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Comment by visarga | Hacker News Reader

It's been known for thousands of years in yoga as "samavritti pranayama", or "square breath". The advice is to count on the finger of one hand. Inhale while stepping 1 2 3 4, Hold 1 2 3 4, Exhale 1 2 3 4 and Hold 1 2 3 4. All of this without mentally counting, just use your fingers to do the steps. It is recommended before meditation for calming the agitated mind.

Another method is to count breaths in increasing cycles: 1; 1 2; 1 2 3; ...; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7;... Each number corresponds to one inhalation and exhalation. See how high you can count before making a mistake. This comes from Buddhism.

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I had the good fortune of learning yoga from a teacher whose core focus was on the breath. He taught this technique and other breathing techniques first and foremost before any movements ever came into play. The difference in the relaxation, stress-relief, etc., between that and the way I see yoga taught at these chain studios is incredible. I wish that was the standard, but obviously much fewer people have the patience to learn this way.

That's because video of breathing exercises on Instagram/Facebook won't garner as many likes as impressive as a scorpion pose on the mountain top.

Let's be honest, a good number of yoga practitioners here in the West do it for superficial reasons instead of actual personal improvement.

Yeah, it's just about fitness for a lot of people.

'Bout dem yoga pants, too, bruh.

But arent there two types of yoga? The spiritual one (yoga) and the 'fitness' one (hatha yoga)?

It's less that there are two types than it is that they're complementary aspects of a larger thing. You can avail yourself of one — to great (if incomplete) benefit, even — without availing yourself of any of the others.

The way Yoga is practiced in the US and most of the world is just a set of exercises. Without the spiritual & mindfulness it is not Yoga as it is meant to be. Yoga is designed to be the complete package, not just for your body, but also for your mind, your thoughtfulness & soul (atma).

> All of this without mentally counting

Wait, some people can count on their fingers without in their head going "One, Two, Three, Four"?

I can't. Suggestions for how to gain this skill first?

That is why this visual is so great. The act of counting is a distraction.

Instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, in your head say "left, middle, middle, right." Repeat until natural, then change it to be "this one, this one, this one, this one." Repeat until natural, then repeat some more until you can do it by the pattern alone without verbalizing anything internally.

Or don't think of it as counting, just think of it as a drumbeat. Bah-bah-bah-BAH. Bah-bah-bah-BAH. Make sure to go slow enough that it's actually four seconds and not two (whole beats, not half-beats). But the end goal is to not have to think about it at all. It may require thousands of repetitions.

that's cheating! we want the power to instinctively tell how many seconds have elapsed. maybe even what time it is.

I start with my fingers all closed into a fist. I simply open the next finger, starting from my little finger. When I reach my thumb, I know to do the next 'thing' (whatever it is), then repeat. Rather than using your brain to store your state, you use your fingers. You can forget about what you are doing and simply know your state based on the feel of your fingers. Its basically like a simple state machine.

I dare say anyone who plays a musical instrument does exactly this. I for sure do not explicitly count the bars when playing (save for some longer pauses) as it would only get in the way. On the surface it seems to work fine via feedback from hearing myself/others playing, movement (fingers/arms/body) while playing etc. Not that much different to counting out loud to be honest (just another feedback channel).

This is also an exceptionally good technique for controlling your pace while you are running. At the beginning, 3 steps in, 3 steps hold, 3 steps out. As you run out of breath, decrease the hold by 1. Then decrease the out by one. Then decrease the in by one. Once you get down to 2,1,2 try to maintain that. You will only be able to do it my adjusting your pace.

This is also nice because it fights getting stomach cramps because you alternate your in/out breathing wrt to your feet landing (odd numbers are best because your liver takes up a lot of room and if you are at full inhale on a right foot downstroke, it compresses things).

I've also got this working for cycling, but it's a bit more difficult due to the faster cadence.

I used this to increase cardiovascular and lung efficiency and volume. Start at 3-1-3, then progressively train to go to 3-2-3, 4-1-4, then 5-2-5, etc, inserting shortened (say 3-1-4) but deeper inhales or skipping the hold when getting short on breath. Inhaling has a natural tendency to slightly increase your heart rate while exhaling does the opposite, so the trick helps a lot in getting in control of a racing heart.

>The advice is to count on the finger of one hand. [...] count breaths in increasing cycles: 1; 1 2; 1 2 3; ...; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 //

Is this hand counted? Knowing BSL I can count to 0-19 with one hand using unique gestures. Is there an acknowledged way: knuckle counting, binary, other? I note one can get to 19 (from 1) by moving ones gaze from finger joint to joint if you include finger tips.

Always curious to see alternate modes of counting on the fingers.

You could count from 0 to 35 in base 10, by counting in base 6 by using each hand to count from 0 to 5.

I find binary the easiest. You can get to 2^10 = 1024 easily.

1023, if you're using the natural representation of zero.

If you raise and lower your arm, that's two more bits for total of 4096.

cognitive load would be higher

I can do it, but holding the middle finger down while the surrounding fingers are up is not comfortable.

There was an ashtanga teacher in SoCal who did pranayama practice with a few students prior to Mysore practice. It was really demanding, somebody counted 55 inhale-exhale cycles in an hour, something like that

Do you happen to remember the teacher? Looking for a good ashtanga class in socal

Tim Miller, now in Carlsbad. There's lots of good teachers in LA area.

Any recommendations?

