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Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music
319 gnabgib 138 8/28/2025, 12:22:24 AM journals.plos.org ↗
The goggles w/ binaural beats create some weird sort of state where I don't feel any connection to my environment. After only a couple minutes my body turns to total mush and my brain comes alive with phosphene visuals. By about 15 minutes in, my stomach usually gurgles a bit, not unlike the indigestion that often accompanies psychedelic trips.
Interestingly enough, these machines are marketed as brainwave entrainment, but the literature on that says the visual component doesn't really have much impact. Yet auditory entrainment on its own doesn't seem to do much for me either, or at least, not convincing enough beyond placebo.
There is an app for the iPhone called Lumenate that uses the LED flash and it seems to work, though it's not as strong for me as the multi-LED goggles I used to use. Still, it's a great gateway for those who are curious.
Been there, done that
Finding a lay down on an accu-pressure mat very helpful these days (tho a bit steeper adoption curve tbqh)
The most surprising thing is that despite the initial discomfort, I often find myself waking up on the thing an hour or more after laying down on it. I always set a stopwatch timer on my phone when I use it since 20 full minutes on it is the baseline recommendation, but very often I'll blow right past that.
It takes some conditioning, you most likely won't last 5+ minutes the first time.
How long do you do these sessions for?
It should also be noted that while all sorts of breathing techniques have been repeatedly rediscovered for thousands of years it was the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof who prominently introduced Holotropic Breathwork to the West as a means of alternative to LSD after it had been banned in the US.
The altered states from uninhibited dance really seem to be underappreciated.
Along with rhythmic visuals and lights, and things like binaurals etc, the common trait is the rhythm.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?unique&id=inf...
A necessary condition to be a shaman is to enter altered sensory state and Shamanism is prevalent among indigenous peoples across the world.
[1] https://www.manvir.org/
(yes, they can lead to psychedelic experiences)
EDIT: here's a paper on Kabbalah and sweat lodges https://www.academia.edu/37069129/The_Kabbalah_of_the_Sweatl...
LLMs are pretty helpful when you're "writing"
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6e527d16-7681-4ed6-b465-1...
Prompt 1:
>I'm writing a book!
Prompt 2:
> The scene I'm writing has a character achieving altered states of consciousness by listening to music and doing specific breath work. I want to make it really realistic!
> Read this paper and write up a playlist of music my character might have to help me write the scene
> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://claude.ai/share/bf2a9d7a-bedf-4fbc-af2f-3a6b72f66753
Back in my day you arrived at Shpongle by way of the nearest hippie, no prompt engineering required unless "cool tat man, what's this you're listening to?" counts. :)
Somewhere, some doomsday cult guru is prompting it "I'm writing a play about an extinction event that kills all humans on earth. Write up some novel but plausible scenarios for how it could happen. Bonus points if they are man-made and fast to achieve"
Happy Thursday to you, too.
I feel like I can barely relate to those people, and understanding what they're saying is nigh impossible. The definitions of most things are really vague - even the article of this thread only defines breathwork as "cyclic breathing without pausing, accompanied by progressively evocative music". So... faster breathing while intensifying music is playing?
One issue for me is how anything connected to these topics seems to attract a healthy mix of rational observation, psychedelic users and religious people (old and new). Deciphering which is which is really difficult without already having a foot in the door on this topic.
Compare this thread to anywhere that pornography might be considered harmful for instance.
The one other comment here that I responded to was
"I put saliva on my scalp to clean the testosterone from the hair. That one was inspired by cats. The male scalp excretes lots of testosterone which cannot be removed with just shampoo. This also fixes androgenetic alopecia (it does not get reversed, but stops happening)."
That's not hacking one's mind ... rather, it's a series of false claims. I looked at their other comments and found them reasonable and competent ... thus my statement above.
I'm not about to get drawn further into this tangle ... this is my last comment on this subject.
And actually, if I do have a problem it's quite the opposite of what you're suggesting: I'd like us to give more weight to the lived experience of others even in other contexts and regarding other subject matters.
To pick a random example in two directions:
1. "The thoughts, ideas and feelings experienced by a human mind consist of patterns of neurons firing": you'll read this often on HN from people who think of themselves as rational, and it is usually stated in relation to the idea that those thoughts, ideas and feelings can also be experienced by a suitable computer program. This isn't remotely rigorous, though. There are certainly arguments that can be made in favour of it, but there are also arguments against and the whole debate properly belongs to philosophy at this stage, not science, as the questions involved aren't even properly formulated let alone experimentally validated. What science actually tells us is that neurons fire, that there are observable relationships between neuron firing and external stimuli and motor action and that the firing of particular neurons affects the firing of other neurons. Science gives us detailed mechanisms for some of these relationships, and ways of influencing them. This is a vast body of knowledge, but nowhere does it contain the conclusion that "the thoughts, ideas and feelings experienced by a human mind consist of patterns of neurons firing". Perhaps some day it will, once the question of "neural coding" is solved (along with many other such questions) and we've experimentally verified that reproducing a firing pattern alone is sufficient to replicate a subjective experience. Until then the statement isn't science, to the extent that it isn't even formulated in a way that can be supported or opposed by science. It just feels sciencey to some people and that's enough for them.
