Air gives the best buzz! Kick harmful habits with breathing techniques

I’m not a health professional. This is for entertainment and information.

Enjoying sober life, but miss a little head change now and then?

People have been getting high on nothing but air for thousands of years! Pranayama, a breathing technique we’ll explore below, has been around for thousands of years! We’ll also take a look at a Guinness Book of World Record holder’s recent contribution to good clean fun.

“Air? Bullshit. No one gets high on air,” is an understandable reaction to the notion that air can get you high. But it can. Don’t believe me! Finish the article and try the techniques out for yourself.

Sidenote- If you intend to practice deep breathing indoors, you may want to invest in a high quality air filter, like this one. Use the cash you will no longer be spending on that habit…

First, we’ll look at Pranayama, specifically the sort that Aleister Crowley prescribed to hopeful candidates looking to join the Ordo Templi Orientis, an occult initiatory society. Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda explains all the esoteric benefits of the practice, and this article by Kristen Nunez on Healthline explains some of the medical benefits.  What we are interested in is the head-change! For that, I can give you firsthand experience. I’ve gotten more high doing pranayama than I have on any extracurricular college outing! The visual imagery is reminiscent of college daze at times as well.

You can read the entire document, Liber E vel Exercitiorum sub figura IX, at Sacred Texts to see the method in its original context. This is just Crowley’s description of the breathing method:

Pranayama – Regularisation of the Breathing

1.At rest in one of your positions, close the right nostril with the thumb of the right hand and breathe out slowly and completely through the left nostril, while your watch marks 20 seconds. Breathe in through the same nostril for 10 seconds. Changing hands, repeat with the other nostril. Let this be continuous for one hour.

2.When this is quite easy to you, increase the periods to 30 and 15 seconds.

3.When this is quite easy to you, but not before, breathe out for 15 seconds, in for 15 seconds, and hold the breath for 15 seconds.

4.When you can do this with perfect ease and comfort for a whole hour, practice breathing out for 40 and in for 20 seconds.

5.This being attained, practice breathing out for 20, in for 10, holding the breath for 30 seconds.

6.When this has become perfectly easy to you, you may be admitted for examination, and should you pass, you will be instructed in more complex and difficult practices.

7.You will find that the presence of food in the stomach, even in small quantities, makes the practices very difficult.

8.Be very careful never to overstrain your powers; especially never get so short of breath that you are compelled to breathe out jerkily or rapidly.

9.Strive after depth, fullness, and regularity of breathing.

10.Various remarkable phenomena will very probably occur during these practices. They must be carefully analysed and recorded.

Now, I’ve done an hour of step four several times and that left me feeling great all day. No joke. I also discovered that if I’m going to a social event where everyone else is going to be drinking, I can do Pranayama for just fifteen minutes and feel a nice buzz, which helps me feel like I’m on the same vibe as everyone else, without wrecking the mental landscape I cultivate for my metaphysical pursuits.

Please note that the feeling is not identical. Breathing will not make you drunk or stoned, or whatever you kids are up to these days! It will provide a great buzz though. When I noted this the first couple times, I examined what it was about drinking that I enjoyed, and what I didn’t enjoy. I noted that everything I didn’t enjoy; not being able to drive afterward, hangovers, diminished mental functions were gone. The great feeling that really shook off any foul mood or uneasiness was what I had. I resolved that it was what I was really after all along. I do enjoy the taste of beer, but luckily the non-alcoholic brew game has come a long way since O’Doul hit the scene. Athletic Brewing, Lagunitas, and Brooklyn Brewery all have delicious offerings. It’s nice, because I don’t have to stop being buddies with the liquor store guy, just because I’m “sober”!

Perhaps I picked up my former habit simply because a part of me was crying out for the type of head-changes that magic, meditation, and breathing techniques produce, but I simply didn’t know how to access them.

 If Pranayama replaces easy drinking with friends, then this next method is doing shots!

Wim Hof is an awesome guy to follow! I did his ten week video course years ago and listened to a dozen different interviews on podcasts, including the Joe Rogan Experience. Wim Hof Method breathing is a great way to shake off a gnarly mood, or to change your head space in two minutes!

I don’t want to explain the method to you since Wim does it for free at his website. Click here for instructions. This is also a practice that has several health benefits. Poke around Wim’s site to learn about them. What I will say is that I’ve broken all sorts of gnarly cravings and shitty moods using the Wim Hof Method. I like to do the method three times in a row. The first time I hold with no breath, then the other two times, I hold a full breath.

Wim is also a HUGE promotor of cold exposure, which also has a ton of documented benefits. An ice bath will also change your headspace, but that a whole different topic!

Well, I hope this helps you get the monkey off your back. I know if did for me. As of this writing, I’ve been totally sober (except for air and a few metaphysical encounters) for four months. I’d never done that in two decades of adulthood. Go breathing! This article is in no way an attempt to debase pranayama, the eight limbs of yoga, meditation, enlightenment, or magic. It’s my way of helping clear a major obstacle in order to pursue those higher goals.

Enjoy the fresh air!

Update – June 2022

This method is super useful for substitution, but I’ve recently worked out a way to rewire what I find contentment in. Check out the bottom of this article on Leveling Up with affirmations!