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afraid to stop breathing

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goddard

goddard

Rising Star
i have had a few steps into dmt world now and i have been trying to breaktrough
last time i tried i took my third or fourth hit and i and the room started to dissolve while i kept my breath in ...but then i got scared what if i keep my breath in forever i will die
i really had a hard time letting go afraid i might forget to breath so i tried to focus myself to a point where i still had control over my body probably pushing away the breaktrough.....

had a great trip still amazing but wondereing how u guys deal with this problem..
 
Here are a few things your post made me think about:

-DMT and tryptamines don't act like opiates. Opiates could inhibit your brainstem activity and lead you to stop breathing but DMT don't!

-Many times I fund, under mushrooms, that slowing my respiratory rythm increased the trip intensity. Stopping to breath even sent me somewhere near of hyperspace.

-Remember that breathing is a totaly automatic function; even if you try to hold your breath until you pass out, your brainstem will immediately send to your respiratory muscles the order to fill your lungs of oxygen.
 
Meditate. Concentrate on your breathing. In and out. Deep and even breaths. Watch your breathing and see how effortless it is. It's automatic. It's another intelligence of your being. You body knows what to do. It knows what to do when you sleep and when you ingest DMT. I know how odd the feeling is. Not remembering if you blew out your last hit of DMT is very strange. You have to trust your body. You have to trust yourself. That is why meditation can be so helpful. You observe your body, your breath, your mind. This would be my number one recommendation for anyone venturing into psychedelics. For me it is essential.

Another thing that has helped me is being very hydrated before I ingest DMT. This gets rid of irritations in the throat caused from the vapor of dmt. Coughing and irritation of the throat can be very disconcerting in hyperspace.

Don't buy into the tricks of the mind. The ego will create scenarios of fear to get itself grounded. Dismiss these thoughts of death and not breathing. The mind is wrong. Trust your body's intelligence. Let go.
 
thnx guys , going to have another attempt later today

will meditate before on my breathing and trust my body will continue to do whats needed
 
I had a lot of issues with panicking about not breathing. I would feel that i forgot how to breathe or even that i had a mouth to breathe with. I guess maybe that forgetting that you have a mouth, not knowing whether your eyes are open or not and suchlike are all pieces in the puzzle leading up to the percieved dissolution of the ego. I don't think that i have ever had a complete ego death as there has always been some semblance of me to realise that i had forgotten who i was.

The whole experience would gather in intensity as i ran out of breath (or atleast thought that i was running out of breath), sort of like a balloon exponentially and infinitely filling up with air. One way of dealing with it for me was to think "ok i am just going to have to stop breathing and give myself up to death", which would make the metaphorical balloon pop and i would end up completely immersed in the bizzarre world that many of us are familiar with. After i worked this out i found it useful to have a big vape then lie straight down in a floppy way and surrender to my imminent death.

Another way i have found to relax me and my breath is to have a small vape before deciding to go for the motherload as this tends to get me into a calm and introspective state of mind that is conducive to me surrendering and not panicking and fighting which doesn't need to be fought with.
 
I have had issues with breathing and DMT though my actual breathing was never threatened, I often think that I'm not breathing or not getting oxygen somehow, when in fact I'm breathing normally, it can be scary, you just have to somehow convince yourself that everything is ok, and that even though it doesn't feel like it, everything is normal, your sitter can confirm you are actually breathing and that you are actually ok for you, though you have to bring yourself to accept that that is the situation.


-eg
 
so i loaded up today again , after reading a post about why are you not breaking trough i decided to just load up a big amount take a hit and see what happens and search for my hotspot.

i meditated a bit before focusing on my breathing and kept in mind that my body would breath for me even if i thought it wouldnt.

So i take my big hit hold in hold in hold in and BOOM the whole room starts to trip out dissolve until everything was candyland colors again
i watched my hands and stretch them out feeling i could stretch them out forever
hands and arms look alien and plastic again bizz as usual ..lol

this time everything in my room including me became cubic everything was sqaured a bit like old 8 bit computergames but then in high def ...

it felt like it didnt matter if i would open or close my eyes so this time i hardly closed my eyes but was just looking in amasement at my room morphing

this time was really intense i dont think i broke trough but shit i might have to readjust my definition of breaking trough..

i saw no entities or at least none so defined i considered it more then just a shadow

still looking forward to break trough but am also now and was during the trip a bit hesistant because i might freak the fuck out if something would start talking to me :)
 
Hello :)

I have the exact same problem, each time the trip is becoming a little bit too intense I'm like "shit I need to breath" and starts consciously breathing which is slowing down the time in the trip a lot and also making it unconfortable and not really deep.

I still haven't figured out how to let my breath go in automatic mode.
 
Koven said:
I still haven't figured out how to let my breath go in automatic mode.
Click to expand...

The total crux of the issue is just that. It is already automatic :) . There is nothing to figure out. Just re-examine the fear based thoughts that spawned this false dilemma in the first place, and watch it dissolve.

In simple practical terms, just let go. If you must think, just think "I have faith in my body. It has carried me successfully all this way in life without my doing. Breathing, digestion, sweating, all those functions I had no conscious part in at all. How smart!".

