Often when I teach, I find myself moving into an altered state of consciousness, and I realize that I am beginning to channel my allies that are invested in communicating a message to my students. Then I listen intently to what comes out of my mouth and learn, as do my students, the meaning of the message.

One of these teachings came through recently. In our gateway class at LightSong, titled Through the Rabbit Hole: Explore and Experience the Shamanic Journey and Energy Medicine, we teach how to journey and meet two of our allies in the spirit world. A basic tenet of this experience is to convey how to move into an altered state of consciousness that uses different parts of the brain. I have written on the topic of the left brain–right brain on various occasions. Here, I use the description from my spiritual allies, so it is not necessarily the scientific explanation.

The left side of the brain processes information sequentially and is considered the source of analytical thought. This part of the brain recognizes the parts that make up a whole. It looks for an anticipated organization that makes sense in the way we have been trained to think. In processing verbal information, this part of the brain recognizes that one stimulus comes from another, and verbal perception and generation depend on the awareness of a sequence in which sounds or stimuli occur. A left-brain-dominant individual might have trouble making sense of right-brain thinking.