The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human
breathe.ersjournals.com
breathe.ersjournals.com
If anyone is interested, I made an hour long mix of lots of waves and wind sounds, paying special attention to panning and levels to create a wide, enveloping, slow pulsing feeling that I use when doing heavy concentration work [0].
:)
Unaided, the record is about half that. Don’t try either at home. Freediving is extremely dangerous, even this version, where aid can always be at arm’s length.
Of course, when setting records it's done in the water (because of the diving reflex), which should never be attempted alone.
I recommend apps for "co2 tables" when practicing.
My favourite facts from the Wikipedia page are: it is originally called octopush and was played with an uncoated lead puck.
"Josh Waitzkin: The 30-second version is that I was doing some Wim Hof-inspired breath hold work. I made the mistake of doing it during lots of reps of underwater swims, 50-meter swims, at a pool in New York City. And on my eighth or 10th rep, I blacked out in a bliss state and I spent four minutes in the bottom of the pool after blacking out from oxygen deprivation. This old guy pulled me out and, which I’m eternally grateful for, and I basically drowned. All the doctors said after 45 to 60 seconds I should have been brain dead or dead, but it was four minutes on the bottom of the pool and that my training saved me. Also, you could say, put me there—but that’s a whole other conversation!"
[0] https://tim.blog/2020/03/14/josh-waitzkin-transcript-412/
Obviously, when you combine such exercise with activities that require full attention, like swimming, frying a steak or driving a car you add a dimension of serious danger.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving_blackout#Shallow_...
This phenomenon is well-known, probably more so than Wim Hof. You’d think a ‘learning guru’ would learn about the potential risks of holding ones breath underwater while hyperventilating before attempting it!
Although the body requires oxygen for metabolism, low oxygen levels normally do not stimulate breathing. Rather, breathing is stimulated by higher carbon dioxide levels. As a result, breathing low-pressure air or a gas mixture with no oxygen at all (such as pure nitrogen) can lead to loss of consciousness without ever experiencing air hunger. This is especially perilous for high-altitude fighter pilots. It is also why flight attendants instruct passengers, in case of loss of cabin pressure, to apply the oxygen mask to themselves first before helping others; otherwise, one risks losing consciousness.[143]
The respiratory centers try to maintain an arterial CO 2 pressure of 40 mm Hg. With intentional hyperventilation, the CO 2 content of arterial blood may be lowered to 10–20 mm Hg (the oxygen content of the blood is little affected), and the respiratory drive is diminished. This is why one can hold one's breath longer after hyperventilating than without hyperventilating. This carries the risk that unconsciousness may result before the need to breathe becomes overwhelming, which is why hyperventilation is particularly dangerous before free diving.
Now that I try to think of all the countries who have performed illegal medical experiments on prisoners... I didn't expect the list to be this long in my head... I thought it would be shorter.
"We always have about two minutes to live, but breathing resets the clock."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_hypoventilation_syndro...
It activates the "dive reflex" in humans which reduces psychological arousal. (Or something like that -- it is a non medicinal chill pill.)
I assumed it was a 'avoid drowning' response. Like if you fall into water, you don't want to stay asleep, you need to wake up really quickly!
At the end of the day we all react differently to different stimuli so try things out and do what works best for you.
If it's just your opinion then say that, don't try and make up some pseudo-scientific reasoning.
Originally you claimed a scientific response and that you knew the reason for it, now you're just commuting that to "well splashing water on my face wakes me up". Well, no shit Sherlock.
1) There is well established science that links the dive reflex to physiological changes in the human body.
2) Using the dive reflex as an anti-anxiety measure is well established in psychology.
3) Humans do respond differently to things and if they don't make you feel good, don't do them. There is nothing postmodern about arguing "some people enjoy a hot sauna and others find it miserable." My wife, for instance, will not do the dive reflex thing because it ruins her makeup. Individual variation is a thing.
4) I am not attempting to write airtight arguments to win a debate, but writing very loosely to share what I've learned with others.
5) If you're not sure about points 1-3, you are welcome to research them yourself instead of insisting I present them to you as formal arguments.
I would've also thought the "Or something like that" should allow for more a charitable response, and that's before we note that you're comparing two different starting states.
Can also just take a walk. It's aimless, but still good for the mind.
