I don´t know if it was intentional, but for whatever reason, I find the specificity of "Winamp visualizer using real-time DirectX plugins and shader-based graphics" in this context, quite funny.

More effective? No. Just a ballpark state similar to the article, which I believe is more like the initial come up where you still have the ability to snap back to reality. Quite efficiently and reliably. Can't edit my OP but the caveat should be applied that I was already experienced w/ psilocybin upon purchasing the device.

Can't claim it would produce the same results for everyone, but I provided a free, low friction option for anyone curious.

Geez, foraged mushrooms and Winamp make me think we’re of the same generation. Those were good times…

This isn’t well known because his name was (deservedly) mud at the time, but Timothy Leary did a lot of work with sound and lights. He did his light shows when he was a pop guru, but he was even doing this work before he got fired from Harvard.

At the time, he considered it following the history of altered states. In the nineties when he had mellowed out, Leary started talking about lights, sound and technology. Here’s one example:

https://www.sidjacobson.com/Portals/23/articles/Tim%20Leary%...

I’ve had a few experiences with non chemically induced altered states. They’re psychedelic-ish, but not really comparable to a substance like psilocybin. They’re definitely altered states, just while I could draw a picture to describe mild effects of psilocybin to a non user, I couldn’t with music and light.

They’re both altered but very different.

> paired with a Winamp visualizer using real-time DirectX plugins

Been there, done that

Damn kids these days, back in MY day we got our daily relaxation by looking at defrag.exe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nidwz3BzFCM

¿Effective? I don't understand your point.

The sensation induced by binaural beats are based on brain waves synchronisation, basically we get control of the stick shifter of the brain, and we perceive the changes strongly, as they are much faster than usual.

TLDR: you definitely feel them, and it feels a bit like getting high.

Chemical induced states of altered consciousness are of a fundamentally different nature. Keeping the car centric metaphor it would be like switching the type of fuel you are giving to the engine. It feels different, for different reasons.

you definitely succeeded in your humorous endeavors ;) i snorted haha

That is a valid point, I already had significant experience with the drug when I purchased one.

That said, I was still shocked at how quickly and effectively it worked the first I used it and how reliably it worked despite whatever state I was in. No amount of meditation or breathing techniques have gotten me close, and I've never had a natural flashback.

Yeah, I'm sure having previously done psilocybin is a pre-requisite. I could never imagine that someone only using light and sound who then takes psilocybin would rate the experiences similarly. Alternatively, I can (involuntarily) re-experience psylocibin just by being overly tired in a particular setting at times, it's not pleasant.

I use to use Flasher too! It's on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_FLASHER_1.51

I had one of these and used it a lot in 8th and 9th grade. Then in the fall of 10th grade, I woke up one morning with the left side of my body numb and ended up having 6 grand mal seizures in the afternoon. The doctors never figured out why and they haven't come back but my mom forbid me from it after that. I do wonder if anyone else experienced that.

Accu-pressure mat seems to (for me) induce the body temperature spike and dip that accompanies the start of the sleep cycle in the same way that taking a warm shower before bed is supposed to. I've also found that it adds to the intensity of deep breathing exercises.

The most surprising thing is that despite the initial discomfort, I often find myself waking up on the thing an hour or more after laying down on it. I always set a stopwatch timer on my phone when I use it since 20 full minutes on it is the baseline recommendation, but very often I'll blow right past that.

I still own it, just go through phases of using it and forgetting about it. The biggest drawback is time as the sessions are between 10-60 minutes. In recent years I've used it to help induce sleep when I'm having issues there. It's been in storage for the last few years as I've been nomadic.

AFA a headset being able to induce the effect, the main requirement is a high lumen output, that's why LEDs are used.

Yes there is something similar in the app Liminal.

It's one of the terms used to describe the eyes-closed visuals one can get on a psychedelic trip.

It's a bit of a misnomer in this case as light helps induce it but the effect is similar.

https://tripp.com

Replied to another person asking a similar question - yes there is a similar experience in the Liminal app.

It gives me some discomfort - almost makes me wonder if it could induce some sort of epileptic episode in me if I tried to push through the discomfort.

But on the whole Liminal is a neat app with other useful experiences.

Thanks. I have read Anatomy books and other medical textbooks. When I have an idea for exercise, I always research it to find out what might happen in the human body.

It is an absolute work of art

i dont think hes trolling. this kind of schizo output is common on shroomery.org, i think hes from there

Looked him up. I think he’s for real.

> Though I believe you've got the causality wrong.

Fair, it might be that. I have tried to emulate this effect, and it worked. So, I dunno.

