I was invited to a shamanic breathing circle by a friend that facilitates these types of practices. I have done similar type breathing ceremonies before a few times but it was years ago and pre-dmt. Knowing full well that dmt blew me they fuck apart(thx Uncle Knucles)and re assembled my mind I was intrigued to participate to see how i now perceived non psychedelic altered states and their travels.

A quick background on me, I was a lot more new-age'y at one time. since my work with dmt and after some natural evolution as a self aware being my views on most matters are vastly different. Personally I believe I have seen the true nature of all things with tryptamines. I know I can never fully understand everything I have experienced but there are residual impressions left that stay with me. So that being said I dont feel I know it all but I do feel ive seen enough to say that my previous beliefs and ideas were inaccurate and inadequate regarding the big picture.

The workshop was nice. The people seemed like your usual suspects for these types of events. ya gotta love the kooks, (I say that in a loving way and feel I am equally as kooky). Anyways, we were were given great instructions as well as explanation and tips and got right into it. I paired up with a sitter and went first as I didn't want to have to watch a group go and then have pre-conceived expectations about the matter.

It went well, I feel a deeper level of understanding in regards to self and altered states so much more now that it wasn't hard for me to find my way into a fairly altered state. I tend to gag and purge out negative crap from my body when i do breath work. This I like, I don't throw up its just gagging and coughing ext. I did some more of that this time as well and would say in the 90 min there were 2 other moments of what you would call seeing.
After a good run of breathing I could see in my minds eye my arms which were outstretched in front of me. Overlayed on my arms were transparent jaguar arms and paws in whitish blue light. it was very cool. I get a very animalistic feeling when i do this stuff. I like that part a lot.

When it was all over we sat around and everyone talked about there experiences. I listened closely to the groups vivid descriptions and accounts that rival our trip reports here. There was a huge part of me that just cant accept this. I can never know what anyone else feels and see's. All we can go by is descriptions But how you imagine my described experience may be very different from how i experienced it. in other words people can talk about their skulls jumping out of their heads and into their hands made of crystal but it seems to me like its completely a minds eye type of experience.

That coupled with being in a trance like state from breathing it can be quite moving. It seems like its apples and oranges to psychedelic journeys but since its described in the same way i feel it becomes misleading to participants as to what to even look for. When it was my turn to be a sitter i watched this poor guy trying so desperately hard to launch to the point of tears from frustration at his "failure". I could just tell he was really expecting or wanting a dmt breakthrough type experience and hoped he could hyperventilate into one.
I left there wondering if im an altered states snob now or have i just not "traveled". part of me wanted to run home grab my vaporizer/spice and say "ok folks....if you really want out of body step right up"

Considering my specific art background of indigenous cultures and future long term travel to South America this year i would have predicted that these shamanic studies would really resonate with me but they don't seem to. Thats kind of sad in a way. I really feel like once you walk through that door of hyperspace there's no way to predict how you will see the world upon returning. Mine wasn't an over night paradigm shift, it is the culmination of years of dmt use, learning and growing but its main influence has been tryptamines hands down.

I do see that there is most certainly a place for this type of shamanic work, I just dont see any significant advantages but do however see disadvantages from only doing this type of work. its fully limited to your cognitive imagination it seems. ive never heard anyone come back from a breath workshop saying" wow, that was so strange and peculiar i cant even comprehend what i just saw". to me this shows that it is truly limited to what your cognitive brain already knows or has seen. no?

Olympus,

Very fascinating. I've never gone to a shamanic breathing circle, but I do practice pranayama and meditation. I've gotten to the point of seeing vision fragments in deep meditation while completely sober and when I combine marijuana with meditation I can actually fully active that vision mechanism in our brains...neither are exctly like DMT of course!

Since you are into non drug induced altered states of consciousness have you ever worked to have lucid dreams? Some of my most profound life experiences have come via lucid dreams...which is literally your bodies natural way of reaching hyperspace!

hey Joe,
One thing I really like about non psychedelic altered states is that i feel it can help you trip harder or more in depth when you do take substances. If you can learn how to journey on air the psychedelic world is your oyster!

I am able to notice the subtle nuances of holding back vs. letting go as well as feeling this animalistic part of me without the foggy confusion or potential fear of ingesting psychedelics. What i think would be very interesting is to combine the two. similar to what your describing with meditation and marijuana.
a little tryptamine "booster shot" could make things much more interesting.

Lucid dreaming isnt something I have tried to induce or encourage. i have had this type of dream and yes they are very powerful. Its like tripping but being crystal clear, sort of what I think death is going to feel like. I wouldn't mind looking into it more but often with natural forms of altered states they tend to be a whole lotta work with slow minimal results so i think that discourages me from diving in. How was your learning curve on lucid dreaming?

Some people just seem to have a knack for these types of things i feel like I am the natural states hard head. Or that i simply expect too much from them. Also im a pothead and it seems you have to trade your dreaming recollection for the pot.

cheers

My lucid dreaming learning curve was pretty quick. I was able to do it the first time in about 30 day's...I was having false awakenings after a couple of weeks. However during that month I literally stopped and asked if I was dreaming just about every 5 minutes.

