We finally set sail at 4.30am and I was woken a couple of hours later being hurled out of my bunk with papers and books falling on my head from the shelf above. I righted myself just in time to catch a bottle of brandy that was sliding off the desktop. I stood for a while swaying with the movement and thought, right, this can either be a disaster or a triumph, it’s up to me.

And immediately Energy Dancing sprang to mind, the way I found my body moving in unusual ways as I did when I was dancing. I let the energy flow and felt a rhythm building that I then found easy to follow to stay upright.

I quickly got dressed and set off to explore the ship, it was beautiful in the early dawn, deserted, with shadows of islands sailing by.

Breakfast was a challenge with a hundred or so people trying to balance plates of food and cups of scalding coffee as they made their way to their tables. By then I had found my feet and was following the sway of the boat, I was still dancing.

By lunchtime the storm out at sea was raging, with 20 metre waves and 55mph winds, and the captain steered the boat into a small port to sit it out in safety, we stayed for 8 hours. Most of the route took us quite close to shore, protected by a chain of small islands but we needed to go out into the open sea for the next stretch, around a particularly treacherous point, notoriously dangerous even in relatively calm seas.

This he decided to do just after dinner when the waves had dropped to about 7 metres. It was going to be rough and we were told to finish dinner quickly then find somewhere to sit down for about an hour.

I could feel excitement welling up in me as I sat looking out over a blackness filled with foaming waves and catching glimpses of lights that disappeared for minutes at a time as the waves swelled up and dropped.

And something I had heard Bruce Springsteen say came to mind when he was asked if he ever got nervous before going out on stage.

He said, no, never, and went on to describe all the feelings he had which you or I would connect with being nervous, heart palpitations, dry mouth, sweating palms, which he read as being the sign that he was hyped up and ready to perform and that the more he felt them the better he knew that his performance would be. Brilliant! So that’s how I let all those feelings go, the more intense the energy I felt swirling inside me the more I knew I was having fun and enjoying the experience. The energy flowed out of my hands and the top of my head until I was tingling all over with the energised end state.

It had worked like a dream and I really did enjoy the turbulent hour which I later found out had been filled with screaming desperate people clinging on for dear life with white knuckles and chucking up all over the place. I almost felt guilty I had enjoyed the experience so much, almost :)

Now before this trip I just didn’t do cold, in no way, shape or form, nada, nothing, no thank you. But it was extraordinary, ok, so I had all the arctic gear, that was only sensible, but even so, to stand on the top deck in a minus 22 degree arctic wind was, I feel, an achievement. And not only that but to transcend those feelings of cold and just be able to suck in the glorious passing snowcapped landscape was a miracle.

The last evening during dinner an announcement was made that the Northern Lights could be seen off the starboard side. I have never run up 4 flights of stairs quite so quickly to the outside deck and then stood for a full 5 minutes, or maybe longer, in just a t-shirt and jumper watching the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

A magnificent streak of palest green swept across the night sky finishing with a small flourish. It took my breath away. It was only when someone came and put a blanket around my shoulders I realized just how cold it was out there, and dangerous, so I went inside to tog up and came back out and spent the next three hours marveling at the spectacle long after others had gone inside.

The Lights were by no means strong, but they were there, that was what I had come to see and I was thrilled.

I found that forcing my eyes to see only made them fainter so I sat back inside myself and let them come to me and I was rewarded by huge intense flashes that lit up whole sides of mountains and rosy pink glows that nestled between some peaks.

I EmoTranced each one, really let the energy in, through and out and one particularly beautiful one, a fan shape over the startlingly crisp constellation of Orion triggered some amazing sounds inside me as the energy moved through me, like plucking different strings of a harp.

I found it difficult to drag myself away but by 1.30am I didn’t feel it safe to stay out on an icy deck on my own so reluctantly went in to warm up and go to bed though sleep was slow in coming, I was so hyped up, so energized, felt so thankful I had been able to witness such an event. I finally drifted off in the early hours, breathing in sleep and breathing out the exhaustion and had the most intense dreams of strange lands, waking refreshed a few hours later and ready for the long journey home.

I managed to jump over all my reversals, and there were many, to take that trip, and I am so glad I did and feel so proud of myself for doing so!

Well done me and well done EmoTrance for making it such a memorable adventure.

Nicola Quinn
05/02/08

Learn more about EmoTrance with Silvia Hartmann's Oceans of Energy, the EmoTrance Manual

Listen to my one day experiential EmoTrance workshop I gave at Gatwick ET06 Conference

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