It's because it's aimless that it's good for the mind. Or rather, good for you (because you are not the mind), because you get a break from your "crazy monkey mind"[1].
"You" meaning anyone who does it, not literally you, of course.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_mind
Also see YouTube videos by Tibetan Buddhist monk Mingyur Rinpoche such as "Calming the Mind".
In that video he shares a great insight right near the start, which proves that everyone has awareness, even if they think they don't.
Watch "Mingyur Rinpoche ~ Calming the Mind: The Practice of Awareness Meditation" on YouTube:
Most of the time it was a group of 2-5 people. When the group was only 2 or 3 people it often became similar to a smoke break where you could have a good discussion as you climbed up/down the full set of stairs.
The beauty of it was that almost everybody felt comfortable participating in it. If you have non-ambulatory coworkers who want to participate, perhaps a walk would be better. Management also liked it better than smoke breaks because they were always trying to lower health insurance costs so it was beneficial to encourage people to be more healthy.
Our building is 12 stories, so 1 complete up/down was pretty good and even the less healthy people could do it well after a few tries. If you're on a middle floor, go up/down/up (or the reverse) until you get back to your floor. If your building is taller/shorter then you may want to adjust the number of cycles. People who get tired can always exit at any floor and take the elevator back, but peer pressure usually pushes most people to exceed their comfort limit a little bit.
It was also a great team bonding experience because everyone wanted the whole team to make it and it was exciting when someone new joined or when you saw someone's physical ability improve. It's still not a smoke break, but it's the next best thing I've found... other than maybe grabbing a coffee/tea with someone.
I seem to get a lot of good work done if I think it's rainy and stormy outside!
I had blogged about my own favorite music for working by:
Music video: Sitar - Vilayat khan - Rarely Heard Ragas:
https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/10/music-video-sitar-vilaya...
They work for me when needed.
Just a simple breathe in, hold, exhale, hold. Taking 4 slow seconds for each step.
I was very, very skeptic of breathing techniques and meditation. However after learning this technique things kind of 'clicked' and meditation started to make sense, and see why it's thrown around so much.
Edit: found it:
Watch "How To Perform the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise | Andrew Weil, M.D." on YouTube
There's a nice dynamic with this technique where you end up using more of the oxygen in your breath, since you inhale for less time (4 seconds) than you hold & exhale (7+8 seconds).
With box breathing, on the other hand, I find it really unpleasant to hold the empty lung position, and also four seconds feels like it's really not enough to use my full breath.
For people interested in the Original sources, i highly recommend starting with; Roots of Yoga by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton to know the primary sources and then actually reading them.
And I use it all the time for falling asleep. Works amazing!
Broadly speaking, mindfulness-type meditation can make you aware of thoughts or emotions that you weren't previously aware of that could be affecting you. Has something ever bothered you, and you didn't realise how much until later on when you got irrationally annoyed at something else and thought "wait a minute, this shouldn't bother me this much"? Mindfulness practices can make you more aware of that emotion sooner so you're not carrying it with you all day. There's nothing inherently odd about it.
There are also other forms of meditation that are intended to increase your sense of love and gratitude (metta), to come to grips with your own mortality (maranassati), and surely other psychological exercises I'm not aware of.
Edit: Learned it here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508038
Me either, its like two annoying memes are trying to breed a memeplex together.
And cronopios is right:
If Tim says X works, how many Silicon Valley types suddenly start doing it?
In fact, given that former Navy SEAL Jocko Wilnick is all the rage in the business world and Tim Ferriss is also followed by the same crowd, the crossover between those two groups is probably larger than you think.
It does seem to help to hum (for some) or at least purse your lips (for me) to drag out the exhalation step without having to inhale right away. I would certainly like to be better at this though, those packs don't last that long.
But a box is a cube. Since there are four steps, shouldn’t it be called square breathing?
<input type="checkbox">only for some definitions of box
Regular deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing is what they recommend.
And, said in a less snarky way: I can see why a diving instructor would say "don't hold your breath" when you're under water. Navy SEALs likely dive a lot, but they also do training and actions above the water. And they likely spend a lot of time in stressful situations (certainly more than me). I can imagine they might box breath _on land_ to help manage the stress.
