when i get ready for the big journey i usually light some incense and put on some chill music like jack johnson or john butler trio or something, make the room warm using the heater and drink a ice tea (has to be ice tea i dont know why ). i get a little obsessive about things that bother me before im about to do it haha i then meditate trying to get my heart rate down till im almost alseep thinking about questions i would like answered during my trip and where my journey stopped last time. does anyone else do this and if so what traditions do u do?

I do it in complete silence (auditive and olfactive), also meditate a bit before while harmalas are kicking in.
Extra clothes on as I'm cold first 30mns and water nearby as I get thirsty while away

I love the ritual aspect of my usage, I tidy my space, burn some incense, listen to Terrence or some spoken word poetry, then meditate for 25 mins, then dissolve reality.

Just a tip (that you don't have to take), but perhaps you'll find it easier to get your heartbeat down if you don't drink the caffeinated iced tea. I don't know if this is even a problem for you, but if relaxing into a trip has been an issue, it's something to consider.

What I like to do is make sure the lighting is appropriate as possible (differs depending on where I do it). Sometimes I surround myself with my crystals and pyramids, sometimes not. I have a set of 9 ancient solfeggio tuning forks which I tone 9 times each in ascending order, and then I'll be off and running in silence in a moderately lit room.

i really makes a difference to the trip if there is some preparation gone into it thanks global i never thought of ice tea having caffeine it haha i will have to stop doing it cause if my heart rate is too high it hits me to fast and i struggle to get into my 2nd or third inhale. i just got my first harmalas so im keen to see if that helps mediation.

Global,

Have you ever tried hitting the tuning forks while under the influence?

I'm not sure why I ask this, I just started watching the television series Fringe recently and there is a lot of pseudo-science in there, psychedelics included. In one episode I watched recently the scientist of the series Walter mentioned that to travel into another universe wasn't all that difficult if you could identify and match the resonant vibration of that universe.

It's clearly made for science fiction, but I was wondering if by tuning during a psychedelic episode if it had some effect on the trip somehow? Terence used to say he could sing himself into another aspect of a trip and he postulated that sound and voice directly related to the psychedelic universe. Anyways just wondering if you had any insights via the tuning forks you could elaborate on further.

I've hit the tuning forks under the influence. The forks seem to create a magnetic field around themselves as they vibrate, and they can sort of "fine tune" hyperspace. The problem with the forks is that they're unweighted and therefore low volume. When I tone the forks before the experience, I hold them up to my microphone which is plugged into a small P.A. When I'm on spice, it's somewhat inconvenient to do this.

One of the interesting thing about the solfeggio frequencies (and their octaves) is that they have a particular affinity for creating cymatic effects. So if you project one of those frequencies into a medium like sand, salt, water, whatever....they have a particular ability for creating the geometrically complex and symmetrical patterns in the medium whereas most other frequencies have a generally low affinity for being able to influence the cymatic medium in any kind of meaningful way. Each frequency has its own pattern. So one of the interesting things was before I was aware of these individual patterns when I first started smoking spice, I had the 528Hz pure tone from youtube going, and that was the first time where I realized that sound interacted directly with hyperspace. My trip was longer than the youtube video, so when the sound instantly cut out from the youtube video, the shapes that I was seeing which were interlocking circles, squares and triangles fell slack into loose ovoids. A couple days later I saw the pattern that 528Hz creates when projected into sand and it was the identical pattern! So I felt I was seeing that sound as "it was".

The other thing with the tuning forks (and this is subjective: I don't have an empirical collection of data to prove this), but it seems like when I use the tuning forks going into an experience, that it seems to significantly raise the chances that Egyptian imagery shows up. I think this may be significant, thinking about it now in retrospect, because each of the pyramids at Giza resonates with one of those particular frequencies respectively.

Global, are familiar with the open ended boxes tuning forks are put in? They are loud enough to have that if you have two of the same note there will be sympathetic resonance with another so much so you can mute the struck fork and year the other unstuck fork just as loud.

No, I'm not familiar with those SoulCrushingBass, I'll have to look into it. I have done my own experimenting with sympathetic resonance though.