust involved. I trust the spirit communicators I work with, I trust the process, and I allow them to guide the experience toward what needs to be communicated or shown to me.
For me, there is no sense of force, fear or struggle.
Quite the opposite.
The state itself can feel profoundly peaceful, euphoric and filled with what I can only describe as unconditional love.
This is why words such as possession or takeover feel completely disconnected from my own experience of trance mediumship.
I don't feel as though spirit takes control of me. I feel as though I join them.
That distinction matters.
It means trance mediumship, as I experience it, begins with consent and intention. I am not an unwilling participant who suddenly loses control. I deliberately enter a state that has been a natural part of my mediumship for many years.
Other trance mediums may use different language to describe their relationship with spirit or what happens to their awareness, so my experience shouldn't be treated as the definition every trance medium must follow.
Can a Trance Medium Stop the Experience?
Entering trance doesn't mean I believe I have surrendered my ability to return to ordinary awareness.
I enter the state willingly, and I trust that if there were a genuine need for me to become consciously aware, particularly if I were in danger, my ordinary awareness would respond.
Trance also isn't a state I remain in indefinitely.
During a session, I naturally move through different depths of awareness, and eventually I begin returning to my ordinary conscious state.
I don't consciously control that process minute by minute while I am deeply immersed in trance. From my perspective within the experience, I am not monitoring the clock or thinking about when I should return.
The transition happens naturally.
And just as moving into trance can feel seamless, returning can involve gradually becoming aware of my physical self and surroundings again.
The fact that I may have no physical awareness while deeply in trance doesn't mean I entered the state without choice.
Can You Talk to a Trance Medium During a Session?
In my own trance sessions, no.
When I am deeply in trance, I don't want someone in the physical room suddenly speaking to me or attempting to engage me in conversation.
Remember that, from my perspective, I may have no awareness of the physical room at all.
Imagine being deeply asleep and suddenly having someone speak loudly beside you.
You may wake abruptly, confused and disoriented, trying to understand where you are and what is happening.
Being suddenly spoken to while I am deeply in trance can feel similar.
This is why the people present during my trance work need to understand beforehand that the experience is different from an ordinary mediumship reading where the sitter and medium may continually talk back and forth.
During trance, my attention isn't on maintaining a conversation with someone in the physical room.
My awareness is within the trance experience.
If communication needs to occur during a particular trance practice, how that is handled should be established appropriately beforehand rather than someone unexpectedly attempting to pull the medium's attention back into the physical environment.
This is also another example of why trance mediumship shouldn't be treated as though every practitioner works in exactly the same way. Another trance medium may retain greater physical awareness and work differently. I am describing what is appropriate for the depth of trance that I personally experience.
Is Trance Mediumship Possession?
No, that isn't how I understand or experience my trance mediumship.
The word possession suggests something unwanted taking control of a person against their will.
My experience is the opposite.
I deliberately choose to enter trance. I trust the process, I willingly participate in it and I experience the state as peaceful rather than threatening.
Consent is present before the trance begins.
Someone else may interpret trance mediumship through a different spiritual, religious or psychological framework, and people are free to reach their own conclusions about what they believe is occurring.
What I can say with certainty is that possession does not describe how the experience feels or is understood by me.
What Does the Medium Experience While Spirit Is Communicating?
This is one of the hardest parts of trance mediumship for me to put into words, because my experience within trance can feel completely removed from ordinary physical reality.
At the deeper levels, I have no awareness of myself sitting in a chair or of having a physical body somewhere outside the experience.
And yet I am not necessarily experiencing nothingness.
Quite the opposite.
I can find myself within what feels like an entirely different world or dimension.
I may be with spirit communicators. I can hear them speaking to me with distinct voices, tones and accents. I may see people, environments or scenes surrounding the communication. I can communicate with them and experience what they are showing me.
At times, it can feel less like receiving a message and more like living another experience altogether.
The strange thing is that while all of this is happening, I am not analysing it.
I am not thinking:
Who is this?
How am I hearing them?
Where am I?
What is happening to my physical body?
Those questions belong to my ordinary conscious mind — and that part of my awareness has moved into the background.
Within trance, I am simply experiencing what is happening.
Spirit doesn't feel as though they are communicating with me from somewhere far away. I experience myself as being with them.
This is why trance mediumship can be so difficult for me to explain afterward. I am trying to translate an experience that didn't feel governed by the same boundaries through which I ordinarily understand myself and the physical world.
Sometimes there simply aren't human words that feel adequate.
What Happens to the Conscious Mind During Trance?
In my deepest trance states, I don't experience my conscious mind operating in the way it does during ordinary waking life.
I am not analysing the information, consciously constructing sentences or deciding what I should say next.
My ordinary internal commentary isn't something I am aware of.