In the emergency ascending you are suppose to constantly exhale all the way to the surface. otherwise your lungs might tear.
When doing next dive take a balloon with you and fill it with your air at the depth. Then go up.
Otherwise when at same depth you don't have to worry too much about it.
Disclaimer i am not an actual certified diving instructor.
Never hold your breate while ascending =/= Never hold your breathe underwater.
There are two ways to hold your breath. The first, and what most people will do, is to seal off their airway at the back of the throat. If you ascend and your airway is closed at the throat, lung expansion injury is a definite danger.
But you can also hold your breath with your airway open and only seal at the mouth. This requires more diaphragm control because you're using that muscle to hold open your lungs. It's like the isometric version of breathing. If you ascend while holding your breath with your airway open, air will just be pushed out of your lungs and through the lips, since that seal isn't nearly as strong. This is why SCUBA divers are taught not to hold their breaths and to blow small bubbles when their respirators come out because both practices ensures an open airway. But those aren't the only ways to keep the airway open.
For SEALs, I would imagine it's important to learn to safely hold one's breath underwater. Exhaling bubbles make you visible to both other divers and those at the surface and there are times that a SEAL team would need stealth underwater. Some minimal risk of lung expansion is acceptable when trying to avoid getting killed in some other way. I had a diving instructor who had originally been trained by the Jordanian military's SEAL equivalent who would breathe roughly once per minute. He said it was second nature based on his training but that we should learn to breathe the way PADI recommends since no one would be shooting at us.
You cannot conceal bubbles while on SCUBA.
I have 5 classroom sessions of about an hour each and two pool sessions and 4 open water dives to take you knowing nothing to keeping you from killing yourself.
When I first got certified as a diver, I would suck down a tank in 15 minutes. By the time I became an instructor, my longest dive on a single tank was close to 1.5 hours and I had plenty of air left.
It would be pointless for me to try and teach breathing control techniques I was using by the time I became an instructor to an Open Water Diver student who will be lucky enough to remove and replace his regulator to pass the course.
We teach not holding your breath because most inexperienced divers will default to panicked fight or flight the second anything goes wrong.
Believe me, I’ve had to physically restrain students underwater when the reg fell out of their mouth and it took them more than 2 seconds to find it. They immediately want to shoot to the surface and 100% they’ll be holding their breath (another aspect of panic) if I don’t hold them down, put the reg back in their mouth, and calm them down.
Breath in, you begin to ascend. Breath out, you will sink.
Your goal is to find a breathing pattern that allows you to stay neutrally buoyant so you’re not fighting the rise and fall by swimming against it.
Part of the instructor exam, at least when I took it, was a pool session where they tested your ability to achieve and maintain neutral buoyancy.
You would sit cross legged holding your fins for balance like a meditator half way between the bottom and the surface and you could not rise or fall more than a foot.
It’s something a lot of divers also practice when doing safety stops. Even if there’s an ascent line, many will simply stop at 15 feet, and watch their dive computer trying to maintain exactly at 15 feet using only their breathing.
The reason for that is often there will be no ascent line or you may have to do decompression stops in open water with no physical point of reference.
I have a very low breath-rate and find box breathing far too quick, and even 4-7-8 often feels fast.
We're building a sleep headband and one component is monitoring your breath-rate and learning what your breath-rate is as you fall asleep. Once we know what your optimal breath-rate for sleep is, we can then play sounds which you consciously follow with your breath, and this will guide you to sleep. It's almost like a personalized breath timing exercise.
Breath is only one of the ways we are working to improve sleep. If this is interesting to you, find out more at https://soundmind.co and sign-up for the waitlist.
The breathing rhythms and GENTLE retentions discussed in the comments, are powerful tools and do affect physiology immediately. I suggest a) working with an experienced person at first, b) know your own body, c) do no include fancy extras in the practice, like the nadi channel restriction shown in the photo, rather focus on steady repitition and stable surroundings, at predictable times of day.
This practice has helped me a lot and I trust it will bring health and stability to others also.
I agree there’s also other techniques first, and if it is uncomfortable, stay away from it. That said, it’s a pretgood technique to know.
It's a 4-2-6 breathing pattern, but it's a single html file, so should be pretty easy to save and customise if you want something different.
