Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music

FWIW, I used to use a light and sound machine (Mindplace Procyon) and was able to induce these states with minimal effort. And I had a couple dozen experiences w/ psilocybin in my college years, so I'm well versed in what they should be like.

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.

I found Lumenate +headphones to be very helpful for a period of time to get me mentally ready to end the day and try going to sleep.

Finding a lay down on an accu-pressure mat very helpful these days (tho a bit steeper adoption curve tbqh)

Accu-pressure mat seems to (for me) induce the body temperature spike and dip that accompanies the start of the sleep cycle in the same way that taking a warm shower before bed is supposed to. I've also found that it adds to the intensity of deep breathing exercises.

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.

I just tried Lumenate and woah that's actually really cool.

How long do you do these sessions for?

What do you use this for?

So you are saying this is more effective than foraged mushrooms in a dark dorm room - paired with a Winamp visualizer using real-time DirectX plugins and shader-based graphics? Forgive me for being a bit skeptical

Weird falling asleep happens to me too. The $5 acupressure mat is so deeply relaxing. And also helps me heal faster from bouts of lower back prolapse. Would definitely recommend, best $5 ever spent.

It takes some conditioning, you most likely won't last 5+ minutes the first time.

I don´t know if it was intentional, but for whatever reason, I find the specificity of "Winamp visualizer using real-time DirectX plugins and shader-based graphics" in this context, quite funny.

> paired with a Winamp visualizer using real-time DirectX plugins

Been there, done that

Quick tip for someone if you wake in the night. A walk on tiles or cool flooring to get your feet nice and cold then a hot water bottle on said feet - if you have poor circulation, I run hot so under the blankets the temp spikes fast.

It should get you snoozy. Some nature sounds in the background etc should get you back to sleep.

Did you try the light and sound machine before trying psilocybin? Not to discount your experience - it is valuable that you can compare your experiences and confirm similarity, but if you did then we cannot rule out that your previous experience with psilocybin makes it easier to reach those states again with a light and sound machine.

I guess if we'd want to know for sure we'd need to test the light and sound technique with people who haven't used psilocybin before, then let them try psilocybin so they can compare the experience, and then let them try the light and sound machine again to see if anything changed in how "suggestive" they are to the experience. And compare against a light-and-sound machine only control group. I doubt we'll see that happen any time soon though.

I remember this from the 90's. Brain machine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_machine

I thought I was going to get a seizure tbh. Do not recommend.

Yes my attempt at humor. Which is always a bit risky on this forum :D

When you say you used them… What made you stop?

Aside from that it would be nice if somebody knows about a meta quest app that might achieve similar effects. Is that even possible?

Jokes aside I've definitely melted my face to visualizers before.

Where did you find an acupressure mat for $5? The cheapest I’m seeing on online is $20.

¿Effective? I don't understand your point.

The sensation induced by binaural beats are based on brain waves synchronisation, basically we get control of the stick shifter of the brain, and we perceive the changes strongly, as they are much faster than usual.

TLDR: you definitely feel them, and it feels a bit like getting high.

Chemical induced states of altered consciousness are of a fundamentally different nature. Keeping the car centric metaphor it would be like switching the type of fuel you are giving to the engine. It feels different, for different reasons.

I'm curious to try a bedjet (no affiliation).

https://bedjet.com

is there anything like this for Oculus Quest headsets?

Is this healthy though? It’s just breathing until you’re poisoning your brain with oxygen right?

Yes there is something similar in the app Liminal.

Replied to another person asking a similar question - yes there is a similar experience in the Liminal app.

It gives me some discomfort - almost makes me wonder if it could induce some sort of epileptic episode in me if I tried to push through the discomfort.

But on the whole Liminal is a neat app with other useful experiences.

Damn kids these days, back in MY day we got our daily relaxation by looking at defrag.exe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nidwz3BzFCM

Yeah, I'm sure having previously done psilocybin is a pre-requisite. I could never imagine that someone only using light and sound who then takes psilocybin would rate the experiences similarly. Alternatively, I can (involuntarily) re-experience psylocibin just by being overly tired in a particular setting at times, it's not pleasant.

Why are you so sure?

I wonder if these audiovisual devices are essentially “hacking” the thalamus in a way similar to psychedelics. After all, they both seem capable of disrupting or rewiring our sensory gating systems.

There's quite a few non-drug things that can induce an altered state of consciousness like Bungee jumping, hunting, practically any extremely intense activity. Any situation where you truly believe you have a legitimate feeling of facing death essentially activates the ASC. Which is to say consciousness becomes secondary to your body's actions and you experience that separation. You feel your mind and body are two completely different entities and in that ASC your mind is the observer of your body the actor. Essentially everything that is happening in the physical world is being controlled by your subconscience and all the brain power used for normally interacting and decision making is separated and observant.

I have no doubt it's possible to activate this through breath work and various means like religious experiences etc, I've done so myself. A strong psylocbin induced separation is far more intense by an almost incomprehensible order of magnitude.