This is very different from how I experience myself while fully conscious.
During ordinary conversation, I know that I am speaking. I can consider my words, change direction, analyse what somebody has said and consciously formulate a response.
In deep trance, I don't experience that same process.
I may hear a spirit communicator speaking to me and communicate with them within the experience, while at the same time my physical voice may be speaking aloud.
Yet I have no awareness that a physical Michelle is sitting somewhere saying those words.
The conscious mind isn't directing the experience for me. It has taken a back seat to it.
This is also why listening to my recordings afterward can be such an unusual experience. I may hear myself saying something that I have no conscious memory of deciding to say, or even of saying at all.
How Do I Know It Isn't Just My Own Thoughts?
This is a fair question, particularly because trance mediumship involves experiences occurring within consciousness.
I can't offer someone an internal test that objectively proves where every experience originates.
What I can explain is why trance feels profoundly different from my ordinary thinking.
In deep trance, I don't experience the usual stream of conscious thought that I recognise as mine.
Instead, I may hear distinct voices that I experience as belonging to individual spirit communicators. They can differ in tone, age, accent and personality, and the stories or information being communicated may concern people, places or circumstances I don't consciously know.
More importantly for me, I am not sitting there consciously asking myself whether the information is mine.
That analytical awareness isn't present.
The experience itself feels fundamentally different from imagining a conversation or deliberately constructing thoughts while awake.
Then I return to ordinary awareness and may remember almost none of what occurred, only to listen to the recording and hear what was spoken during the session.
Those differences are part of why I personally understand what happens in trance as communication with spirit rather than my ordinary conscious thoughts.
That is an interpretation based on my lived experience, not a scientific test that another person is required to accept.
Is Every Trance Experience the Same?
No.
Even within my own trance mediumship, the experience can vary.
I may encounter different spirit communicators, experience different environments or receive communication in different ways. The depth of trance can also vary from one session to another.
And another trance medium may describe something completely different from everything I have described here.
Some may retain much more awareness of their physical surroundings. Some may remember considerably more afterward. Some may experience communication differently or use trance for different forms of mediumistic work.
This is why I am reluctant to turn my experience into a set of instructions for how trance mediumship is supposed to happen.
My trance is deeply natural to me. It isn't a template another medium needs to reproduce.
Can Anyone Learn Trance Mediumship?
This is a difficult question for me to answer because trance mediumship wasn't something I originally learned how to do.
It was something I was already doing.
Before I met other mediums, attended classes or understood the different terminology surrounding mediumship, this deeper state was simply part of the way I communicated with spirit.
I genuinely thought everybody did mediumship this way.
I didn't know that what felt completely natural to me could be described as trance mediumship, or that another medium's experience of spirit communication might be entirely different.
It was only when I began meeting and working with other mediums that I realised this wasn't necessarily the case.
That changed the way I understood my own mediumship.
It also taught me something that has become increasingly important to me: we can learn from other mediums without assuming we are supposed to experience mediumship exactly as they do.
Because trance has always been such a natural state for me, I wouldn't feel comfortable giving someone a formula and saying, “Do these steps and you will experience trance the way I do.”
I can't teach another person how to become weightless in their awareness, lose all sense of their physical body or experience themselves within what feels like another world simply because those things happen naturally within my trance.
Another person may experience trance very differently.
Some people practise meditation, altered states of awareness or forms of mediumistic development and describe their trance experience deepening over time. Others may retain considerably more conscious awareness than I do.
So I wouldn't say that my experience proves trance mediumship either can or cannot be developed.
What I would say is that my trance state isn't a technique I learned and it isn't a template I believe somebody else should try to copy.
It is the way my own mediumship developed naturally.
Do You Need to Go Into Deep Trance to Be a Trance Medium?
No, I wouldn't use the depth of my own trance as a benchmark for somebody else's experience.
My trance can become extremely deep, but that doesn't mean a medium who retains greater awareness is somehow doing a lesser form of mediumship.
Different practitioners describe different degrees of awareness, memory and involvement during trance.
This is also why comparisons between mediums can become unhelpful.
If I had encountered another trance medium early in my development and assumed I needed to experience exactly what they experienced, I might have started questioning something that had previously happened completely naturally for me.
Instead, my experience developed before I knew there were supposed to be rules around it.
Looking back, I'm grateful for that.
I learned what my trance felt like before I learned what anybody else thought trance should look like.
How Is Trance Mediumship Different From Evidential Mediumship?
I work with both evidential mediumship and trance mediumship, and although both involve what I experience as communication with spirit, they feel very different to me.
The easiest way I can describe the difference is through an image.
In evidential mediumship, it can feel as though I am standing on the outside looking in.
I am consciously present. I know where I am. I am aware of the sitter and the physical room around me while receiving information through the clairs.