This is very speculative, and I'm not even fully sold on slow breathing conclusively having benefits. But it's looking more likely, and there seems to be a deep parallel with the very well-documented benefits of caloric restriction. In both cases, a crucial metabolic input is being rate-limited to just above the baseline amount required for survival. Oxygen in one case, glucose in another.
Much of aging seems to be the result of oxidative stress caused by metabolic waste products. Sustainably reducing the total amount of metabolic activity seems to substantially slow the accumulated damaged accompanying aging. One way to do that is to simply set a hard limit on one of the critical ingredients in the process.
When you're short on breath, the feeling is not actually due to a lack of oxygen but due to an excess of carbon dioxide. This is why just by starting to exhale after holding your breath, you immediately feel better, despite not having inhaled any additional oxygen. By holding your breath all the time you teach yourself to tolerate more CO2.
For some weeks I'd practice holding my breath all the time say while I'm driving or working, holding on each breath (maybe 20-30 seconds until my diaphragm starts to try to breathe involuntarily), maybe an hour at a time or more, but I find you need at least 20 minutes or so to feel an effect that lasts longer than a few minutes. You do get to a point where you really feel different throughout the whole day and your breathing slows down naturally.
I don't see why science is so resistant to researching disciplines involving the breath. Breathing is literally your most important source of energy, common sense would tell you there is something there to unpack.
If you just eat less, make less energy, do less, you get net neutral state of a longer life lived more slowly. Not worth it in my estimation.
Ideally you want to maximize your metabolic throughput while keeping it as clean as possible and have an active life to use the calories.
can you share some of the reasons you remain skeptical on the health benefits of slow breathing? if you had $1m to fund an experiment to prove/disprove your hypothesis on breathing, how would you design the experiment?
Am I imagining that or did something trigger the recent public interest?
It might be because we have a global pandemic on our hands, where the virus is attacking the lung.
Auto-correct, thinko, or something I'm missing?
> The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is the illusion where something that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (...) It was named after an incidence of frequency illusion in which the Baader–Meinhof Group was mentioned.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...
A bit off topic but I was wondering what you mean with Baader-Meinhof - don’t see the obvious link and curious if there’s an expression / connection linked to RAF
Not sure where it's got this name from, though.
It's right in the paragraph you linked: "It was named after an incidence of frequency illusion in which the Baader–Meinhof Group [0] was mentioned."
I recommend it to many people as a way of demonstrating that "hey, a few simple breathing tweaks might be really helpful".
I tried it, but didn't really see the benefit with quick breaths but maybe I didn't do it long enough.
You can save settings, so I have a "Quick calm down" that's just 3 minutes, going down to 4.5 breaths/min, and a "Slooow" that 6 minutes long that has me at 3 breaths/min for most of it, and a "Slooow continued" that starts at 3 breaths/min and just continues for another 5 minutes, for when I just want to stay there for a while. I also have a square breathing pattern saved, 6 seconds per side, but I don't much like square breathing.
Inhale and exhale is shown visually, by sounds, or by phone vibrations. No other fluff.
Recently I've taken an interest in fitness (again) and, via a garmin watch, I've learnt my resting heart-rate is ~42 most nights, some nights dipping to 39. I'm by no means exceptionally fit, but have to think the slow breathing techniques are the cause.
The biggest part for becoming a confident public speaker was the psychological side (aside from all the usual stuff about slowing down mentally). Becoming conscious of breathing for just a few seconds before starting works wonders, as does carefully timing awkward to produce sounds/syllables on different parts of the breathing downstroke.
I've been doing this for 30yrs (i wrote 20 initially ... forgot i'm old :) now, slow breathing is the norm at the desk & before speaking to an audience/hosting meetings etc I still have to follow the same steps every time otherwise I start tripping over my tongue.
vargas nerve, parasympathetic nervous system, etc.
(sourced from a quick google search; it's been 2 years since I was active in this and I don't have my sources in short-term memory).
I've been trying to lower my HR when steady-state jogging also & variability came up a lot in my light reading on techniques for doing that also, but the articles did tend to feel a lot more at the quackery end of the scale
I go to get diagnosed, and they give you a nebulizer with something that triggers symptoms if you have it. I didn't visibly react, so the tech did it again, then measured the difference in my breathing. Whoops, the lack of visible response meant that I should have stopped after one dose.
