(Jacob Wackerhausen/iStockphoto/Getty Images)
Breathing is something we do every moment of our lives, usually without giving it a second thought.
While it's easy to take breathing for granted, changing the way we breathe can actually have profound effects on our health, altering how we feel, and even perhaps how we think.
These effects overlap with the practice of breathwork – a range of breathing exercises intended to influence your mental and emotional state, sometimes even helping to elicit psychedelic-like brain changes.
One particular breathing technique, called high ventilation breathwork, involves deliberately intensified rapid and/or deep breathing and is increasingly being used in therapeutic contexts.
In addition to helping people with stress and mental health, high ventilation breathwork is also reported to induce altered states of consciousness.
This can include experiences people normally associate with psychedelic drugs, such as perceptual alterations, emotional release, ego dissolution, and a sense of unity.
So what exactly is intensive breathing doing inside the brain to trigger such surreal sensations?
(Science Photo Library/Canva)
In a new study published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, researchers found evidence that could explain how these mysterious side effects emerge.
"Many people who practice intensive breathwork report profound changes in perception and self-experience, yet the underlying brain mechanisms remain poorly understood," says neuroscientist Christian Schmitz from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Germany.
"Our study suggests that these experiences are linked not only to marked changes in cerebral blood flow, but also to alterations in how key brain networks communicate".
In the study, Schmitz and fellow researchers recruited 30 healthy adults who had previous experience with intensive breathwork, with an average age of 45.
During the experiment, the participants performed a self-guided intensive breathing technique called circular breathing – continuous, uninterrupted breathing, without the regular pause between exhaling and inhaling – while undergoing an MRI brain scan.
The results showed that high ventilation breathwork triggered a "profound reduction" in blood flow in the brain's gray matter at peak intensity, corresponding to a 45.5 percent drop compared to baseline, while also increasing heart and respiratory rate.
"The ∼45.5 percent reduction in gray matter cerebral blood flow represents a substantial hemodynamic perturbation produced by a voluntary, non-pharmacological intervention," the researchers write.
"While this reduction remains below the critical flow limit of 50–60 percent at which insufficient cerebral oxygenation has been reported, it approaches this threshold and substantially exceeds reductions typically observed in clinical hyperventilation paradigms."
At the group level, the researchers found no significant overall change in functional connectivity in the brain's default mode network (DMN), which is disrupted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin.
But individuals who reported feeling more intense altered states after the experiment showed some signs of greater changes in the DMN, although the effect was subject to how the data was processed, so should only be treated as a preliminary finding for now, which could be looked at in future research.
Interestingly, the cerebral blood flow reductions the experiment produced were not associated with individuals' DMN changes, nor with participants' subjective ratings of breathwork-induced altered states.
Overall, the participants ranked the intensity of what they were feeling as high during the breathing exercise (3.47 on average, on a 4-point scale). In a questionnaire after the session, participants' responses varied, but the group reported feelings of unity, changes in perception, and a reduced sense of self.
The researchers caution that the study involved only 30 experienced breathwork practitioners, with no control group, and that further research is needed to confirm the findings.
Despite the striking drop in cerebral blood flow, the researchers don't think it's single-handedly responsible for the altered states people feel during intensive breathing.
Rather, it's possible that the reduced blood flow in the brain (hypoperfusion) during intensive breathing might create the physiological conditions for altered consciousness, while changes in how different parts of the brain communicate could play a more direct role in determining the intensity of those experiences.
"These findings position breathwork-induced hypoperfusion as a permissive physiological condition for altered consciousness, with network-level reorganization serving as the more proximal neural correlate of experiential depth," the team writes.
"The results have implications for understanding the neurobiology of non-pharmacological altered states and for the potential development of breathwork-based therapeutic interventions."
In a new study published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, researchers found evidence that could explain how these mysterious side effects emerge.
"Many people who practice intensive breathwork report profound changes in perception and self-experience, yet the underlying brain mechanisms remain poorly understood," says neuroscientist Christian Schmitz from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Germany.
"Our study suggests that these experiences are linked not only to marked changes in cerebral blood flow, but also to alterations in how key brain networks communicate".
In the study, Schmitz and fellow researchers recruited 30 healthy adults who had previous experience with intensive breathwork, with an average age of 45.
During the experiment, the participants performed a self-guided intensive breathing technique called circular breathing – continuous, uninterrupted breathing, without the regular pause between exhaling and inhaling – while undergoing an MRI brain scan.
The results showed that high ventilation breathwork triggered a "profound reduction" in blood flow in the brain's gray matter at peak intensity, corresponding to a 45.5 percent drop compared to baseline, while also increasing heart and respiratory rate.
"The ∼45.5 percent reduction in gray matter cerebral blood flow represents a substantial hemodynamic perturbation produced by a voluntary, non-pharmacological intervention," the researchers write.
"While this reduction remains below the critical flow limit of 50–60 percent at which insufficient cerebral oxygenation has been reported, it approaches this threshold and substantially exceeds reductions typically observed in clinical hyperventilation paradigms."
At the group level, the researchers found no significant overall change in functional connectivity in the brain's default mode network (DMN), which is disrupted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin.
But individuals who reported feeling more intense altered states after the experiment showed some signs of greater changes in the DMN, although the effect was subject to how the data was processed, so should only be treated as a preliminary finding for now, which could be looked at in future research.
Interestingly, the cerebral blood flow reductions the experiment produced were not associated with individuals' DMN changes, nor with participants' subjective ratings of breathwork-induced altered states.
Overall, the participants ranked the intensity of what they were feeling as high during the breathing exercise (3.47 on average, on a 4-point scale). In a questionnaire after the session, participants' responses varied, but the group reported feelings of unity, changes in perception, and a reduced sense of self.
The researchers caution that the study involved only 30 experienced breathwork practitioners, with no control group, and that further research is needed to confirm the findings.
Despite the striking drop in cerebral blood flow, the researchers don't think it's single-handedly responsible for the altered states people feel during intensive breathing.
Rather, it's possible that the reduced blood flow in the brain (hypoperfusion) during intensive breathing might create the physiological conditions for altered consciousness, while changes in how different parts of the brain communicate could play a more direct role in determining the intensity of those experiences.
"These findings position breathwork-induced hypoperfusion as a permissive physiological condition for altered consciousness, with network-level reorganization serving as the more proximal neural correlate of experiential depth," the team writes.
"The results have implications for understanding the neurobiology of non-pharmacological altered states and for the potential development of breathwork-based therapeutic interventions."
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