Spirit may give me images, words, feelings, memories, personality traits or pieces of information that I communicate to the sitter.
I am connected to what is happening, but I am still very much aware of me experiencing it.
Sometimes I describe it as looking through a layer of fog.
I can see into the experience. I can receive from it. I can communicate what I am being shown.
But I am still looking from the outside in.
Trance feels completely different.
Instead of looking through the fog, it feels as though I have moved through it.
The physical room disappears from my awareness. My body disappears from my awareness. The separation I normally experience between myself and what I understand as the spirit world seems to disappear with it.
Suddenly, I am not looking into another world.
I am experiencing myself within it.
Everything can feel extraordinarily clear. I may hear voices, experience environments, communicate with spirit and move through what is unfolding without simultaneously being aware of myself sitting somewhere in the physical world.
This is what I mean when I describe trance as a deeper state of immersion.
I am not saying that trance mediumship is better, stronger or more advanced than evidential mediumship. They are different ways in which I personally experience spirit communication.
The difference for me is not the value of the communication. It is where my awareness seems to be while the communication is happening.
If you're unfamiliar with the different forms mediumship can take, I explore evidential mediumship, trance mediumship and other ways mediums may experience spirit communication in What Is Mediumship? A Straightforward Guide to Spirit Communication.
Common Misconceptions About Trance Mediumship
Trance mediumship has been portrayed in so many different ways that it can be difficult to separate somebody's actual experience from the assumptions surrounding it.
Some of those assumptions come from films and television. Others come from spiritual traditions, religious beliefs or simply seeing one trance medium work and assuming every other trance medium must work the same way.
My own experience has taught me otherwise.
Trance mediumship doesn't have one appearance, one depth or one way that it must happen.
The Medium Is Possessed
This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions.
As I've explained earlier, possession isn't how I experience trance.
I deliberately enter the state. I am a willing participant, and the experience for me is peaceful, trusting and profoundly euphoric.
I don't experience something taking me over. I experience myself joining spirit.
All Trance Mediums Should Look the Same
They don't.
One medium may retain considerable awareness during trance, while another may remember very little afterward. The way they speak, move, communicate or describe what happens internally may also differ.
Seeing one person demonstrate trance mediumship doesn't establish what trance is supposed to look like for everyone else.
This was something I had to learn myself. I experienced trance naturally before I understood that other mediums could experience communication very differently.
You Can Just Talk to the Medium While They're in Trance
This depends entirely on the medium and the way they work.
In my own deeper trance states, I don't have ordinary awareness of the physical environment around me. Someone unexpectedly speaking to me can therefore be extremely disorienting, much like being abruptly woken from a very deep sleep.
For that reason, how a trance session will work should be understood before it begins rather than assuming the medium can simply move back and forth between deep trance and ordinary conversation.
Deeper Trance Means Better Mediumship
I don't believe that.
The depth of my trance describes what happens to my awareness. It doesn't give me a scale for measuring another medium's ability.
A medium who remains more consciously aware isn't therefore less capable, less connected or less authentic.
Different experience doesn't mean lesser experience.
Trance Is Something You Can Copy
My own trance mediumship isn't something I learned by watching another medium and reproducing what they did.
It was already happening naturally before I knew what to call it.
For that reason, I would be very cautious about looking at another person's trance and thinking, That's what mine needs to look like.
Development may be part of another medium's journey, but I don't believe my personal trance experience should become somebody else's instruction manual.
Understanding another medium's experience can be valuable. Trying to become their experience is something very different.
So What Is Trance Mediumship Really Like?
After everything I've written here, the strange thing is that I still don't think words completely explain trance mediumship.
I can describe becoming weightless.
I can describe losing awareness of my physical body.
I can tell you that I hear voices, experience different personalities, communicate with spirit and sometimes find myself within environments that feel completely real while I am there.
I can describe returning with only fragments of memory and listening afterward to recordings of words I don't remember speaking.
But those are descriptions of the experience.
They still don't quite capture what it feels like.
For me, trance is one of the most profound states of consciousness I experience.
There are no physical boundaries that I am aware of. There is no sense of sitting here attempting to reach somebody somewhere else.
There is simply the experience unfolding around me.
Perhaps that is why the simplest description remains the most accurate one I can give: I don't feel as though spirit takes control of me.
I feel as though I join them.
And sometimes human language can only take me that far.
FROM THE TABLE
Debbie Charlton: Trance Mediumship & Phenomena Captured on Camera
Trance healing medium Debbie Charlton returns to The Mediums Table Podcast to share video recorded during her deep trance sessions, including unusual changes in light and what she interprets as spirit voices. We explore the phenomena, Debbie's experiences during trance and what these moments mean to her.
▶ WATCH ON YOUTUBE
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