So, I couldn't leave until after enough doses of an inhaler that it went back to normal. About 7 hits, I looked like I was sunburned for a while.
It's helpful (for many of us) to have guided breath meditation, if only to get into the right headspace needed for sustained "focus" on breath. Thanissaro Bhikkhu is perhaps the most chill human on the planet.
Brainstem structures located in the medulla are in charge of the automatic mode, whereas cortico-subcortical brain networks - including various frontal lobe areas - subtend the voluntary mode.
Patients suffering from central congenital hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS), a very rare developmental condition secondary to brainstem dysfunction, make themselves breathe consciously while awake, but require mechanically-assisted ventilation (MV) during sleep to overcome the inability of brainstem structures to mediate automatic spontaneous breathing (SB), which is unreliable.
This study used EEG-fMRI to compare patterns of brain activity between voluntary and autonomic ventilation during wakefulness. It found that the CCHS patient was more efficient in cognitive tasks requiring executive control during MV than during SB. Mechanical ventilation freed up the brain to perform other cognitive functions.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Urinating.
Defecating.
Navigating.
Grooming.
Voting.
Adjudicating.
Loving.
Hating.
I mostly just tried to breathe through my nose as much as possible, with a lesser focus on breathing slower. At first it was difficult because it always felt like my nose was stuffy and hard to breathe through, but there are some techniques to clear it temporarily [0]. And over time my nasal passages became clearer to where I very rarely have trouble breathing through my nose.
Of course I don't know for sure if that was actually what brought my heart rate down, but the timeline fits pretty well. Plus I figure the cost and risks of just trying to improve your breathing are pretty much nil, so it's worth a shot.
He did a promotional appearance [1] for the book with Joe Rogan that covers a bunch of the material, but the book is interesting beyond what gets discussed in the interview.
[0] https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5o9b2RVC2E
He explains that you can change the pH levels in your body with breathing techniques. And this alters how your nerves are working.
Very interesting: https://youtu.be/hJ7zbsRM0-c
[0] https://edlatimore.com/wim-hof-method-review/#the-science
Edit: found a twitter thread where he told someone to not do it before freediving, so at least we agree there. I've just seen his method mentioned so many times in relation to breath hold, and it's so incredibly dangerous to do under water.
The breathing sessions are also an easy way to get meditation and body scan exercises into the daily routine. Definitely recommend it
Your comment sounded good until that sentence, I sweat profusely in anything approaching normal temperatures and wouldn't want to lower my "starting to sweat" temperature (which now is at about 20 C) by another ten degrees...
Rather than just raising body temperature to become impervious to cold, it's actually giving your body a greater ability to regulate its own temperature. So in cold you're warmer, in hot you're cooler. When I started doing the exercises, I was living in Southeast Asia and sweating profusely whenever I left AC environments. After about a month of the breathing exercises, I stopped sweating almost entirely. I originally attributed it to my body adjusting to the climate, but when I returned home to the US, I also found that the cold no longer bothered me.
Breathing exercises help move your "inner energy" through your body. The book I'd recommend is the Tao Te Ching if you're interested.
Needless to say, Apple Watch Series 6 doesn't seem to have this feature and I assume that the accuracy was an issue as off the shelf pulse-oximeters which claim to measure both SpO2 and breath rate do a bad job at the latter.
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/155-make-me-breathe-properly-he...
I know from my own experience that it works for me to calm down stage fright prior to public speaking or important presentations :-).
“...humans have on average a heart rate of around 60 to 70 beats per minute, give or take. We live roughly 70 or so years, giving us just over 2 billion beats all up.”[2]
Other animals follow a similar trend, according to [2], and I find that to be much more interesting.
[0] https://heart.bmj.com/content/99/12/882
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/174182671039427...
[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/relationship-between-heart-beat...
Now we are seeing an explosion in breathing related practices from Wim Hof, to Kelly Starrett and the Navy Seals essentially taking a practice that people have been doing for millennia and making it seem novel.
For example, yogic breathing (pranayama) is a well-known ancient practice of controlled breathing, ..."
I don't think it was discredited. It's just making the case stronger using science. I believe this will keep happening and that's good!
