Your Breath is Psychedelic

In my experience, there are three general types of “breathwork” techniques:

• Calming breathwork, like different yogic breathing techniques

• Energizing breathwork, like Wim Hoff-style techniques

• Psychedelic breathwork, like holotropic breathing

Most people know about the first two from yoga, therapy, or coaching. Not enough know of the third.

It’s still wild for me when I leave my local holotropic-style breathwork class (thank you James Lough at Clearing House Savannah!), and I realize that I just had a legit psychedelic experience with no outside chemicals, totally legal, just by altering my breath for an hour.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been doing holotropic-style breathwork about once or twice a month. In these breathwork sessions, I’ve had visions, downloads, emotional releases, tears, ecstasy, and even a communion with my recently passed grandfather.

I recently facilitated a retreat where a small group of men did holotropic-style breathwork the first night and the next day sat for a therapeutic psychedelic experience with a plant medicine. Several of the men said that the breathwork experience was even more intense than the plant medicine! And just this past weekend, I facilitated a breathwork session where one of the participants said they hadn’t felt this calm in two years, since their father passed away.

All of this without drugs, just breathing in a particular way, with carefully crafted music, and intentional, caring guidance.

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Holotropic breathwork was “invented” in the late 1960s by the psychiatrist, Stanislav Grof, MD, when he needed a way to bring people into non-ordinary states of consciousness after LSD was made illegal. Grof had studied LSD in a clinical psychotherapeutic setting since the early 1960s and saw how these psychedelic states of consciousness could lead to greater self-clarity, self-compassion, and emotional healing.

He developed this breathing technique by combining approaches from Indian and Tibetan teachers as well as Western therapists. Holotropic breathing itself is quite simple: it’s deep, rapid breathing through the mouth––essentially intentional hyperventilation. But the preparation, music, and guidance through the breathing, which lasts about an hour, is what can turn the experience into something profound, awareness-expanding, and emotionally healing.

For decades, Grof and his wife Christina led holotropic breathwork classes at Esalen, the famous retreat center for personal growth off the coast in Big Sur, California. This breathing technique is now practiced under many names (shamanic breathwork, somatic release, Effiji, Owaken, and transformational breath to name a few).

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Our team at Yes Collective is excited to offer a 2-hour workshop featuring this style of breathwork, which we’re calling “Psychedelic Breathwork,” as a semi-monthly Pop-Up Circle. We’ll hold our first one this Sunday, October 1st at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern. I’d love for you to join us!

I’ve crafted an amazing DJ set for this (if I do say so myself), and we also have a beautiful set of of meditations, journal prompts, and guidance for you to have a truly clarifying, compassionate, and healing breathwork session.

If you’re looking for a big breakthrough, a release, some peace and contentment, or are just open to trying something new, then our Psychedelic Breathwork Pop-Up Circle is for you.

Click here to learn more. And click below to get 50% off this first Psychedelic Breathwork session. And feel free to hit me up with questions or comments!