Skip is watching the news one night when he begins to think about his day at work and a conversation he had with a coworker. As he replays that conversation over and over again, he becomes unaware of the news on the television. All of a sudden he snaps back to alertness and realizes that 15 minutes have passed. Skip was experiencing:_______.

As the exercise suggests, Skip was experiencing an altered state of consciousness or mind. This state occurs when the individual is, basically, any type of mind alteration which is different from the normal state. In this particular case, Skip was watching the news at night. While doing so, he starts to think about a particular moment, a conversation he had with a coworker. In this moment, he starts to replay the moment, taking him out of his "normal" state of consciousness (watching the news at his house, during the night) and brings him back to that moment. When he snaps out of it, 15 minutes passed, 15 minutes of an altered state of mind.