Holotropic breathwork?

https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/comments/43t41c/holotropic_breathwork/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

I've personally attended a session with 15 other people. Trust me, it's as effective as it is intense. They had us breathe deeply and continually for 45mins. The effect this had on people was amazing, some cried, some burst into laughter, but we all healed on some level. It was as if everyone in the room was on something, but it was just the heavy breathing. I hallucinated as well, and after the session I felt the peaceful sensation you feel after taking LSD. I tried doing it again by myself, but with no results. I think it had to do a lot with the people guiding us and singing throughout the session. I wish I'd do it again, I can find their website for you if you're interested.

I recommend checking out some of the articles on Stan Grof's website; this article in particular I found quite compelling. Also take note that there are many different breathing techniques across the ages and disciplines; many of these other techniques can produce similar effects and I recommend looking into and trying a bunch. From the few that I have tried I recommend Wim Hof's method as well as some pranayama techniques like bhastrika.

I've been working with my breath, exploring different techniques for about 6 months or so and I can say without a doubt you can produce very profound psychedelic type effects which can be sustained. The beauty of working with the breath as compared to psychedelics is that you can easily stop a bad experience by changing your breathing pattern. I've also found that combining breathwork with psychedelics is quite beneficial; the breathwork makes the psychedelic experience much more navigable; it gives you more control.

The basic practice which seems to work well is to try out a few different breathing techniques, play with them a bit and see which ones stick with you. The basic breathing technique I do goes like this:

Pretty simple but you can start to produce some interesting effects. It's essential that you try to feel your way along rather than strictly adhere to a practice so 'how does it feel when I breath like this' as opposed to 'this is the technique, I must do it like this.'

Rather than try to describe all of the experiences I have had with this I'll just list some:

Just a few examples of what can be achieved with breathwork while not on drugs. Add psychedelics to it and you can start to traverse your subconscious like never before. In one experience I had with breathwork and psychedelics my beliefs and fears became tangible entities which I could interact with in my mind; I was able to overcome a deep fear which had been plaguing me for a while. Anyways, I'll stop my rambling. Don't listen to the nay-sayers that have never actually given much effort to it - breathwork can produce profound effects.

Edit: I suck at formatting.

The idea is that the breath work is based as a Transpersonal Psychology technique for therapeutic benefits. The idea of paying for this really put me off for a few years, especially considering the price of 'admission', but I decided to try it in February after having saved up because it was being held in one of my favorite places on Earth, Joshua Tree, California, and especially since I plan to be going to grad school for Clinical Psychology in about a year I figured school is gonna cost a shitload anyways, maybe I can implement this knowledge in my future career.

The week-long retreat was actually centered around Stan Grof's ideas of implementing a new sort of therapeutic technique with patients when psychedelic psychotherapy became illegal all those decades ago. Since Stan could not work with the substances anymore, he decided to work towards something new. This was it. Developed through years of experiential psychiatric work, as well as with colleagues and other psychedelic pioneers from Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

Normally there is a theme or genre assigned the week-long retreats or 'modules' as they call them, in which during the group times that you are not breathing, you are essentially coming together to learn new ideas about that specific topic chosen for the week. It's like a college course or something to that effect. Like I said, the theme of my module was Psychedelics, including modern/contemporary use, the pioneering research of MAPS, and most importantly, the cultural background and extensive use of sacramental medicines that have occurred for thousands of years, and been seemingly repressed in the past couple thousand years by European monarchies.

Those who have completed the Holotropic Breathwork training, which is something like 4 mandatory modules and 3 that are elective topics (the psychedelic one I attended was an elective), are called 'facilitators' and they are in attendance at the modules to assist as a sort of 'guru' who may exemplify the archetype of one who radiates saint-like positivism. They are there to answer questions, be someone to relate to (or not to relate to), and simply learn from. Well, everyone in attendance is there for that, but these facilitators are there to maintain a sense that there are plenty of people who have once been in the position that you are currently in but have graduated beyond that stage, and are well aware of the range of emotions that can and will be experienced, so they are not freaking out or having breakdowns themselves when they realize that you are freaking the hell out over a couple hours of "nonsense breath work". It's truly like having a bunch of trip sitters around, and you get the sense that you can trip as hard as you are comfortable with, and if they can help you get more comfortable, so that you can trip harder, then that is literally perfect because that's what they're supposed to be there for in a way.

You're not just paying to 'trip out', and you're really not just 'tripping out' either. Yes, I have to admit that in my two 3-hour breathing sessions, I did experience different ranges of effects quite ridiculously similar to all of the psychedelics I have ingested, but the thing is that you are being encouraged to feel whatever it is that you need to feel by a trained team who have all been through the breath work themselves (it's not a scam, nor a sham), and as you or your fellow breathers may wind up flopping all over the floor like a fish out of water, screaming at the top of your lungs like a banshee, there is a team of people there to do a couple of things: put more pillows down on the floor near where your body is about to roll around on, lend you some light touch (or rough massage if some crazy physical issues pop up, like for example the shoulder I had surgery on in high school became very active, and one of the facilitators would lend pressure to the shoulder while I backed myself into the pressure and achieved some ungodly and euphoric pops).