A detergent probably can. On that will be labeled as shampoo, which is intentionally gentle, to not remove too much oil from your scalp (which causes excessive oily hair, since it's regulated with a feedback system by the sebaceous glands), maybe not.

Both of you should provide evidence.

No it can't. Saliva has enzymes in it, enzyme means: "in life"-alive. Shampoo substances are dead, or chemical combinations which were never alive.

> What is the more intelligent way you use to emulate fighters being hit in the stomach?

It is a little bit complicated, but what I do, I put some music on, I lay down on a bed or a sofa, with my head hanging from the edge, and hanging as much necessary, so as the prefrontal cortex is the lowest point of my whole body. That way blood starts to flow towards the lowest point, and the prefrontal cortex is responsible for imagination, memory, higher order ideas and more. I want to activate that particular area of the brain.

My hands, are at the back, and pressed by my body, one at the height of the scapulae, one lower. There is one muscle, that gets exercised, only when the hands are configured like that, at the back.

From then on, I move my mouth as if i am chewing imaginary leaves, like a cow. Breath synchronizes with the mouth moving, and the stomach is moving as if it is getting hit by a fist.

I get six pack at my belly, just from that exercise. The main reason I do that though, is that I want to pump as much blood to the prefrontal cortex as possible. I get some crazy ideas that way.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/

This 100% horse shit, or just surprisingly clever trolling. I used to box many years, sparring 12 rounds every thursday. What ”discombobulates” fat is the insane amount of cardio at the very near and above your top heart rate. Exercise where you are punched to the stomach repeatedly is to learn how to flex your abs so that you are not dropped with one hook to the belly. And there is plenty of fat boxers, just look at Tyson Fury or Andy Ruiz Jr.

[EDIT] My idea there, is that internally fat individuals[1], are having trouble exercising parts of their body located near their center of mass, even if they are athletes. Not all athletes obviously, but most of them. Being hit by some other person at that area, seems the most efficient way to remove the fat particles. The only thing I had to do, is find a way to emulate it, but with less danger and not requiring a second person.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOFI

He looks authentic. You’d be surprised how varied and ridiculous people’s ideas about how the world works can get when they have some intelligence, some ignorance, and a little bit too much self confidence. Doesn’t seem harmful to anybody else in his case. I’ve done (and still do) my own share of biohacking.

Random threads here will ocassionally surface these guys in the extremes.

He's currently high on breathing and hallucinating a bit, don't worry too much.

100% serious. Also using similar methods, I can withstand cold 0 celsious for several hours and just sit on a computer and read, wearing just shorts nothing else. Nowadays though, getting older, it starts to be a little bit challenging.

Some years back, I sat in freezing cold, 12 hours a day, wearing almost nothing and just reading. The more I can withstand cold, the better my eyes work.

This is also not Reddit where you call for mods to remove things you find uncomfortable. I'd rather this guy be talked out of his delusions rather than letting him become more aggravated alone. Failing that, other people who were about to consider embarking on the same delusions would be hopefully discouraged by the rational replies.

This reminded me of something Milford Graves said in a book (paraphrasing): "The first sound we encounter is our mother's heartbeat in the womb -- and it swings!" [1][2]

[1] https://www.inventorypress.com/product/milford-graves-a-mind...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Graves

IIRC rhythm perception is extremely sophisticated in terms of brain function, involving several regions working together in complex ways. It's built on the functions we use to model movement through space and has a timing-based prediction component plus of course the auditory processing. I don't know enough about it to confidently say but it seems reasonable to me that most animals simply don't have the prerequisite gear.

It's sometimes called "circular breathing." There are a few versions of an active breathing meditation called Quantum Light Breath (which has nothing to do with either quantum mechanics or light). It's definitely worth trying.

> Keep breathing. Getting comfortable

Is it just me or is this commonly discomfort-inducing? Hyperventilation is so associated with anxiety and panic that I don’t see how anything remotely pleasant can come of this. Assuming one’s acid-base balance and oxygenation are normal, I don’t quite see the point here.

Hah, you remind me of how I basically had to learn to ignore the "wellness instructor ASMR" voice used in audio guides to yoga, mindfulness, and so on. And of my sister who did her biology PhD on breathwork as an intervention method for pregnant women, which also involved selecting and sending out mindfullness audio-guides of that kind to pregnant women who were part of the research. By the end of it she swore that if she ever had to listen to someone using that kind of voice again she'd lose her mind.

