Sustainable Spirituality. Brainwaves during Meditation & Psychedelics

In this opportunity we will compare the different short and long term effects of meditation and psychedelics in our brain electro-chemistry, and our lives. 

Meditation offers a stable, long-term path to healing and integration by sustainably activating coherent brainwave states, while psychedelics disrupt brain patterns temporarily and should be used only sparingly, as a reset — not a habit. True transformation lies not in the intensity of visions but in the grounded embodiment that follows, guided by discipline, presence, and service to the whole.

Let’s start with my favorite: Meditation, in all its forms—from gentle mindfulness to profound transcendent states—offers a stable and controlled path to deep healing, insight, and integration. Gentle practices foster alpha wave production, promoting calm awareness, emotional balance, and gradual purification of thoughts and feelings. As the practice deepens, sustained and coherent gamma waves emerge, reflecting heightened brain connectivity, where different regions fire in harmony. This coherence gives rise to states of profound inner peace, non-duality, and mystical insight, arising not from external stimulation but from inner silence and regulation. Meditation strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing the body to rest, restore, and regulate naturally. Over time, it enhances cortical thickness, aligns the chakras, clears the subconscious, and supports the gradual and safe rising of kundalini energy. It produces no craving—only discipline—and teaches emotional resilience without chasing highs. By training the mind to observe without identifying, it steadily deconstructs the ego in a sustainable way, cultivating detached awareness and confronting reality without bypassing it. Meditation is the most stable alchemical transformation available to us, offering lifelong transformation through gradual, embodied, and deeply integrative change. Deep spiritual insights require patience, discipline, commitment, hard work, inner work, self control, presence, sobriety. Isn’t it funny that those traits are exactly what our communities are lacking?

Ayahuasca and psychedelic mushrooms significantly alter brain function by disrupting normal patterns and activating regions that don’t usually communicate. Alpha wave suppression reduces sensory and emotional filtering, creating openness to experience. The brain enters a state of increased entropy — more flexible but also more chaotic — characterized by fragmented, erratic connectivity. Mushrooms heighten synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis, increasing emotional rewiring and ego dissolution. Ayahuasca induces deep subconscious restructuring, visionary states, and ancestral healing. Both substances trigger intense emotional catharsis, purging blockages and bringing forward hidden traumas or shadow material. These experiences can be life-altering, activating kundalini, dissolving ego boundaries, and inspiring major life shifts.

When properly integrated, these practices can bring deep healing and emotional resilience. Ayahuasca can purge trauma and ancestral imprints, leading to profound personal transformation. Mushrooms support neuroplasticity, breaking rigid thought patterns and fostering new perspectives. Both can catalyze insights into identity, life direction, and relational dynamics. They allow individuals to break identity attachments and encounter unity consciousness. For some, this results in greater clarity, emotional strength, and a release from long-standing psychological patterns. These expanded states offer breakthroughs that traditional methods might not access, unveiling deeply buried truths and unlocking inner healing processes that set the foundation for lasting change — if followed by intentional integration.

Some individuals become psychologically dependent on ceremonies, addicted not to the substance itself, but to the visions and perceived spiritual guidance. High doses may induce euphoria, and some begin chasing the “mystical experience” itself, becoming attached to altered states rather than integration. While ego dissolution occurs, it does not eliminate attachment — and may even create new ego structures around spiritual insights, like “feeling the chosen one”. This can reinforce spiritual narratives that, if not carefully examined, become forms of spiritual bypassing. People may rely on visions for meaning instead of doing inner work, or interpret symbolic experiences as literal directives, making drastic life decisions without considering practical consequences. In such cases, reprogramming is incomplete, and the individual risks repeating previous behaviors under a new, spiritualized story.

Kundalini may be prematurely awakened through substance use without proper purification and preparation, leading to unhealthy physical and energetic consequences. These visions, however profound, may be adopted as absolute truths without critical reflection, fueling spiritual materialism — using the experience to bolster ego rather than dissolve it. Some attend frequent ceremonies, chasing insight without applying it, avoiding therapy, lifestyle shifts, or grounded action. Ayahuasca is not chemically addictive, but the psychological dependency can become a substitute for sovereignty. A person may begin to undervalue the richness of ordinary consciousness — no longer able to enjoy the colors, emotions, and depth of daily life without stimulation. It’s like adding sugar to fruit juice — life without the ceremony no longer tastes sweet enough. The body’s natural chemistry is overstimulated, leading to a loss of trust in one's inner supply. The vision becomes more real than reality, and the present moment feels diminished.

Used too often, these substances become less like medicine and more like bombs — breaking through psychic defenses without time or support to reconstruct what was destroyed. Trauma can be reopened without tools for containment, disturbing the fragile inner order. From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, the experience can empower a single part — a protector or exile — while overwhelming others like managers or firefighters. This can result in a hijacked internal system where one part becomes inflated and drives decisions, constructing a new story or identity that reinforces a less integrated version of the self. Without conscious integration, such powerful moments can fracture more than they heal.

