Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music

This is not a surprise to anyone that has engaged in prolonged meditation, especially across more than one day. It makes shortcuts like psychedelics look foolish. During a ten day Vipassana retreat time slowed down to such a great extent it changed my entire perception of time thereafter. The space provided by the mental quiet created by Anapana is so profound.

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

Psychedelics arent foolish, not everybody can or wants to arrange their lives around yet another (albeit important) item in semi-endless list of items of our lives, tripple that when having various responsibilities adults tend to have.

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.