Summary: New research shows that practicing breathwork while listening to music can induce profound altered states of consciousness similar to those caused by psychedelics. Using self-reports and brain imaging, scientists found that HVB both activated the body’s stress response and increased blood flow to emotion-processing regions like the amygdala and hippocampus.
These changes correlated with bliss, emotional release, and unity, known as “oceanic boundlessness.” Participants consistently reported reduced fear and negative emotions, highlighting breathwork’s potential as a non-pharmacological therapeutic tool.
Key Facts
- Psychedelic-Like States: Breathwork evoked sensations of bliss, unity, and emotional breakthrough comparable to psychedelics.
- Brain Blood Flow Changes: HVB decreased blood flow globally but boosted activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, tied to emotion and memory.
- Emotional Benefits: Participants reported reduced fear and negative emotions across all sessions with no adverse effects.
Source: PLOS
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.
To fill this knowledge gap, Kartar and colleagues characterized ASCs induced by HVB in experienced practitioners by analyzing self-reported data from 15 individuals who participated online, 8 individuals who participated in the lab, and 19 individuals who underwent magnetic resonance imaging.
Their task consisted of a 20- to 30-minute session of cyclic breathing without pausing while listening to music, followed by a series of questionnaires within 30 minutes of finishing the breathwork session.
The results showed that the intensity of ASCs evoked by HVB was proportional to cardiovascular sympathetic activation, as indicated by a decrease in heart rate variability, indicating a potential stress response.
In addition, HVB-evoked ASCs were associated with a profound decrease in blood flow to the left operculum and posterior insula – brain regions implicated in representing the internal state of the body, including breathing.
Also, despite HVB causing large and global reductions in blood flow to the brain, there was a progressive increase in blood flow during the session to the right amygdala and anterior hippocampus, which are brain regions involved in the processing of emotional memories.
These blood flow changes correlated with psychedelic experiences, demonstrating that these alterations may underlie the positive effects of this breathwork.
During all experimental sessions, participants reported a reduction in fear and negative emotions, with no adverse reactions.
Across participants and experimental settings, HVB reliably enhanced ASCs dominated by Oceanic Boundlessness (OBN), which is a term coined by Freud in 1920 that describes a set of related feelings including spiritual experience, insightfulness, blissful state, positively experienced depersonalization, and the experience of unity.
OBN is considered as a defining aspect of ASCs evoked by psychedelic substances, such as psilocybin.
According to the authors, their study was novel and exploratory and requires replication by future research including larger sample sizes and a control group to separate the effects of music on the brain.
Despite these limitations, the findings provide a better understanding of HVB and direct research to investigate its therapeutic applications.
The authors add: “Our research is the first to use neuroimaging to map the neurophysiological changes that occur during breathwork. Our key findings include that breathwork can reliably evoke profound psychedelic states.
“We believe that these states are linked to changes in the function of specific brain regions involved in self-awareness, and fear and emotional memory processing.
“We found that more profound changes in blood flow in specific brain areas were linked to deeper sensations of unity, bliss, and emotional release, collectively known as “oceanic boundlessness”.
Amy Kartar, lead author, adds: “Conducting this research was a fantastic experience. It was thrilling to explore such a novel area – while many people anecdotally recognize the health benefits of breathwork, this style of fast-paced breathing has received very little scientific attention. We are very grateful to our participants for making this work possible.”
Dr. Alessandro Colasanti, P.I., adds: “Breathwork is a powerful yet natural tool for neuromodulation, working through the regulation of metabolism across the body and brain. It holds tremendous promise as a transformative therapeutic intervention for conditions that are often both distressing and disabling.”
About this music and consciousness research news
Author: Hanna Abdallah
Source: PLOS
Contact: Hanna Abdallah – PLOS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Neurobiological substrates of altered states of consciousness induced by high ventilation breathwork accompanied by music” by Amy Kartar et al. PLOS ONE
Abstract
Neurobiological substrates of altered states of consciousness induced by high ventilation breathwork accompanied by music
The popularity of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is rapidly expanding.
Breathwork practices that increase ventilatory rate or depth, facilitated by music, can evoke subjective experiential states analogous to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) evoked by psychedelic substances.
These states include components such as euphoria, bliss, and perceptual differences.
However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the profound subjective effects of high ventilation breathwork (HVB) remain largely unknown and unexplored.
In this study, we investigated the neurobiological substrates of ASCs induced by HVB in experienced practitioners.
We demonstrate that the intensity of ASCs evoked by HVB was proportional to cardiovascular sympathetic activation and to haemodynamic alterations in cerebral perfusion within clusters spanning the left operculum/posterior insula and right amygdala/anterior hippocampus; regions implicated in respiratory interoceptive representation and the processing of emotional memories, respectively.
These observed regional cerebral effects may underlie pivotal mental experiences that mediate positive therapeutic outcomes of HVB.
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