These practices, while potentially transformative, come with serious risks that must be acknowledged. Ayahuasca can overstimulate the sympathetic nervous system, leading to intense physical and emotional reactions. While it may inspire major life shifts, those shifts require strong grounding; without it, individuals may feel lost, dissociated, or destabilized. When trauma is not properly integrated, these substances can cause dissociation, anxiety, confusion, and paranoia — sometimes triggering underlying mental conditions. Ayahuasca, in particular, is risky for those with heart conditions and often causes intense nausea, vomiting, and emotional overwhelm. High doses can lead to temporary emotional confusion or panic attacks, and both mushrooms and ayahuasca can cause temporary instability if not held within a supportive structure. They can be life-changing, but without intentional follow-up, people often fall back into old patterns, unable to embody what they experienced.

While psychedelics like mushrooms and ayahuasca can catalyze powerful openings — dissolving ego boundaries, increasing connectivity across brain regions, amplifying delta, theta, and even gamma wave activity — their potential lies not in frequent consumption, but in how we live after the experience. These substances can break through habitual patterns and initiate deep emotional purging, but without structure, reflection, and grounding, the breakthroughs fade into spiritual highs with no real impact. In contrast, deep meditation — rooted in discipline, commitment, and self-regulation — builds gamma coherence and endogenous DMT naturally, fostering long-term plasticity, emotional balance, and integration without reliance on external substances. If the seeker is honest — truly devoted not just to personal awakening but to serving their community and evolving as a sovereign human — psychedelics must be approached with reverence and restraint. Relying on our own supply of magic chemistry, with the Divine Design of the receptors of molecules of Emotion, allows us to truly listen to the Divinity inside of us. Transformation is not in the intensity of the vision, but in the slow, embodied rewiring that follows. Frequent use may reveal mystical realms, but it is the daily practice, the earth-bound choices, and the humble integration that bring lasting healing — not just for the self, but for the whole.

Last, this information is relatively encapsule in the following table. I hope this article brought you some great perspectives. 

REFERENCES:

“Molecules of Emotion, The Science Behind Mind Body Medicine”, Cadence Pert, 1997.

"Introduction to Internal Family Systems", Richard Schwartz, 2001.

Joe Dispenza's Lectures. 

My own experience. 

And... some consultations: 

Lightening the mind with audiovisual stimulation as an accessible alternative to breath-focused meditation for mood and cognitive enhancement

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11513117/

Pharmacological, neural, and psychological mechanisms underlying psychedelics: A critical review

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763422002822

Endogenous theta stimulation during meditation predicts reduced opioid dosing following treatment with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8026958/

DMT alters cortical travelling waves

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7577737/

Baseline Power of Theta Oscillations Predicts Mystical-Type Experiences Induced by DMT in a Natural Setting

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8602571/

Meditation acutely improves psychomotor vigilance, and may decrease sleep need

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2919439/'

Changes in the Electrical Activity of the Brain in the Alpha and Theta Bands during Prayer and Meditation

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7766487/

Contrasting Electroencephalography-Derived Entropy and Neural Oscillations With Highly Skilled Meditators

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8119624/

Investigation of advanced mindfulness meditation “cessation” experiences using EEG spectral analysis in an intensively sampled case study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393223002282

Broadband Cortical Desynchronization Underlies the Human Psychedelic State

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6618409/

Neural mechanisms underlying psilocybin’s therapeutic potential – the need for preclinical in vivo electrophysiology

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9247433/

Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51974-4

Meditation Experience is Associated with Increased Structural Integrity of the Pineal Gland and greater total Grey Matter maintenance

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10942509/

Emotional Stress: Anxiety, Depression And Panic Attacks: A Neurologic And Psychiatric Like Condition Caused By Cervical Spine Instability

https://caringmedical.com/prolotherapy-news/neurology-like-conditions-caused-cervical-spine-instability-vagal-ganglion-neuron-destruction/

Psychedelics and Neuroplasticity: A Systematic Review Unraveling the Biological Underpinnings of Psychedelics https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.724606/full

Advanced approaches to regenerate spinal cord injury: The development of cell and tissue engineering therapy and combinational treatments https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332221013160

The serotonin hallucinogen 5-MeO-DMT alters cortico-thalamic activity in freely moving mice: Regionally-selective involvement of 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors

http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028390817305889

A neurophenomenological approach to non-ordinary states of consciousness: hypnosis, meditation, and psychedelics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661322002911

Fire Kasina advanced meditation produces experiences comparable to psychedelic and near-death experiences: A pilot study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1550830724001630

Spinal cord injury: molecular mechanisms and therapeutic interventions

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01477-6

Your Brain’s Overnight Detox: Glymphatic System and Upper Cervical Alignment Support Cognitive Health https://internalhealingandwellnessmd.com/your-brains-overnight-detox-glymphatic-system-and-upper-cervical-alignment-support-cognitive-health/

Psilocybin induces rapid and persistent growth of dendritic spines in frontal cortex in vivo https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34228959/

Yogic Breathing Affects Cerebrospinal Fluid Dynamics During Breathing Practice

https://www.nccih.nih.gov/research/research-results/yogic-breathing-affects-cerebrospinal-fluid-dynamics-during-breathing-practice

Changes in the Electrical Activity of the Brain in the Alpha and Theta Bands during Prayer and meditationhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7766487/