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Comment by mistrial9 | Hacker News Reader

People! please be careful with these casual references to breathing exercises and other mind-body techniques. Breathing changes can hurt you. Please seek an experienced teacher.. for example, another post mentioned a cessation of breathing rhythm as a gateway.. BS, and dangerous too. Blood pressure, cardiac rhythm, mental balance, are all deeply effected. thanks and take care

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" Breathing changes can hurt you. Please seek an experienced teacher."

Could you provide some reference of the dangers? That sounds like a generic marketing speech for yoga instructors.

I don't mind finding guidance, but empty scare tactics are the cheapest trick in the salesmans arsenal.

If there are explicit dangers, give external reference. Otherwise you just sound like a snake oil salesman.

The key word is spontaneous breath retention. Google "kevala kumbhaka". Not BS at all, in fact it is a primary aim of the breathing exercises known as pranayama and is very widely documented within yogic texts, both old and current.

While breath retention is part of pranayama techniques, they are NOT beginner techniques, and misuse certainly does have the capacity to do damage.

Consider the inner breath as a pneumatic tool. Can you imagine holding in a powerful sneeze or cough and hurting yourself? That’s the power of the diaphragm. Getting it under control cannot be done overnight, and retention techniques increase the risk of accidental injury.

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