I have been going to raves for years, since the mid-90’s. And for a long time, longer than I'd like to admit, I kept that very separate from the work I do.
On one side: the clinical practitioner. The researcher. The woman with the MPH and the peer-reviewed publications.
On the other: the woman on a dancefloor at 3am, fully dissolved in bass and light and the particular kind of communal transcendence that happens when a room full of people surrender to the same frequency at the same time.
I told myself these were two different things. Two different parts of me, each appropriate to its own context.
I was wrong.
And the first time I really realised this, was what followed when Emma Marshall (founder of MIMHQ https://mimhq.co.uk/) asked her Instagram community if anyone had some qualifications to help her with a business insurance application back in 2022. I was able to help as I was credentialed and so I sent her a copy of my neuroscience degree. As it turned out she had literally said to her assistant that day that she really needed to find a neuroscientist specifically. Coincidence or fate?
Our discussions led to me writing an article for Emma’s website that explained the neuroscience behind why her method worked (at every step of the way in each class). I described what was happening at a neurotransmitter level and why this would be so effective. It was the first time I had really thought about raving in such a scientific way, but it was easy for me to explain to her having worked specifically with neuromodulation and neuroplasticity for the prior two decades. Writing down the neurophysiology & neurochemistry together like that really embedded for me why I was finding Emma’s classes, my own solo home living room raves, and actual raving events so effective for processing emotions, moving trapped and stuck energy. Furthermore, I was achieving further trauma release through both the somatic meditation and free dancing aspects of Emma’s MIM classes quickly & easily.
I should have realised the whole time given I had called my business The Reiki Raver initially, even my Instagram handle was @thereikiraver from 2022 until 2026 when I rebranded to The Aurora Lens. It was right there in front of me the whole time.
What's actually happening on a dancefloor
Let's start with the bass.
Low-frequency sound, particularly in the range of 20–200Hz, which is where the bass in electronic music lives, is felt as much as it's heard. It vibrates through the fascia, the connective tissue that runs throughout the body and holds, according to bodywork research, a significant portion of our emotional and physical memory.
The fascia responds to vibration. Myofascial release , the technique used in certain forms of physical therapy, works precisely because the tissue can be shifted by sustained, targeted pressure or vibration. A subwoofer at volume is not identical to a trained practitioner's hands. But the system being engaged is the same one.
Rhythm, repetition, and the brain
The repetitive, driving rhythms of DnB (typically 174BPM) and house music (typically between 120-140BPM, have a measurable effect on brainwave activity. Sustained rhythmic stimulation has been associated with shifts toward more relaxed brain states. This is called neural entrainment.
This is not coincidence. It is why shamanic drumming, trance states, and ecstatic dance have existed across cultures for thousands of years. The specific genres change. The underlying mechanism does not.
When the brain shifts into a more relaxed state, the filtering function of the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for self-monitoring, rumination, and the internal narrator that never stops commentating, temporarily loosens. What remains is something more direct. More felt. More real.
The dissolution of self
There's a quality to a really good dancefloor that I've heard described in many ways, losing yourself, dropping your ego, surrender, flow. The technical term in psychology is "transient hypofrontality": a temporary reduction in activity in the frontal lobes, associated with states of flow and absorption.
In this state, the default mode network, the brain's self-referential processing system, the seat of worry and rumination and identity-construction, goes quiet. What's left is presence. Sensation. The body doing what it knows how to do without the mind narrating it.
For many women I know, this is the only place they reliably experience that quiet. The only context in which the thinking, monitoring, managing, planning brain genuinely lets go. That is not a small thing. It is, in fact, a form of healing.
Why this belongs in what I do
What years of raving has taught me is something I now bring to every session: the importance of the body. Not as a container for the mind. As an intelligence in its own right.
We store things in the body that the mind has never found words for. Movement, sound, vibration, and touch are not alternatives to cognitive processing. They're the route to what cognitive processing alone can't reach.
The person who cries at a certain song at the rave. The client who, mid-session, says "I didn't know I was holding that." The inexplicable but consistent release that happens when the nervous system is finally given permission to be still.
I have felt all of those things on a dancefloor. I have also facilitated them in sessions. They are the same territory. I am done pretending otherwise.
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