Sadly I don't have lucid dreams very often now...I smoke to much marijuana...though I'm currently cutting way back in hopes of rekindling the lucid state.

I do however fall asleep consciously probably once every couple of months out of random. That is an amazing (often times quite scary) experience as well..interestingly it has happened a few day's after mushroom trips on a couple of occasions now. I think there is a link for sure.

BTW I totally agree about learning to have non psych altered states. I can actually get visuals off about 5mgs of DMT if I do it after about 10 mintes of pranayama designed to slow my breathing rate...I'm not breaking through, but the inner eye gets turned on. I also think that because of my meditation experience I can extend out my DMT trips by a good bit. 20 mgs of straight spice will last in total about 25 minutes before I completely loose access to the inner eye...

Honestly the primary reason I do psychedelics is to enhance my meditation practice and increase spiritual awareness.

What is "shamanic breathing" anyways? I wonder where people get their 'knowledge' and become experts in these sort of things

In any case, I do think that through breathing we might be able to reach different states of consciousness and/or somehow learn about ourselves. Check out all of Stanislav Grof's holographic breathwork. I never tried it but I've had a couple of good friends swear to me it really works and they got in quite distinctively altered states when they went to one of Grof's workshops.

Or also think about the importance of working on breathing to eastern cultures (pranayama), or also Wilhelm Reich's thoughts on how breathing patterns relate to psychological traits. Then again others such as Gurdjieff would highly discourage any breath work because he claimed that our organism is so sensitive and dynamically balanced, that inducing changes through breathing could also result in negative effects if you didnt know exactly what you are doing and why, related to your own unique characteristics as well as a detailed knowledge of the "finer/unknown" aspects of the human body/mind/soul complex. In any case whatever we believe, trust or follow, it does seem to show that breathing has a key importance and that somehow altering can have strong effects on our psyche.

As for how effective this is in comparison with psychedelic drugs, maybe this is also one of these things that it shouldnt be one vs the other, but rather one + the other? You know in certain indigenous cultures they have some very developed breathing techniques to use during ayahuasca ceremonies... After a few ceremonies working with one shaman in Brazil, in one session he decided to show us some of the breathing techniques, which they use within some kind of framework/cosmovision that they try to describe as "calling the spirits" or similar (or at times the breathing/blows are to change the experience, remove bad visions from someone or heal, etc)

It was some fast complex inhalations and then strong exhalation blows that was accompanied by some kind of sound/scream. I remember I was feeling quite comfortable before this, then we made this technique and suddenly I had this extremely intense come-up of the trip (I was already well into the peak, long past the real come up of ayahuasca), so strong that I suddenly purged very heavily while having some of the strongest visions I've yet had on ayahuasca. There was definitely some strong altering of the effects, but since then I never tried this again to see what happens.

Thats exactly the technique we used and what this women was trained in. She even spoke to us about the man himself and which i thought was nice to hear.

I agree endless the word shamanic this or that gets thrown around like bubblegum these days. It sell's plain and simple however it is what it is regardless of the name.

Hey mon, was it anything like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfS-Pgh02wY


I can imagine a bunch of people wanting to trip just from breathing.

that vid is freaking sweet! what awesome footage of a really cool time.

To answer your question I would say its all the same thing. There are a few differences, these hippies seem to be breathing from there nose in and out. The holographic breathing method uses the mouth in a relaxed "ahhh" shape in and out.
Years ago I have also used what is called the double helix breath which consists of 2 deep short inhales one through the nose one through the mouth and out through the mouth. this method seemed to give be better results but it could have been the setting and people i was with. Was i tripping, no but i was certainly in an altered state and it had a very big impact in my life motivating me getting off opiates and changing what i didnt like about me.

In my layman's opinion on breathing induced trance states its all the same,no matter what its called raising your kundalini, holographic breath work, shamanic breathing, ext.... it takes about 1 min be taught the exercise and then its up to you. I.e how much can you let your mind go, can you put yourself in a trance state and stay there for a few moments or even min.

I think its definitely worth trying just dont have expectations of psychedelics they really are apples and oranges. its a lot of work and tiresome so its not the type of thing id like to do often. My throat is still a bit sore.

I've been practicing breath/stretching exercises the last couple months. I had a yoga book once, know some of the poses and such, but really now I just 'wake' myself, with a belief that those who think from strange and far views should allow their body strange and far from normal poses.

Anyway, the day after my first cactus tea, which was a small dose, I was stretching on tip toes, fingers to the sky, breathing deep, making large sweeping motions, watching out the window where kids played ball. All of a sudden pushing my chest out, shoulders back, arms moving up over the head from below, I was hit with a realization, "I'm about to pass out!" It happened so fast, I was moving slow, took that deep breath and pushed out, and blackness fell on me. I had the realization and had time to aim at the bed. It was like a full blown trip feeling. I was like ' overwhelmed, I fell and hit the bed, all faded, and as soon came right back. It felt really awesome, hasn't happened since then.

But it does make me wanna take a nice dose and just exercise/meditate in nature.