On that note, you might find the Medlife Crisis' video where he investigates the genre of "people roleplaying as doctors giving you a check-up using an ASMR voice" entertaining, and also enlightening on why some people do like it[0]. Don't worry, it doesn't feature too many actual clips of that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33QoTKgYKDI

They could have made their own, but it's really not that uncommon for music to slowly increase in tempo. Some styles of music use it more than others - for instance, ceremonial drumming might start out extremely slow and build to a frantic climax. But it's also fairly normal for musicians who are playing live, rather than to a click, to speed up when the music gets more intense.

No real music gradually increases tempo? Isn't that like sailors hornpipe, kalinka, and various other russian folk songs?

The commercial technology transfer is primarily as an alerting modality when pre-trade risk limits are breached.

Michael Harner's earlier work was in the same vein. He even released a record back in the 70's with drum beats that fit the typical shamanic rates he saw in use.

To the planet.

Seidenberg's work is really interesting but he's definitely not arguing that sweat lodges are a part of historical Jewish practice. He's doing a compare/contrast.

Mandinka

> Physical posture during the day affects your anxiety?

Yes; one of the first things my therapist showed me after just talking about stuff was a breathing exercise, with the first thing being assuming a position that allows for easier breathing (lying down flat, relaxed, but feet propped up / knees in the air). "Relaxed" breathing is deep and slow breathing through the stomach, but you can't do that well if your posture is off and I can imagine this has long-term effects. Subtle, of course, and it's never one thing that causes anxiety etc.

I can't speak for others, but for me it's really any chronic discomfort or the kind that takes extra and conscious effort and/or patience to make go away. That narrows it down to the types I listed.

Bad posture causes muscle tension making it hard to relax. A massage gun to the neck, shoulders, and/or back has calmed my panic attacks very effectively before. I discovered this on a long road trip years ago.

For gut health it really depends on what your forms of indigestion are. Common ones are lactose intolerance, not enough fiber, acid reflux, etc. Even just overeating can trigger anxiety since heart rate goes up and it causes weird sensations. Dehydration has a strong effect on your heart rate and blood pressure, and alcohol can also cause nutritional deficiencies in unintuitive ways.

These all sound silly until they happen along with some other external form of stress and it all piles up at once. I think just about anyone would spiral into a panic attack if the list of discomforts becomes severe enough and for long enough. Everyone has a breaking point.

Anyway I think the more interesting topic is stress management. Living deliberately and being organized is probably far more effective than trying to "control" your fight or flight instincts. Of all the things I've ever tried, performing breathing techniques while freaking out makes anxiety so much worse. I'm better off avoiding things that fuck with my breathing enough to cause me to think I need to manually intervene in the first place.

Can you explain how exactly that process happens? The article is still really vague about it, as are most people here. Is it about forcing yourself to hyperventilate? Or forcing your breathing to be at a certain rhythm, regardless of what the rest of your body demands naturally? And how does the music come into play here?

Also, is it dangerous? I know the human body is very sensitive to abnormal blood saturation, so I'm curious what it can do to you.

I'm not asking why these different groups come together, it's not very difficult to understand. The confusing part for me is deciphering which comments and arguments come from which school of thought. That seems to be nearly impossible unless you have personal experience with this topic, and I don't due to it being such an impenetrable topic.

And yet, not unusual; some years ago there were posts about nutrition fairly frequently, when Soylent was being developed and SF was high on investor money being thrown around left right and center. People came out and shared their personal experiences with regards to health, diet and nutrition, with the Soylent developer leading the effort in min/maxing food and eating down to a convenient shake, and its proponents sharing their experiences in weight loss, time min/maxing, how food is boring and a distraction, etc. A lot of people had a Steve Jobs-like mentality, believing that eating, thinking about what to eat, etc is a distraction from what they think is Actually Important. Famously Steve Jobs wore the same outfit all the time so he didn't have to think about what to wear.

Some time later it was about microdosing LSD and nootropics.

It's like you're doing meditation, and thinking "I shouldn't be thinking". But you can't be conscious about being unconscious. Or something like that.

Sorry, but due to having never experienced this, I don't get the importance of asking these questions. The base meaning of your comment is clear to me, but not the part about how this is hacking or indicative of a paradigm shift in your thinking. I just don't have anything to compare that to.

I don't know why you're interpreting my post like it's written in an accusatory or aggressive way. Seriously, multiple people have done this in response to me and I don't know why. I never speculated on the validity of any of this, or said that it was all woo or fake. Please, kindly leave your "groupthink" and "harshes your mellow" at the door.

All I said is that understanding this topic for someone with no personal experience of what's being described is difficult, especially since there are multiple groups (yes, some of them more focused on unprovable 'woo' than others) who take an interest in this. In those descriptions, telling apart reality from magic is hard when speaking to someone new - but that's not saying that the underlying topic is magical at all.

