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LIST 14

12 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness Without Drugs

Drugs are one of the most obvious—and, in some ways at least, the easiest—ways to induce altered states of mind, but there are many paths you can take. Alternative health guru Dr. Andrew Weil explains: “I believe strongly that psychedelics merely trigger or release certain experiences that originate in the human nervous system and that one can learn to have these experiences without drugs. That so many different methods lead to the same experiences suggests that the experiences come from inside us, that they are latent in the human nervous system, waiting to be released.”

breathing

Little kids learn the hyperventilation trick, where lack of oxygen causes brief, basically uncontrollable altered states. In a more sophisticated approach, proper breathing technique is crucial to all forms of meditation, but sometimes respiration is the complete focus of the technique. In fact, “breath-work” is an entire field within holistic health and alternative healing.

eclipses

Dr. Weil is apparently the first, perhaps the only, person to suggest that being outside during a solar eclipse leads to altered states. A self-described “overt eclipse freak” who tries to view as many as possible, Weil has felt this “high” himself and heard the feeling described similarly by others who watch the Moon cover the Sun. He postulates that it has something to do with the unearthly light, the feelings of unreality and dreaminess, and the complete uniqueness and majesty of the event. “Time did not flow,” he writes. “I have no way of comparing those three and a half minutes of clock time to any other three-and-a-half minute interval I have experienced.”

Finnegans Wake

Guerrilla philosopher and reality hacker Robert Anton Wilson believes that reading aloud James Joyce's experimental novel Finnegans Wake triggers altered states.

flickering lights

Not only does strobing light create a feeling of unreality, but it has concrete physical effects on the brain, as evidenced by the fact that it triggers seizures in people with epilepsy. The rotating “Dreamachine”—created by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville—is a sophisticated use of flashing light to send consciousness to new heights.

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laughing and crying

Not just any laughing will do the trick, but a gut-busting, eye-watering fit of hysteria is likely to invoke a cleansed sense of well-being that feels like a pleasant high. Andrew Weil believes this results from the fact that during laughter, our logical, uptight cerebral cortex is no longer in control, having given over to the primitive brainstem. This is evidenced by the creation of tears, the spasming of the diaphragm, and “the loss of upright posture” that occur when you laugh your ass off. All are signs that the autonomic nervous system has taken over. Weil writes, “In a fit of laughter there is no ego—no censorship of messages flowing back and forth in the brain.” Research has shown that laughter reduces stress hormones (such as dopamine) and stimulates the release of endorphins, the body's own opiates.

As with laughing, a good crying jag can lead to a transcendent sense of lightness and well-being, a cleansed feeling due partially to endorphins, deeper respiration, and other effects of the limbic system.

music

Whether it's loud, crunching rock and roll that makes you feel like you've taken speed, or ethereal chanting that lifts you out of your body, music has myriad ways of changing your state of being. And that's just from listening to it. Playing it can take you into a zone where nothing exists but you and the music. Performing chant is often cited as particularly transcendent, presumably because of the vibrations it sends throughout your body and the way it focuses and slows breathing.

pain, extreme discomfort, exhaustion

When applied in correct ways and settings, pain leads many people to altered states. This is a recurring theme in the literature of

SM, in which practitioners routinely describe transcendent, ecstatic experiences. Many ancient body-oriented rituals—such as the Sun Dance performed by many Native American tribes—apparently involve the same mechanisms. The pseudonymous Fakir Musafar has become legendary in alternative circles for having performed almost every type of body modification, adornment, and ritual known to the human race, starting with giving himself tattoos and piercings when he was a preteen. He says of his experiences:

One of the first altered states you can learn is to separate your consciousness from your body. You don't walk away from your body, you don't separate from your body, but the part of you that feels and thinks can separate from the feelings in the body itself. So that makes it possible for you to push a needle through. You don't feel the pain; the body feels the pain, and you observe the body recording or feeling sensation. Then it's not pain. If you can learn to separate your consciousness and your attention from your body, you can do almost anything to it and you don't feel pain! If all your attention is locked in your body, and not focused outside the body or on a specific body point, you'll feel pain. That's one of the first lessons I learned. That's an altered state. And there are hundreds of different kinds of altered states.

Musafar also says:

The negativity of pain (strong, unexpected sensation) only exists for people who are relatively undeveloped. If you have enough training, instruction and practice, you can transcend, transmute or change a sensation to anything you wish…. That's what I do when I hang by fleshhooks. People say, “That's incredibly painful!” I say, “No, it's ecstatic, it's beautiful!”

Writer Patrick Califia has been exploring and expounding on SM for around three decades now. In his essay “Shiny Sharp Things,” he writes: “There is a whole other reality beyond our flesh. But in this world, our flesh is our only way to gather information and to experience what is within and outside of ourselves. So we have to use flesh to get to that other place. These practices have become taboo.”

Of course, you don't need to do something as extreme as hanging by hooks to experience this transcendence (although it does seem that the more extreme the ritual, the more ecstatic the experience). The sweat lodge used by Native American tribes works on a similar principle, with the intense heat of the steam (created when water is thrown on a pit full of red-hot stones) in a small, enclosed area triggering altered states. Andrew Weil suggests that eating chili peppers is another way to use (mild) pain to invoke (mild) altered states.

Physical exhaustion can also act as a trigger, the “runner's high” being the most famous example. It has long been thought to spark the release of the body's own opioids, but recent studies are pointing toward the body's natural cannabis analogues as the biochemical that gets released. Similarly, not all instances of the Sun Dance involved suspension by flesh; sometimes the participants achieved altered states by dancing until they literally dropped from overexertion.

rapid blinking

In her autobiography, autistic Donna Williams writes: “One of the ways of making things seem to slow down was to blink or to turn the light on and off really fast. If you blinked really fast, people behaved like in old frame-by-frame movies; you got the effect of strobe lights without the control being taken out of your hands.” By seeming to slow down the world around her, the rapid blinking gave Williams a sense of detachment, as if she were watching reality instead of being a part of it—a sure sign of an altered state. Since, as she points out, this technique simulates a strobe light, it might also have the physiological effects of strobe lights, triggering certain pulses in the brain.

spinning

From kids on playgrounds to Sufi mystics (“whirling dervishes”), spinning is a quick, easy way to instigate an undeniable trip, in the physical and mental senses.

touching, sex, orgasm

Physical contact with other people releases endorphins, which explains some of the pleasurable sensations of massage, cuddling, and sex. Orgasm releases a cascade of endorphins all by itself, as well as the hormone oxytocin. Not a whole lot is known about the effects of oxytocin, but it seems to increase interpersonal bonding and feelings of closeness.

Besides inciting the release of these hormones, the orgasm itself is simply a transcendent experience. If you give yourself over to it completely, it transports you to another state of consciousness where the ego cannot tread. There's a reason that the French call it petit mort, “little death.” Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism all have branches that seek to use orgasm (or withholding of orgasm) as a means of channeling life-force energy into heightened spirituality.

vomiting

Yacking your guts up is usually considered a miserable experience, but Andrew Weil argues that it may be a way of experiencing an altered state. He highlights yogic and Native American rituals involving the act, and he points out that barfing massively invokes the parasympathetic nervous system, which can have pleasing effects on respiration, heart rate, and lacrimation (production of tears). It might also be a way to rid yourself of unwanted emotions and patterns. Weil reports on his self-induced vomiting: “From the successes I have had, I can testify that the result is indeed a feeling of well-being.”

Others: falling in love, fasting, hypnosis, meditation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, and sleeping and dreaming.