Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music

Personally I like to think of breathwork as another form of music, or rather that music and breathwork are all rhythmic stimulus with similar and complementary effects. Add dance to this as well. One of the big draws of EDM and trance and tribal music is the incessant rhythm of music and dance.

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.

I really wonder where this came from, evolutionarily or culturally, since it seems that only humans seem to have a response to rhythm. Some of the more talkative birds seem to as well.

IIRC rhythm perception is extremely sophisticated in terms of brain function, involving several regions working together in complex ways. It's built on the functions we use to model movement through space and has a timing-based prediction component plus of course the auditory processing. I don't know enough about it to confidently say but it seems reasonable to me that most animals simply don't have the prerequisite gear.

I often think I'm the only person not on drugs at an EDM festival and still getting into weird mental states. Good to know there's at least one other person.

This reminded me of something Milford Graves said in a book (paraphrasing): "The first sound we encounter is our mother's heartbeat in the womb -- and it swings!" [1][2]

[1] https://www.inventorypress.com/product/milford-graves-a-mind...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Graves