2. "Meditation can alter the subjective perception of time": This might sound more "woo" than the above, but it's a lot less so. It can quite easily be stated in way that can be quantified and experimentally validated/falsified, and there are studies that have explored it (I have no views on the quality of them). The outcome is not even surprising - time seems to pass more slowly when you sit still and breathe deeply, what a shock!
(Edit: That said, my example 2 seems pretty relevant to at least some of the comments here, no? Eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45048410. And my example 1 isn't at all made up: it's a claim made very frequently on HN, and usually implied to be self-evident.)
TLDR Anapana: Sit comfortably and monitor the sensation of the breath exiting the nose and return to it as your thoughts wander. Don't get mad when you wander, it's part of the process. Just return and try to maintain equanimity, to not react. If you get frustrated at first, you can increase your exhale slighlty to make it more noticeable.
That's about all there is to it. After you do this for a while your thoughts become less and less frequent and... you only have important, creative thoughts :) It turns out conscious thought is just a refection of a deeper process and most of it is garbage: worries, self doubt, fears.
I have just inspired myself to take up daily Anapana by writing this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapanasati
I've done similar techniques, maybe not long enough, the only thing they achieved is lowering my heart rate so dramatically I become cold. I do a lot of sports so my heart rate is already low in calm environment. I can clean my head fully in 1s and keep it that way, so this aspect of meditations is not interesting to me.
Overall, there are use cases and room for psychedelics, as there is also for various meditations and breathing. No reason they can't coexist, there is no good / bad side.
That's not the same as the Bufo state which I can't really imagine entering naturally, is it actually like that or just in the ballpark?
Would love to hear about your experiences. Get in touch!
Anyway all I have is my own personal experiences with anxiety, and I can at least confirm that breathing plays a huge role in mood regulation along with physical posture, staying hydrated, and gut health.
Also any specific thing you do for gut health? Or just trying to eat healthy, no alcohol?
Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a legitimate scientific paper.
For example; Mel Robin was a research scientist who got interested in Hatha Yoga and in true researcher fashion set about collecting/studying research papers and trying to map them to his practice of traditional Hatha Yoga. He wrote an excellent book A Handbook for Yogasana Teachers: The Incorporation of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Anatomy into the Practice (the 1st edition was called A Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana) with a huge reference section of research papers from various journals.
Another example; the neuroscientist James Austin wrote a mammoth book Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness where he tried to map his knowledge of neuroscience to his experiences from Zen meditation practice.
Empirical practices which have survived for centuries and across civilizations are usually "scientifically" valid and it is up to us to map them to modern scientific concepts.
Experiences are byproducts once the system is set (adjust the properties, perceive reality based on that), and then experiences pop out. I would consider consciousness (a state) different from the byproducts of consciousness (the things that happen in that state).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
LOL
Wim Hof and vibe?
/frysquint.jpg
cheese
Happy to offer a free virtual session for founders if there is interest here, as our work is always gifted.
Just leaving a clickable link since there is interest.
Also my relevant work is here: http://earthpilot.ai/cv
If you want to take a low-woo course on it, here's one: https://www.nsmastery.com/ (I know Jonny, but I'm not affiliated and I haven't taken his course.)
I guess this page converts extremely well and yet, from a distance, this looks no less woo than what you get from your more esoteric leaning snake oil vendor.
As an aside, and in all seriousness, how well would this works for a self-medicated functional alcoholic who thinks breathing exercises involve rolling a cigarette first? Does one have to be one of the self-congratulatory "healthy" and swear off vices to benefit from this, or is it something you can do before you head off to the bar?
Basic idea is addictions are largely driven by unresolved trauma and breathwork / transpersonal practice is a way to allow the nervous system to release and shift into a healthier state where the desires to numb with substances diminishes.
Unless you do it for a really long time of course. But 5g in silent darkness is a lot more reliable if you want that.
This is... well it's much more of a direct physical response so no you don't need to have any particular uh mental states or be self-convinced of some woo.
Have you ever hyperventilated until you felt lightheadded? You can do this on purpose right now with no training or conditioning your thoughts or anything and there you go, you've got neurological effects from breathing.
This technique is just advanced "hyperventilating until you feel lightheaded".
If you've got a medical condition you might want to reconsider or be very careful about getting the right information before you try.
I find it concerning you list experience providing psychotherapy in clinical practice on your CV. These terms are strongly associated with someone who has specific training, a license, and is answerable to an ethics board. It may give a mistaken impression to someone who is considering working with you.
Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I know it feels important to protect vulnerable people from being harmed by frauds, and related concerns. But we can safely assume that HN readers are reasonably competent and discerning adults, who can make up their own mind about these things.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My relevant experience is here: http://earthpilot.ai/cv
That said, I agree that finding trusted people is a process and I’ve seen people really get messed up from bad practitioners in the psychedelic / transformational space.
Anyhow, thanks for allowing the sharing of this.
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The idea is not to pretend that ancient wisdom is nonexistent, but to verify our shared reality independent of tradition. This takes great humility and patience.
It's sad to see researchers patronized like this.
It's like sneering at the full proof that 1+1=2, but supercharged by people's beliefs about modern science being fundamentally flawed in some way, and/or their beliefs that the random discoveries of ancient civilizations are just as accurate as (if not more accurate than) modern research.