Mindfulness is another example that we're just a little farther along with. It's now becoming widely known that being mindful for 5-15 minutes a day will lower your stress levels or help you control emotions or rise in the corporate ladder or help with other sorts of problematic behavior. But what happens when you go further? 2500 years ago, people knew that meditating for 1-2 hours a day leads to dramatic, permanent, and wildly transformative changes to your perceptions of reality and your relationship with the sensate world. But words like "awakening" are spiritual mumbo-jumbo so we apply our natural scientific skepticism, largely ignore the deep parts, and do our society a disservice.
So on one hand, you're right that we don't just completely dismiss these things. But on the other hand, we do often dismiss the important parts.
Because a lot of it _is_ spiritual mumbo-jumbo.
The books "The Mind Illuminated" and "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" occasionally get recommended on here and are pretty mainstream books, supposedly backed by "brain science" and written by two PhDs. Let me give an excerpt from "The Mind Illuminated":
"The first practice involves cultivating the so-called “higher knowledges of the mundane type.” These are: 1. The “higher powers,” which are said to allow a yogi to perform miracles such as walking on water, or walking through walls. [...] 4. Knowing the minds of others, which is a form of telepathy. 5. Recollecting past lives"
And this isn't presented as a "oh, here's this historical context", it's presented without any real comment next to the jhanas.
Or, a nice bit in "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha", talking about pyschic powers:
"On the other hand, it does seem to be possible through powerful intent, strong concentration ability, appreciation of interdependence and careful experimentation to manipulate what we might call “this world”,as well as those in it, in very unusual and profound ways. Yes, I am referring to such things as telekinesis, mind control, reading other peoples thoughts, pyromancy, and all of that. The more you get your concentration and insight trips together and the more you look into the magical aspect of things, the more you will learn about what I will call the magical laws of the universe and how to use your will to manipulate it."
You know why people are skeptical of things like "awakening"? Because it's sold in the same breath as all the religious parts, making it impossible to discern which is what. If the cost of getting to 'the deep parts' means having to not dismiss such obvious bullshit like pyromancy, I think society will do fine with such 'disservice'.
So when you reach for The Mind Illuminated, which is a 400 page book, and trivialize the 390 pages of good pragmatic instructions on improving concentration and insight skills because you read 10 pages of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, you're missing a powerful opportunity.
The fact is that if you sit quietly and pay attention to your breath for a couple hours a day, some very transformative stuff will eventually start happening all on its own. No books or religion is required. But as a society, we mostly aren't willing to do that because of attitudes like that displayed in your post. We're making progress, though. Brains of advanced practitioners are being put in fMRIs with surprising results, and things are happening slowly. My point was that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in the name of being good scientists.
This is just so crazy to me. We have a book that claims to be scientific while making absolute absurd statements without any comment, why wouldn't we dismiss it? It's a bit hyperbolic, but imagine if "Introduction to Electrodynamics" included a chapter on how to use magnets to communicate with god. To me it would absolutely ruin what is otherwise an amazing resource, because it fundamentally ruins my ability to trust the source. It doesn't matter if the rest of it is actually legitimate and good, either they're unable or unwilling to separate what is legitimate knowledge and what is religion.
Honestly, I'm actually rahter disturbed by the book's reception. It's a well received best seller that even on the (supposedly) skeptical HN is praised without a caveat. Not only that, but if you look into a lot of meditation forums, a lot of people into meditation do genuinely believe in the supernatural stuff. I can't imagine a better sign to show that we're not skeptical enough.
>The fact is that if you sit quietly and pay attention to your breath for a couple hours a day, some very transformative stuff will eventually start happening all on its own.
Sure and if you state it that way, I'd wager most people wouldn't dismiss it. The issue is that 99% of the time, this is not how it's sold.
>But as a society, we mostly aren't willing to do that because of attitudes like that displayed in your post
Sure, but without this attitude it's also a lot easier to fall for (intentional or unintentional) bullshit of all sorts. I used to be really into chaos magick (same deal basically, natural 'brain hacking') and I'm pretty sure without this attitude I would have turned into of the crazies who thinks their self inflicted psychosis means they have the powers to alter reality.
The fact that most people in meditation forums either outright admit believing the supernatural stuff or are incredibly evasive about it (just like with chaos magick), says more than enough in my opinion.
>My point was that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in the name of being good scientists.
