An exploratory study of breathwork-induced altered states of consciousness in experienced practitioners: the airways to alteration (A2A) trial
I am proud to have delivered both arms of this study, the Breathwork and meditation. I am a co-author for this piece of important Breathwork research. It is the first randomised control study for High Ventilation Breathwork (HVB) and shows promising results.
There were clinically significant differences between the HVB group and the meditation group both immediately on mystical experience and emotional breakthrough but also one week on for psychological insight and self-reported change.
We saw improvements in stress, anxiety, depression and wellbeing in both arms. Great that both meditation and breathwork contribute to this.
Psychological insight was completely dominated by the HVB group, interestingly sleep improved with the HVB group and the clever data folk deduced the higher a participant score on total mystical experience, oneness and oceanic boundlessness the better they slept.
The magnitude of some of these altered-state scores compares to moderate-to-high-dose psilocybin research scores.
Read the full paper below:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1851882/full
