Ecstatic dance is the use of dance to reach states of ecstasy, trance and altered consciousness, in which the dancer is carried beyond ordinary awareness into an experience of transport, release or union with the divine. It is one of the oldest and most widespread of religious practices, found across cultures wherever rhythmic, sustained and often frenzied movement, frequently driven by drumming, music and repetition, has been used to loosen the hold of the everyday self and open the dancer to the sacred. In many traditions such dance is understood as a means of inducing possession by a deity or spirit, of healing, of communal bonding, or of mystical ascent, and it stands at the heart of forms of worship in which the body, rather than the word, is the primary vehicle of religious experience.
The forms are many and culturally specific. The whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes of Sufism turns dance into a disciplined meditative ascent toward union with God; the possession dances of a range of African and African-diasporic religions invite the deities to descend and "mount" their devotees; the ecstatic dances of many traditional and shamanic cultures carry practitioners into trance for healing and vision. In the modern West a secular or eclectic "ecstatic dance" movement has also arisen, free-form, often substance-free dance in groups, sometimes drawing on these older practices, pursued for release, wellbeing and a sense of connection. Across its sacred and secular forms, ecstatic dance rests on the common recognition that sustained rhythmic movement can alter consciousness and open the dancer to experiences felt as transcendent, making the moving body itself a means of reaching beyond the ordinary.