I found that more often than not, instead of trying to impose rhythm on the breath, observing with genuine curiosity whatever the current rhythm is (deep or shallow? short or long?) and focusing on the feeling of the breath itself as well as assorted bodily sensations such as the chest raising and falling does wonder to calm down. A gentle letting-go of resistance fares better on the long run towards acceptance and relief than downright coercion, which can have a nasty swing-back boomerang effect.

Slapping "navy" on it is a prime example of cultural appropriation.

(Before someone claims that this technique is modern: there are hundreds of technique similar to this one in Yoga and Buddhism)

The more cultural appropriation, the better off we all are. I’m being serious.

Agree. That's how things spread and become "familiar" to people. It's amazing how mindfulness is slowly starting to spread in the US... thousands of years of evolution and only now is the value being seen. Better late than never!

Every time I read the phrase cultural appropriation I am reminded of the Kimono Try On protests in Boston and I cringe: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33450391

Back to the original topic: it's breathing. Nobody owns breathing. It can't be trademarked or patented. The technique can be renamed and passed on for free or for profit.

Those kimono protests are ridiculous, I'm surprised it's not an April Fool's joke. Thanks for the link.

As for 'nobody owns breathing', nobody fundamentally owns anything, ownership is just a social construct. Someone owns something if a majority agrees they own it. What's being discussed is a style of breathing rather than breathing as a whole. It's no different to attributing the history of styles of music, dance, food, etc... to certain groups.

Mostly agree – except maybe in cases where the practice devolves into a cliché. American Indians and feathers come to mind.

It boggles my mind that anyone thinks cultural hybridity and cross-fertilisation are a bad thing, regardless of whether proper attribution is given. Which, as in this case, it never is and almost never can be.

It's one of the more stupid ideas from a cluster of stupid ideas.

I'm not saying cross-fertilisation is a bad thing, quite the opposite. Butchering ideas often prevents them from being taken seriously and turns them into fads - that's the bad thing.

I used the term "cultural appropriation" instead of more positive sounding "cross-fertilisation" thinking it implied oversemplification and misrepresentation.

According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation is not always clearly negative.

What I was referring to is the existing trend to pick ideas from hundreds of years ago, relabeling them while "forgetting" to mention the sources, and selling them as new in some self-help section in a library. This happens to western philosophy as well, and butchering complex philosophies to make them more palatable is hardly beneficial.

Here is the fun part. Everyone thinks Pranayama and Yoga are from Buddhism. But really it's from Hinduism (it is mentioned in Vedic scriptures). Buddhism adopted these techniques which invariably resulted in cultural appropriation.

However, it doesn't matter what the source is as long as the technique is useful for the end user.

And even more fun, Yoga share a lot of philosophical roots with Samkhya, a school of Hinduism that doesn't exist anymore. Samkhya came about at the same time as Buddhism and is also atheist, or at least doesn't concern itself with god, much like Buddhism.

Yoga, however, brought god back into the mix, and these days, when taught in India, it's mostly done in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta school, which is the vast majority of hindus.

Advaita means "indivisible", i.e. god, the world, and everything is one thing, but the very few texts of yoga that has survived, clearly show it was a dualist philosophy separating prakrti (matter) and purusha (consciousness).

It's not just taught in Advaita schools. It's also taught in Dvaita and Vishisht-Advaita Vedanta schools. I know because I belong to the Dvaita school of thought. Also, there is a big misconception that majority of Hindus are Advaitis. It's not so. Almost half of Hindus are Vaishnavas who either belong to Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita or Dvaita-Vishistadvaita Schools (a.k.a ISKON/Chaitanya Mahaprabhu).

Yoga itself however originated from Santana Dharma (or modern day Hinduism). To back up this statement, you can read this chapter of Mahabharata which talks about the birth of Ved Vyasa (the writer of the Vedas) wherein it mentions how the Sankhya, Yoga, Pancha-ratra, Vedas and Pasupati cults came into existence: http://sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/m12c049.htm

I'll quote the relevant text for your convenience:

"Vaisampayana continued, "I have thus narrated to thee, O monarch, the circumstances connected with the former birth of our revered preceptor, viz., Vyasa of unstained mind, as asked by thee. Listen to me once again. There are diverse kinds of cults, O royal sage, that go by diverse names such as Sankhya, Yoga, the Pancha-ratra, Vedas, and Pasupati. The promulgator of Sankhya cult is said to be the great Rishi Kapila. The primeval Hiranyagarbha, and none else, is the promulgator of the Yoga system. The Rishi Apantaratamas is said to be the preceptor of the Vedas, some call that Rishi by the name of Prachina-garbha. The cult known by the name of Pasupata was promulgated by the Lord of Uma, that master of all creatures, viz., the cheerful Siva, otherwise known by the name of Sreekantha, the son of Brahma. The illustrious Narayana is himself the promulgator of the cult, in its entirety, contained in the Pancharatra scriptures."

> Everyone thinks Pranayama and Yoga are from Buddhism

Not me, as written.

Anything to discredit Hinduism.

Hinduism eats other religion, it's the super set religion, which is cool except for the cast system and that it says we all are living in the downward spiral (Kali Yuga) where people are as far away from God as possible. I don't wanna live in a downfall...

The caste system is really not prevalent within Hinduism. Again another hit job by the British (& most Western media) to discredit Hinduism and paint it in a bad light. In fact the word "caste" is Portuguese in origin, there is nothing equivalent to caste in Hinduism.

Also, I'm wondering how you got the impression that Kali Yuga = downward spiral. It is a phase in the endless cycle of the universe, but not necessarily a downfall.

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