Or remember a time as a child when you learned a new skill with an element of risk that you threw caution to the wind and succeeded e.g riding a bike without support.
 
I know exactly what you mean. To be honest, i think it is a symptom of being sort of halfway in between breaking through and not breaking through. The mind, desperperately trying to hold on to the body and physical reality. Just a little step further and there isn't anything to hold on to anymore.

It is all a matter of letting go. Maybe a tiny bit more DMT will do it. Once you are being fully immersed, you'll forget about all these little things like breathing.
 
^^^ this.

Super common. Try relaxing every muscle in your body, clearing your mind of the chatter, exhaling one last gentle conscious breath and succumbing to the magic.

When I've found myself clinging to those last threads of reality, for whatever reasons, it's a sign that I'm forcing it and I'm better off packing my spice away from a while. When I'm truly in the mindset to dissolve reality without fear then everything slides away peacefully and effortlessly... like butter off a hot knife :)
 
Reading this thread made my chest get light and my skin feel all computery.
I still cant get past the fear of not breathing, you just have to accept it and push forwards regardless.
 
Heh, I had never even considered the possibility that I might stop breathing during a breakthrough. Only after reading about it, had I actually considered it. So, one night, in the midst of a breakthrough I remembered that I had a body somewhere and thought, "I wonder if it is still breathing? Oh well. If not, I guess I'm here, now." Then after a while, I came home to a body that was exactly as I'd left it - Breathing and all.

I thought of it like this - if I breathe when I am asleep, then it's fine. When we're asleep, we're not worried if the body will breathe or not. It knows what to do while "you" are elsewhere.

Take care,
ACY
 
My great fellow Nexians already did great job giving you advice and helping you, i will throw my 2 cents here.

I will start by quoting T. Mckenna - The problem is not taking too much the problem is taking too little, because you kinda have the ability to resist it in a way. To fight it. (He said it better, cant remember 100% correctly but thats what he meant)

And now i will quote myself

Just my opinion here: Extreme anxiety, your diaphragm could of been tight due to stress which leaves less room for the lungs to expand which results in tight chest, gasping for air, shortness of breath, pain. I myself had this a lot back in the days, it was caused by huge amounts of chronic stress, one night i had it so bad that i had to go to the hospital concerned that im dying and the doctors gave me diazepam and within few minutes i was back to normal. (I was 100% sober).
Click to expand...

aka Psychosomatic disorders, those can kill, DMT wont!
So just take it easy relax its all good your in no physical danger.
 
Even if you willingly and forcefully try to stop breathing, you will pass out, and breathing will resume. Breathing is such a primal instinct, your body knows what to do. Trust yourself that you will continue to breathe. Only issue is if there is something physically stopping you from breathing.
 
Just my humble opinion,

Fear of not breathing = fear of death

After all, that's ultimately what would happen. Death is scary for the living. It's the all pervading, ever present mystery. I think you could argue that all fear, regardless of it's surface appearance, is really a construct built upon the foundation of our ultimate fear, our own demise. Even those who have tremendous belief and fanciful expectations about their death and what awaits them, are still at the mercy of the unknown.

As the Hindus say, (if I recall correctly)

Find death, before death finds you

Edit:

One other thing, I find the most peace in the space between breaths.
 
I've tried it 15 times in the last few months and I always get that last second feeling of "hey buddy remember to breathe" but the above are right, your auto pilot kicks in.

After that third hit and I start to fade off I just give out a longgggg exhale and then I try to get one more inhale and exhale out and slowly start shortening my breathes until I enter a pre dream like breathing rhythm. Think about how aware you are of your breathing before you fall asleep, right before you fall asleep your breathes get smaller and quieter, the same happens with DMT, just a little faster.

From what I've heard, it's very very rare for someone to stop breathing under DMT.

Let go.
 
Yes, I start breaking throuhg while holding my breathe too and usually try to start breathing again when i see am "going" .. but also when I breakthrough I had some sense of the room morphing and the air being sucked out like no air and I cannot breathe.. but if I relax its n problem and i do the whole tryp while still breathing althoiugh am not aware anymore and come back safe everytime. never out of breathe like I would be breahtless diving ... so I think DMT is very safe regarding respiratory automatism. I even tend to keep my whole body safe and well sitted, or like half lotus position and astraight while going through chaos mentally... its safer than salvia breakthrough in this regard for exemple.. with salvia I'd recommend ot have a sitter cause you could stand up and try walking and fall, it happened to me and I broke my glass bong this way and my GF had to make me sit back on couch ( thankfully she was here and there was no hurt beside the bong broken ), also 5 meo dmt you prolly will fall if smoking / vaoping it and breaking through while standing up ..
 
If breakthrough is what you are aiming for, maybe try using a comfortable eye mask, I use a folded organic cotton bandana. Sometimes I use ear plugs too, if I'm not in a completely quiet setting.

If entities are what you are looking for then you are likely going to come across them. But that might not the case. Breakthrough may be feelings, concepts and geometry.

I try to breakthrough in one breath. Have you ever seen the video of Iyengar (yogi) demonstrating how long he can inhale!? :thumb_up: That inspired me to move away from from 2,3,4 toke method. I often won't remember my body exhaling :twisted:
 
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