This compounds the fact that I have no frame of reference to understand what most people here are describing. I wish I had a better reference, but this is genuinely the best I can do as someone with no experiences like these.

Thanks for the extended description of what "breathwork" entails, the disambiguation was very helpful.

Which is to say, hacking one's wifi router is a legitimate and worthwhile pursuit, but hacking one's mind is not?

Interesting, hadn't thought of asking Claude for something like this. Just tried to pull this and the one from a child comment together as a Spotify playlist and looks like it's made a few mistakes in the last section. It's included an album title instead of a song from that album (Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet) and in the other one it included a 10-minute track so it's over the 10-15 minute section time. A few differences between the two, but very close to each other.

Edit: actually, the timings are completely off. Total should be a maximum of just over an hour, but the child comment playlist is 2.5 hours. I think it might be using an average track time - 23 tracks total should mean just under 3 minutes per track, which is much more like punk timings than transcendent stuff!

The fact that the two playlists are so close does make me feel like results from these kinds of prompts are going to reinforce local minima in choices. Slightly different context, but one of my favourite party memories was a friend playing a bit of downtempo to start with, then techno for quite a while until pretty much everyone was dancing, then threw in Highway To Hell by AC/DC and the place went absolutely wild.

Edit 2: Actually, listening to the playlist, while the tracks in the sections are sort-of coherent, the ordering is really off - the tempo varies quite a bit within the high tempo section for example, which I can imagine being quite off-putting if you're trying to maintain focus. I wonder if there will ever be a system that could replicate the feel that really good DJs have for the vibe in a room, and when slipping in something like Highway To Hell will really work rather than kill the mood.

I didn't need any tricks. I just asked it in the context of understanding the paper rather than asking for my own use.

https://claude.ai/share/bf2a9d7a-bedf-4fbc-af2f-3a6b72f66753

We'll have AGI the day an AI mocks us for trying to censor it

That is amazing.

Sleepiness is a very common challenge. A common mitigation is to find a way to sit comfortably without a chair back, forcing you to stay upright. I find it uncomfortable to sit cross legged for long stretches so I usually kneel with a large cushion under me like, kinda like a saddle.

Try stuff, see what works for you. Once you find a relaxed but upright position you may find you can sit for quite a while without dozing off.

I think many different states can arise. In deep meditation you’re epistemically open and experientially vulnerable. You're softening your priors so much that both your way of knowing and your way of experiencing can manifest in manifold ways.

It’s the same premise of hyperventilation followed by breath holds. There’s a huge amount of variability in exertion/duration etc. depending on how long you’ve been doing it.

>it's whether they want to be

I think it's necessary but not sufficient. I was hypnotized by a stage hypnotist, and it didn't work, even though I wanted it to, very badly. I tried. I was so excited to be called up. I also tried binaural beats a long time ago and that didn't work for me either.

It's quite fitting for the post and comment in question as well.

One thing I've learned through the study of Hermetic magick is that to achieve the Great Work, you really only theoretically need meditation techniques, which have been separately discovered around the world. The premier "western" work on meditation is "The Cloud of Unknowing" by an anonymous 14th century English monk. Most of Hermetic magick is a ritual scaffolding to support people who cannot achieve the Great Work through contemplative prayer alone. In this sense, Hermetic magick is to contemplative prayer as Tibetan Buddhist practice is to Ānāpānasati -- using people's cultural context as a supportive framework for an achievement that is not, itself, fundamentally culturally-bound.

No, it is only when you try to interpret them in today's context and assumed models which are quite different from the context/models in which they were written/practiced that it seems like mumbo-jumbo. They are more of an empirical science and it is up to you to study, practice and interpret them carefully.

For example; Mel Robin was a research scientist who got interested in Hatha Yoga and in true researcher fashion set about collecting/studying research papers and trying to map them to his practice of traditional Hatha Yoga. He wrote an excellent book A Handbook for Yogasana Teachers: The Incorporation of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Anatomy into the Practice (the 1st edition was called A Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana) with a huge reference section of research papers from various journals.

Another example; the neuroscientist James Austin wrote a mammoth book Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness where he tried to map his knowledge of neuroscience to his experiences from Zen meditation practice.

Empirical practices which have survived for centuries and across civilizations are usually "scientifically" valid and it is up to us to map them to modern scientific concepts.

There is usually a lot of mumbo-jumbo associated with the actua exercises, but the exercises stand strong on their own.

> pseudo scientific

Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a legitimate scientific paper.

