Breathwork techniques - A natural doorway into the subconscious

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SEO title: Breathwork Instead of Psychedelics | Circular Breathing & Grinberg Method in Lisbon

URL: /writings/breathwork-instead-of-psychedelics

SEO description: Circular Breathing can take you into the subconscious in minutes, with no substances. What it is, what research shows, and how breath and the body hold the key to change.

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[TITLE] Breathwork instead of psychedelics

Circular Breathing is a powerful technique that is very dear to my heart. I use it whenever I need to enter an altered state of consciousness.

It takes me into the subconscious in minutes, allowing emotions to surface and transform, and inner guidance to become clear.

Similar to the state that's induced by Mushrooms (Psilocybin) or LSD, but here you are in control of the pace and can even stop if you need to.

[HEADING] What is Circular Breathing?

Sometimes called Conscious Connected Breathing. The inhale and the exhale connect with no pause in between. You choose your pace, and you manage your experience.

It carries the body past the thinking mind, into a state where emotions can be processed in a different way, outside of conscious restrictions.

[HEADING] Where it comes from

In the 1960s, a psychiatrist in Prague researched how LSD connects people with their unconscious emotional world and allows them to achieve emotional release after years of difficulty.

Then the substance got banned. But Stanislav Grof didn't stop there, he found a specific breathing technique that could take people into the very same experience.

[HEADING] What people feel

Many people say they met with themselves there for the first time in years, or that they have reached a deep state of presence they didn't know exists.

I have to say from my personal experience, what you feel is very personal and changes from session to session, as the body will bring up only what you are ready to deal with, and only what needs to be seen by you at the moment.

[HEADING] What the research says

In a Frankfurt study, 61 people breathed this way, and what they felt was comparable to what people feel on psychedelics (mushrooms, Psilocybin).

(Read the study: www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00247-0)

In a Sussex study, a breathwork session was compared with a guided meditation session. Here the breathers felt far more oneness, peace and emotional release, at levels seen with moderate to high doses of psilocybin.

Later during a follow-up, the breathwork group reported much more psychological insight and behavioral change than the meditation group.

(Read the study: www.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1851882)

[HEADING] Your breath knows how you stop yourself

The way you breathe changes with everything you feel. When something is too much, the body holds the breath, so you feel less. Most of us learned this so early that we don't notice it anymore. It just became the way we breathe.

This is the heart of the work I do 1:1, through the Grinberg Method. You learn to recognise how your body stops your breath and your emotions, and to let that go. When you agree to feel, and agree to be a body, the breath opens by itself. The pain, the stress, the emotional experience that keeps coming back, they can start to change from there.

Breath is one of the doors, and the most important one.

[HEADING] What happens in a breathwork session

In a 2 hour session we learn a few breathwork techniques and practice the Circular Breathing with music and my support. I am there to guide you through it and support you with my touch.

During the session, I take us through slower breathing to enter a meditative state of Alpha brainwaves. It's a calm and inward place where you are the creator.

There we imagine and feel the change that we want to see in life, and we use the whole body to manifest that change. It's powerful because there the heart and the mind come together in coherence (Maybe you have heard Joe Dispenza talk about that same thing).

No substance - Breath and intention are enough. We have those doors programmed into our bodies for a reason, to be activated and used when we wish to access the subconscious, when emotions are too much and ask for relief, or when we are in need of reconnection and guidance from within.

[HEADING] Is it right for everyone?

If you're pregnant, or have epilepsy, a heart condition, high blood pressure, or a serious mental health condition, please talk to me personally before booking so we can decide together if this is the right timing for you. Specifically if you are under psychiatric medication, let me know about it before booking.

This session is not therapy, and it isn't a replacement for medical or psychological care.

[HEADING] Breathe with me in Lisbon

I teach this technique in Lisbon at Little Yoga Space in Baixa - a 2 hour session of breathing together in a safe space.

[BUTTON] Upcoming breathwork sessions → /workshops/breathwork-group-lisbon

If there's something in your life that keeps coming back, and you want to change it at its root, I work 1:1 in Lisbon and on the Silver Coast.

[BUTTON] 1:1 sessions → /somatic-bodywork-sessions

Not sure what's right for you? Talk to me directly on WhatsApp: +351-923-519956 (Itai)

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[ABOUT BOX]

Hi, I'm Itai.

I facilitate breathwork groups, somatic bodywork sessions, and active-meditation groups. I work one-to-one with people in Lisbon and on the Silver Coast, to transform emotions into power and to break out of emotional patterns.

I trained as a Grinberg Method practitioner for over three years in Italy, and I work daily with people's somatic and emotional experiences.

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