We shouldn't, but we should also be as skeptic as possible and dismiss people who seamlessly interweave facts and fiction, because that's also how conspiracy theorists and nonsensical "alternative medicine" quacks sell their craft.
But all that aside, it's not really about believing or not believing in whatever the claims are. These disciplines are all based on the 'doing' aspect - you do it, and if you feel the slow transformation of your character, then great. Whether or not you become a pyromancer is actually not important, most of these disciplines actually discourage these things even though they believe in them. Their stance is that different strange abilities may come and go but clinging to them is more destructive to progress than anything.
Proving things impossible is beyond the scope of _any_ science, that's just how epistemology works.
>How can you know that mind control is impossible?
I can't. I also can't know with absolute certainty that climate change is real, that the earth isn't flat, that vaccines work and don't cause autism or that bill gates isn't a satanist using covid pandemic to implant people with mind control microchips.
I have seen absolutely no evidence for any of it and all the believers seem to be absolute lunatics, so the chance of it being true are low enough that I'm pretty comfortable with acting like I know it for certain.
>If you were truly capable of it, would you advertise it?
Well, I'd say writing about your experience with your abilities in a book certainly counts as a form of advertisement! I also don't really see what there'd be to worry about if it's true that these powers could simply be learned.
>But all that aside, it's not really about believing or not believing in whatever the claims are. >Whether or not you become a pyromancer is actually not important, most of these disciplines actually discourage these things even though they believe in them.
Sure, they might see it like that, but I don't think it makes sense for anyone else to view it this way. If someone is either lying or deluding themselves, I think that's pretty important information to consider! If someone is, say, an anti-vaxxer that doesn't mean everything they're saying is false, but it certainly makes it seem pretty reasonable to dismiss what they're saying until they've provide some actual evidence.
Similarly, why shouldn't I be skeptic of people who are claiming supernatural powers while not being able to offer any evidence? Especially because they're not making it clear where knowledge ends and religion begins, possibly because they themselves don't know.
The same is true in strength training, where coaches like Charles Poliquin used techniques that weren't "scientifically validated" till decades later.
Meditation and mindfulness has pre-dated Calm, Headspace and the SV bubble by a couple of millennia so it's important to have an open mind to practices that don't yet have papers in PubMed. Just because a doctor can't prescribe it to you doesn't make it bogus.
Agreed that there’s a lot of time that has been lost on these really important topics. I’d readily concede that a lot of that time has been lost because of frankly racist perspectives on other cultures. Just like meditation is not - or ought not be - exclusively an eastern innovation, science is not - and ought not be - exclusively a western innovation. Let’s take findings like this as an absolutely critical merging of thought and not a subversion or subjugation of thought.
It is also refreshing to see that modern science is now starting to investigate these various practices so as to determine the mechanism and physiological impact behind them. The fact that psilocybin and ayahuasca are now being researched for their medicinal properties under lab settings is refreshing.
However, going back to breath work it would be nice if these publications gave credit to the original practitioners instead of framing the research as novel and revolutionary.
Well, sure, and they've also been saying for 1000s of years that if you just meditate hard enough you'll get supernatural abilities.
If you mix religion and actual knowledge, I think you should expect to generally be dismissed until there's some more evidence.
One of the earliest recorded mentions is in the Bhagavad Gita (set in 2500 BC). In it, Krishna tells Arjuna to calm his mind, focus his gaze on the tip of his nose, and concentrate on his breath.
One of the greatest practioners was Sri Aurobindo who practised this for 8 hours a day for several weeks. He then reported a radiating energy through his body and wrote "Savitri" - 24,000 line poem in English while hiding from the British in French-occupied Pondicherry.
> The act of controlling one’s breath for the purpose of restoring or enhancing one’s health has been practiced for thousands of years amongst Eastern cultures. For example, yogic breathing (pranayama) is a well-known ancient practice of controlled breathing, often performed in conjunction with meditation or yoga, for its spiritual and perceived health-enhancing effects.
There is no substitute for the scientific method.
Yoga and Ayurveda have proven benefits.
More personally, why aren't you just happy to see extra validation of something you believe in?
One is what is discussed in the article (prāṇāyāma) controlling breath for health benefits and calm. Slowing the breath, holding after exhale. Often as preparation for meditation.
