Breathing is such an automatic function of our brains that we often take it for granted. We forget, or simply don’t know, how transformative it can be when done properly and with intention.
You can calm yourself, relieve anxiousness or anger, or, in the case of findings published in a real mouthful of a scientific journal, Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, it might even help you reach an altered mental state that’s a bit like the one you’d experience if you took psychedelics.
Presented at the ECNP Congress in Munich, researchers from Germany’s Central Institute of Mental Health shoved 30 experienced breathwork practitioners into an MRI machine to see what happens to the brain during continuous “circular breathing,” a technique used by musicians playing instruments like saxophones, trumpets, or trombones that allows them to continuously breathe in while breathing out into their instrument, thus cutting down on the need to stop and take a breath.
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The researchers found that global gray matter cerebral blood flow plummeted by about 45 percent. Cutting off 45 percent of blood flow in the brain sounds like it might kill you, but it does induce a lot of trippy side effects in the brain; it isn’t solely responsible for causing those trippy side effects.
Circular breathing was found to reshuffle the brain’s neural wiring, with participants reporting high-intensity altered states described as a deeply “oceanic” state in which they felt deeply connected to the universe. If that sounds a lot like the words of someone on LSD, you’re right. The effects are similar.
It was a small study, and there wasn’t a control group that was doing no breathwork at all, but researchers see it as a fascinating non-drug way to peer into the effects of psychedelic drugs. Breathing, after all, is free and doesn’t tick off the FDA.
Simple breathwork, when done properly, might be a nonpharmacological path for mental health treatments, considering how much LSD and psilocybin have been studied as potentially viable treatments for depression and PTSD.
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