People all over the world are looking for effective and natural methods to support their health. Psychedelics can have a great positive impact on both body and mind. But did you know that breathwork goes very well with psychedelics? Breathwork involves feeling more grounded, aware and calm through conscious breathing. That way, you can use breathwork to enhance your psychedelic trip. In this blog, you’ll read how that works.
What is breathwork?
Breathwork, also called breathwork, is a technique that uses conscious breathing to get more oxygen into the body and brain. Through deep and concentrated breathing, people gain a deeper awareness of their bodies and are better able to relax and recover.
Breathwork has a calming effect and can help regulate the nervous system. You become more attuned to your body and its instincts as a result, and it increases your bodily intelligence. This allows you to remain calm and centered even in stressful situations. As a result, people report that these breathing techniques allow them to remain more their authentic selves and better connect with their own truth.
Cyclic breathing limits the pauses a person takes between inhaling and exhaling. At first, this way of breathing may make you dizzy and cause tingling in your fingers. But once you get used to it, it awakens feelings of calmness and your mind also settles down.
For some people who use breathwork, it goes beyond just relaxing. Breathwork can also cause a change of consciousness. When you breathe deeply and cyclically, more oxygen enters the brain, which can cause a kind of high.
Because of all these effects, it’s not hard to see that breathwork could be well used to enhance a psychedelic trip with magic mushrooms or truffles, for example. These agents also lead to a change in consciousness.
The effects of psychedelics
Most people know what mind-altering drugs do. They can change your perceptions, thoughts and emotions. Examples of such substances include magic mushrooms, LSD and mescaline cacti. If you take psychedelics, you will be tripping, or hallucinating.
People have been using these substances for centuries. One of the oldest pieces of evidence that our distant ancestors were already taking psychedelics comes from cave drawings found in Algeria. These are 9,000 years old and show a shaman with a psilocybin mushroom (Psilocybe mairei) growing out of his body. Peyote has also been used for more than 5,000 years, according to historical records.
Psychedelics have a unique interaction with the body. The substances affect the serotonin receptors in the brain. This allows certain areas of the brain to communicate with each other that normally cannot. In this way, they induce whole new cognitive and emotional experiences, opening the brain to new insights.
What breathwork can do for your psychedelic trip
If a trip is already such a unique experience, why use breathwork? These breathing techniques can be very valuable in conjunction with a trip. So breath work can also bring about a change in consciousness. But if you apply breathwork when you are tripping, it can help increase the chances of a positive experience.
When you use breathwork, you breathe rhythmically and calmly. This creates feelings of tranquility, which can be beneficial. After all, during a trip you can feel quite stressed or uncomfortable. It is even possible for hallucinations to be creepy and to make you anxious and panicky. A trip doesn’t always go the way you want it to.
By applying proper breathing techniques, you can reduce the chances of such a bad trip. You can get through these more easily even when you experience difficult feelings because of your knowledge of breath work. Applying breathwork during a psychedelic trip can bring many benefits, from a reduction in anxiety to greater clarity of mind.
- Less burden of anxiety
- Increase awareness of the body
- Greater mental clarity
- More control over your emotions and therefore less suffering from negative emotions
Breathwork can help calm the fight-and-flight response, which can reduce the likelihood of anxiety, stress and even depression. In general, people who engage in breathwork seem to experience more cheerful moods and sleep better. So these breathing techniques are definitely recommended even if you don’t use psychedelics!
The powerful combination of breathwork and tripping
If you practice breathwork for half an hour every day, you will find that it has many benefits. It improves the connection between body and mind. But the very combination with psychedelics is enormously powerful. Both can open the mind more to what lives deep inside. This allows you to see from calmness what surfaces, such as trauma or other mental health issues. It is not for nothing that mind-altering drugs can also help well with depression or PTSD.
In addition, both can cause a change in the state of consciousness. Researchers have observed that similar chemical changes occur in the brain during a psychedelic trip and while doing breathwork. In either case, certain areas of the brain relax and a person can gain new insights.
Also, both psychedelics and breathwork encourage an attitude that is more mindful, where you are more introspective and can deal positively with thoughts and emotions. The wonderful thing is that you can apply breathwork anytime, anywhere and you don’t need anything for it. If you combine breathwork with psychedelics, you can get even more out of your trip. Both are good for the body and mind and can support the natural healing process.