A pretty specious one IIRC; he compared San rock art to paleolithic European cave art and -- despite the fact that the San do not practice shamanism -- concluded both types of paintings are records of shamanic trances. Like I said, the theory has taken a few beatings in the past couple of decades.

That's a not a definition. Just another fuzzy word to say subjective experience.

It doesn't really surprise me that's possible. I've landed by accident in a very recognizably DMT state when the stars aligned. It can happen, I just don't generally buy claims of "naturally". It's a preexisting state, but getting into it requires such a shock (such as flooding the brain with exogenous DMT) to enter.

That's not the same as the Bufo state which I can't really imagine entering naturally, is it actually like that or just in the ballpark?

Would love to hear about your experiences. Get in touch!

What kind of cheese are you talking about?

a@175g.com

Hey thanks for asking.

BioMythic is something we’ve always gifted to the community as a way for folks to gain group access to some of the same tools that our 1:1 coaching clients get access to in our Alchemy program (which is also waitlisted / full as of now).

We work with all sorts of folks, including founders who both seem to be a large part of the YC community and who often face incredibly challenging mental and emotional obstacles that are unique.

I’ve personally overcome and healed using these tools and would like to help prevent other people from the time and pain I went through, and to prevent us losing any more creative visionaries.

I hope that clarifies things.

There should be some sort of, like, trusted bureau that gives a woo-level ranking to these things. Massage therapy boards and such are too busy unsuccessfully rooting out human trafficking on the other side of the self-help spectrum.

As an aside, and in all seriousness, how well would this works for a self-medicated functional alcoholic who thinks breathing exercises involve rolling a cigarette first? Does one have to be one of the self-congratulatory "healthy" and swear off vices to benefit from this, or is it something you can do before you head off to the bar?

That is just a different kind of woo. It’s an excellent sales page, targeted at tech bros consuming the typical podcasts of presumably high achievers, written in a language that makes them shell out $1,500 without thinking twice.

I guess this page converts extremely well and yet, from a distance, this looks no less woo than what you get from your more esoteric leaning snake oil vendor.

I can believe you're well-intentioned, but we don't need comments like this on HN. The guidelines [1] address this style of commenting in different ways:

Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I know it feels important to protect vulnerable people from being harmed by frauds, and related concerns. But we can safely assume that HN readers are reasonably competent and discerning adults, who can make up their own mind about these things.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1. BioMythic Breathwork is traditionally done in a group setting. We have done it both with teams as well as individual people. Some people don’t feel comfortable in a group setting, which is also fine — no pressure from us to participate.

2. I can understand that re confusing terms and will have my team update that - this is a newer CV that was compiled for a talk I’m giving with Paul Stamets and Rick Doblin and am happy for the feedback. I ran an underground clinic specifically because you couldn’t be licensed at that time.

I don’t say or intend to imply I’m licensed by anyone.

In fact, my personal healing came from well outside the mainstream which I found to be counter productive to the growth I was looking for.

I regularly consult and work with licensed folks, MDs, etc. either advising or who would refer people to me to support outside of what they could provide.

I no longer run the clinic and now advise, coach or help folks integrate experiences.

Also note to mods, this feels like a valid question — I wish people would question practitioners and approaches more in any healing field.

I recall reading every primary research paper I could find over a period of 90 days and then questioning my psychiatrist on their approaches and sort of getting no real answers.

I re-read this re group dynamics.

The majority of our work has been a group of individuals who have opted in.

In the case of teams, some founders have asked if we could offer this during Covid or during the war starting in Ukraine and offered it as an interesting free activity. Not everyone came and the vibe felt fine.

But I can also see your concern about that and it’s valid. We have had a couple people that initially came and said they weren’t comfortable and it was totally fine for them to leave. It’s also been outside of work time so people choose to come on their own time.

Thanks. My work has been featured on national television with PBS as I was the first person to openly administer underground mdma on national TV.

My relevant experience is here: http://earthpilot.ai/cv

That said, I agree that finding trusted people is a process and I’ve seen people really get messed up from bad practitioners in the psychedelic / transformational space.

Anyhow, thanks for allowing the sharing of this.

It's nothing new. In any posts like these, people love being snarky at researchers who are studying something that's 'basic' in their minds. They don't think that even the most foundational and obvious (to them) things need to be proven and put down on paper somewhere, by someone.

It's like sneering at the full proof that 1+1=2, but supercharged by people's beliefs about modern science being fundamentally flawed in some way, and/or their beliefs that the random discoveries of ancient civilizations are just as accurate as (if not more accurate than) modern research.

"HN commenteers encounter joke - It flew completely by them"