Ana Flávia Nogueira Nascimento was
born in Uberlândia (MG) in 1979. She obtained her degree in psychology
from the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, and she has a clinical
practice as a body therapist working with massage therapy, chromotherapy
and reflexology. She received her Masters in Social Anthropology from
the Pontifícia Universidade de Católica de São Paulo,
where she researched the project, “Psychedelic Festivals in the
Planetary Era” ("Festivais Psicodélicos na Era Planetária"),
whose aim was to understand the psychedelic trance festivals as rituals
of trance in the contemporary and looking to make explicit the relationship
between music, dance and psychoactive substance use as means to reach
altered states of consciousness. The central hypothesis of the research
is that the ‘Psychedelic Trance Festivals’ that are taking
place in Brazil and the world are ritual manifestations that integrate
the archaic techniques of ecstasy – music, dance and the use of
psychoactive substances – with new technologies, and that these
manifestations express a need of today’s youth.