How to Psytrance Dance

The beauty of psytrance dance is that there are no moves. The point is to surrender to the music, move freely and enter a trance like state where you feel blissful and one with the dancefloor, one with the Universe. Whether helped with psychedelic substances or simply high from the dopamine rush of stomping to the beat.

You are completely free to move however you like, but the basic psytrance dance hop is: two stomps to the left, two stomps to right following the beat. Some people also like to give form to the higher notes with hand gestures.

Psytrance DJ Chicago captured it best:

“Trance music goes way back to the early caveman. They were dancing around the campfire at night and banging bones on bones, making a little percussion, chanting, and going into trance under the moon and the stars.

Today, in the 21st century, we are still doing the same thing. And the idea is that if you dance to this kind of particularly psychedelic music at faster bpms… and you do it for some time, you can go into a trance, or a trance-like state. And sometimes, you even have transcendent experiences, where you go outside of your body and beyond the normal world, into something special, something beyond words.

Most of these things we can’t describe in words. But that’s what the idea of trance music is. And to me, it’s a special magic that we can’t get any other way.

When you want to dance, and get high from dancing to music, this trance music takes us in a special way like nothing else does. It can be deeply meaningful with other people and within your own self.”

So if you’re looking for psytrance dance moves, you will have a hard time finding videos because it is completely freestyle. Some people have made videos of them shuffling to psytrance, and if you like moving in that way, that’s fine too. But it will likely be more fun and enjoyable when you are able to freely express yourself, without being constrained by dance moves or routines.

But what if you’ve never been to a party or psytrance festival and feel a little insecure moving your body to unfamiliar beats?

Try dance meditation at home first to feel more comfortable moving your body to psytrance music. Perhaps even watch a few videos of people dancing to sets at festivals to get a feel for it.