What methods do you use?

Why not try focusing on stillness. Peace and tranquility from within?

[JaysonR]

What methods have you found work in inducing a meditative trance?

This would depend on what the ambition is in doing the meditation.
Meditation is metaphorically akin to Captain Jack Sparrow's compass.
His compass only points to what he wants, but if he is conflicted or unsure of what he wants, then it points nowhere consistently and a direction of course does not occur.

Similarly, meditation can be difficult to approach if we do not emotionally know what we are attempting to achieve in the meditation; even if that achievement is but only absence of the mind.

Methods aren't going to help much.
This is a short parable to aid in explaining:
A man went to a teacher to learn martial arts.
The teacher brought the man in as his pupil.
After a long time, the man still felt that he had failed to learn martial arts and so he left; thinking this method was not right for him.
This occurred several times, with several teachers; in each, the man left empty and not yet capable of martial arts.
After many times of trying, the man sat frustrated outside the grounds of his last teacher in rhetoric to himself regarding his plight.
A passing farmer heard the man and asked for his dilemma.
After hearing and considering, the farmer suddenly struck out at the man's face.
The man dodged and scampered backwards in shock, almost falling over.
The man demanded to know why the farmer was trying to hurt him.
The farmer readied to leave and told the man, "Your body knows where to move, even if your mind does not. If you listen more mindfully, then you'll hear your body's way."
The man retorted by pointing out how foolish the farmer was for this by showing how clearly he, the man, almost fell over just from a simple farmer attempting to hit him.
The farmer continued to walk away, saying lastly, "Then keep listening until you move out of the way of your body so that your body doesn't fall over."

Yes turning within by shutting down the mind from the outside, one can get answers when the subconscious is integrated with the conscious

Originally Posted by higherself

Yes turning within by shutting down the mind from the outside, one can get answers when the subconscious is integrated with the conscious

I meditate regularly for more than 42 years. Almost never my mind was shut down (nor I ever intended to shut down my mind). The benefits and results I had from meditating are innumerable, without my mind being shut down.

I suppose I could try both and see which benefit me. Thank you everybody for your suggestions :)

[JaysonR]

For clarification; the parable I posted doesn't advocate either shutting down the mind or not shutting down the mind.

It points out listening to your own body, which does include the mind, instead of trying to force the body into a construct rendered only from the mind learning something cognitively.

It is subjective.
If shutting down the mind is what is your form, then it is your form.
If it is not your form, then it is not your form.

This is a solution of a form with no form.
You listen and mold your form from following what you, "hear" (feel, sense, think, etc...).