"Breathwork while listening to music may induce a blissful state in practitioners, accompanied by changes in blood flow to emotion-processing brain regions, according to a study published August 27, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Amy Amla Kartar from the Colasanti Lab in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, U.K., and colleagues. These changes occur even while the body's stress response may be activated and are associated with reporting reduced negative emotions."
"The popularity of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is rapidly expanding. Breathwork practices that increase ventilatory rate or depth, accompanied by music, can lead to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) similar to those evoked by psychedelic substances. High ventilation breathwork (HVB) might offer a non-pharmacological alternative, with fewer legal and ethical restrictions to large-scale adoption in clinical treatment. However, the neurobiological mechanisms and subjective experience underlying ASCs induced by HVB have not been studied extensively."
Experienced breathwork practitioners completed 20–30 minute cyclic high-ventilation breathing sessions with continuous music, followed by questionnaires within 30 minutes. Data included 15 online participants, 8 lab participants, and 19 individuals who underwent MRI. Intensity of altered states of consciousness correlated with decreased heart rate variability, indicating sympathetic cardiovascular activation. Altered states were associated with pronounced decreases in cerebral blood flow to the left operculum and posterior insula, regions implicated in interoception and emotion processing. Participants reported reduced negative emotions despite physiological stress markers, suggesting a non-pharmacological route to psychedelic-like experiences.
Read at Natural Health News
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