For an example, let's say you induce a, for lack of a better term, trip from breath work. At no point is it going to get so intense that every aspect of your body and conscience forgets that you are doing the breathwork and you are unable to stop even when prompted by people such as EMT's and police. Physically ending the breathwork will bring the separation back. With Pyscolbin that's not true and the intensity only builds and you could be in this state of unrecoverable separation for 8+ hours. In the reverse, the deep feelings and insight from Psylocbin come in that decline after the peak where everything starts to become real again and your recognition of the world returns and you remember you ate mushrooms.

After that though it's quite reasonable to get that same feeling from any altered state of consciousness.

Are there any apps to experience this on a VR headset?

Sure, but maybe you have a goal that can be achieved with either method, even if doing so feels different. If they'll both achieve the goal, foregoing the inconveniences of drugs sounds pretty great.

Many decades ago I used to enter altered states with dxm and an app called flasher.exe would let u pick from different saves to use and it would flash the light on my old Toshiba dos laptop. Used to pop in cds and go for trips in the dark; very memorable.

you definitely succeeded in your humorous endeavors ;) i snorted haha

oh so satisfying.

Used WinAmp AVS back in the 90s with some crappy projectors to melt faces at parties professionally.

> I can (involuntarily) re-experience psylocibin just by being overly tired in a particular setting at times

do you get it particulary when you lie down or put your feet up?

30-40 mins on the Shakti mat is my go-to. If I need to kick it up a notch, wim hof, then cold shower then Skakti mat. Heavenly.

hmmm seems interesting.

I've always been a really good sleeper. The cold feet trick worked for me because I grew up in a house without central heating in Ireland. So if I woke I'd toddle to the toilet and back, by the time I did that I was properly cold. And I run quite hot so I heat up under the covers quickly. boom back to sleep.

That is a valid point, I already had significant experience with the drug when I purchased one.

That said, I was still shocked at how quickly and effectively it worked the first I used it and how reliably it worked despite whatever state I was in. No amount of meditation or breathing techniques have gotten me close, and I've never had a natural flashback.

More effective? No. Just a ballpark state similar to the article, which I believe is more like the initial come up where you still have the ability to snap back to reality. Quite efficiently and reliably. Can't edit my OP but the caveat should be applied that I was already experienced w/ psilocybin upon purchasing the device.

Can't claim it would produce the same results for everyone, but I provided a free, low friction option for anyone curious.

That sure is a lot of words to say Milkdrop

> phosphene visuals

Any more detail on this? Never heard this terminology before

It's one of the terms used to describe the eyes-closed visuals one can get on a psychedelic trip.

It's a bit of a misnomer in this case as light helps induce it but the effect is similar.

I still own it, just go through phases of using it and forgetting about it. The biggest drawback is time as the sessions are between 10-60 minutes. In recent years I've used it to help induce sleep when I'm having issues there. It's been in storage for the last few years as I've been nomadic.

AFA a headset being able to induce the effect, the main requirement is a high lumen output, that's why LEDs are used.

It sounds like the state I've been able to get myself into a few times when I've been super tired, and then put some headphones on, close my eyes and focus on a central light in the dark. All the while listening to edm similar to Stutter house and other binaural beats. And that's it.

The first time I did this unexpectedly was a trip. I can't do this at will, and ignored it for a long time. I've recently started trying to see if I can control into it. I come out of this in an alert and super-relaxed state when I can get into that state.

edit: Forgot to mention that those "phosphene visuals" are exactly how I know I'm in this state.

Just to be clear, I'm comparing it to the linked research and any notions of naturally induced states.

To me, it's similar to that early part of the trip where you get tired and feel like you want to take a nap, only to find that impossible upon closing your eyes and seeing the images dance around. Eventually that part of the trip ends as the energy builds.

I had one of these and used it a lot in 8th and 9th grade. Then in the fall of 10th grade, I woke up one morning with the left side of my body numb and ended up having 6 grand mal seizures in the afternoon. The doctors never figured out why and they haven't come back but my mom forbid me from it after that. I do wonder if anyone else experienced that.

Geez, foraged mushrooms and Winamp make me think we’re of the same generation. Those were good times…

This isn’t well known because his name was (deservedly) mud at the time, but Timothy Leary did a lot of work with sound and lights. He did his light shows when he was a pop guru, but he was even doing this work before he got fired from Harvard.

At the time, he considered it following the history of altered states. In the nineties when he had mellowed out, Leary started talking about lights, sound and technology. Here’s one example:

https://www.sidjacobson.com/Portals/23/articles/Tim%20Leary%...

I’ve had a few experiences with non chemically induced altered states. They’re psychedelic-ish, but not really comparable to a substance like psilocybin. They’re definitely altered states, just while I could draw a picture to describe mild effects of psilocybin to a non user, I couldn’t with music and light.

They’re both altered but very different.

Hello GForce. Hello Milkdrop.

What if you do the goggles with binaural beats on psilocybin

I use to use Flasher too! It's on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_FLASHER_1.51

what wim hof means here?

Norway - Biltema. And pretty sure they are dirt cheap in Poland too. They actually differ in how sharp they are, so maybe a slightly more expensive one will be marginally better.

Forgot to add: BUY THE PILLOW TOO. The whole set is worth it.

Oh man thanks!!!