The big idea is that the planet needs healing. There is bickering going on even between the healers. This foundation of the Holotropic Breathwork community is meant to universally unite our species with the others in the universe for true self-preservation.

The smaller idea is that we can all be therapists, we can all be doctors, we can all help each other. We don't have to necessarily do what the status quo tells us to do, get degrees, and actually get the professional title or whatnot. THIS, in my opinion, is a big aspect of the necessity to actually attend the modules, perform in the as you so call "New Age ceremonial crap", because when it comes down to it, we all evolved from cultures that did use mind-altering substances and convened together to radiate positivity to each other and the world, and now that we have intelligence, there is still so much selfishness and suffering that goes on. One person can't press a button to make everything better. We must all help ourselves, and each other. This is something that's difficult to achieve the effects of without "skipping all the nonsense" as you put it. It's not nonsense. You're just not seeing things from the big picture.

If you were to save up the money, go ahead with a module, and find that it was stupid, then so be it. That was my intention when I decided to try it out. Trust me though, it was life changing and I'm so excited for the future to know that Holotropic Breath Work is out there. I cannot express the boost in creative thought that I experienced. It truly launched me into a psychedelic state. In fact, on the way home I actually suffered from a really stupid situation of being handcuffed, having my car searched, and was given a sobriety test due to an unfortunate circumstance of a law official getting a little too "friendly" (said no-one) when having a perfectly legal back-and-forth conversation with me he must have deemed my behavior as a little too loopy. They let me go after like 2 hours because they realized I was only flexing my rights as a human to speak using rich word choices, not intending on being a smart ass.

Anyways.

Yes, at the beginning of the retreat I did feel like I was entering some new sort of church-type congression. Personally, I had considered myself an atheist from around 9 years old until 22 when I tried DMT for the first time. This place I found myself in truly felt like the sort of group that all religions, ancient and modern-contemporary, strive to achieve themselves. and I'm okay with that. the sheer honesty of every person I met at that week-long retreat (it was attended by about 26 other people than myself, not including facilitators who didn't do any breathing sessions themselves), as well as the integration of being able to share what we experienced during our breathing sessions, and being able to have others there (ranging from a decade older than me, to almost triple my age) (I was the youngest in attendance that week).

at times, I felt like I was taking part in some ancient Egyptian/occultist-type consciousness expanding rituals. and I'm not sure how far off that actually is.

I couldn't help but think to myself, if only the government realized what was going on that and the fact that what we were achieving could even be achieved at all WITHOUT DRUGS, I knew the feds would have to be wondering, "How do we make oxygen illegal?"

All psychedelics are, are neurotransmitter mimics. Just because we breathe oxygen 24 effing 7, you would assume it's not psychoactive because look at us all! We're sober! Psh. You think being alive, conscious, making sounds with your body to produce things known as "words" is the act of a sober entity? Dopamine, serotonin, and Oxytocin alone tell me nobody is sober.

If we lived on a planet in which we breathed in another gas, not Oxygen, but suddenly discovered this 'new' gas called "Oxygen" we would probably study it to understand its misunderstood effects. As it stands, we have been breathing in Oxygen forever, so no one bats an eye at the fact that it produces psycho-activity. How much, though?

Wikipedia has this:

Holotropic Breathwork (a trademark) is a practice that uses breathing and other elements to putatively allow access to non-ordinary states of consciousness. It was developed by Stanislav Grof as a successor to his LSD-based psychedelic therapy, following the suppression of legal LSD use in the late 1960s.[6] Following a 1993 report commissioned by the Scottish Charities Office, concerns about the risk that the hyperventilation technique could cause seizure or lead to psychosis in vulnerable people caused the Findhorn Foundation to suspend its breathwork programme.[7]

Sounds like some dude trying to cash in on the New Age movement.

Its likely the technique uses you to breath in such a way as to induce hyperventilation or hypoventilation producing colors in your vision.

Just meditate, it's far less wacky than these other "practices" and has demonstrable mental health benefits.

Stan Grof is not exactly "some dude". He pioneered psychedelic therapy and even Hoffman (inventor of LSD) has called Grof the Godfather of LSD. He has done thousands of LSD-fuelled psychotherapy sessions, cataloged his data, and has written a few books about it. He was awarded one of the highest honours by the Czech government, I forget the exact title, but essentially an award for service to humanity.

Worries about hyperventilating appear to me to be bullshit. Unless you have an existing condition, why/how could breathing cause you any problems? The notion is meaningless.

Wim Hof has a similar method but it is very stripped down.