Another is focusing on breath as meditation practise. In that practise breath is not subject to control, it's subject of attention and focus. The breath usually calms down during meditation but it rarely slows down as much as during controlled breath exercises.
Of the many Vedas, the Ayurveda and the Yajurveda cover many medical bodies of knowledge.
The various Wikipedia articles cover these.
I used to get disappointed at how various Indian bodies of knowledge are treated here at HN by some ( not all, no point in generalising). But I then remember that regardless of what a few unaware works like to claim as “spirit medicine”, millions of us Indians and others around the world enjoy the benefits of Ayurveda.
For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda#Classification_and_ef....
Without science, you don't know if it's the slow breathing, the lead-infused tonic, or the oil pulling that's working.
The "Indian bodies of knowledge" get passed through the scrutiny of experimentation and end up living on in practices like slow breathing and mindfulness while we leave harmful superstitions behind like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samskara_(ayurvedic). What's the problem?
One example, disrespectfully calling it “spirit medicine”.
==== That Wikipedia article doesn’t account for the practices at well regarded Ayurveda schools and clinics, btw. The doctors are such places aren’t “reluctant to admit” that certain herbs may cause issues, and in fact consultation to identify a person’s composition and the suitability of families of herbs is the first step.
What the article reports about the issue of lead and other items in various mass manufactured medicines is true and this is not an Ayurvedic issue but one of unscrupulous medicine manufacturers.
The socialiest species.
Re-breathing your own expelled air is provably bad for health.
The mandatory mask wearing is anti-peace, anti-life, anti-'all the good stuff mentioned above'. And governments have made this mandatory in many places. I can't think of something more anti-life than restricting free breathing.
Governments are mandating anti-life activity, and this is accepted!
This has been rolled out and is encouraged by most. Its even actually considered ok to shame and snitch on others who don't accept it.
For me, the mask 'cure' is worse than the disease. How many people will suffer known health effects from wearing masks, for the sake of the unproven hypothesis that they mitigate something?
I don't understand those on this thread who are happy to upvote the nice comments, while overlooking the elephant in the room. Perhaps you didn't recognise it as the mask is covering its whole trunk!!
None? Or they are probably already in a physical state in which going out in public during a pandemic is not a good idea?
On the other hand, wearing a mask does prevent particulate transmission, which is provably good for other people's health.
Would you be able to provide any reliable evidence to your claim?
Surgeons wearing masks for a period of time during an operation is not the same thing. But I would expect that those surgeons that wear masks the most would suffer with dental issues, sores, and breathing issues. Are you able to prove that there are no deleterious effects?
Its not proven that masks prevents particulate transmission. Can you provide reliable evidence for your claim?
And to governments now, can you provide that evidence before you start enforcing mandates please? And, why the evidence is so patchy - no distancing or masks in Sweden. Sometimes masks are mandatory and advised, then sometimes not. Its mixed messaging because there is no evidence.
This is not a logical conclusion. However, in Japanese culture, people wear masks by choice when they are ill. So it's not universal that people don't choose to wear masks.
> Are you able to prove that there are no deleterious effects?
That's not how it works - the side making a claim has to provide evidence.
> Its not proven that masks prevents particulate transmission. Can you provide reliable evidence for your claim?
CDC - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...
Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
UCSF - https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...
> Its mixed messaging because there is no evidence
It's mixed messaging because this was a novel virus, and we didn't know how to deal with it at first. Also, with shortage supplies, the initial guidance was focused on ensuring sufficient PPE would be available to medical workers. Finally, it's a very complex situation - looking at something in isolation is reductionist and doesn't help with understanding.
> That's not how it works - the side making a claim has to provide evidence.
Lol! Who is making the claim? Is it me who's saying that we should be able to breath as nature intended (without masks)? Or you who's saying that we should wear masks? Who has to prove their case do you think?!?
And a breaking story - "Covid-19 study on mask-wearing efficacy rejected by journals"
https://www.rt.com/news/504219-danish-mask-study-rejected-co...
No one will publish the study...
You are making the claim that masks hinder respiration. This has not been supported by evidence, theoretical or outcome based. What is your hypothesis for the mechanism? We know that gases diffuse through the material.
> No one will publish the study... The fact that a single study is problematic - without specifying why it's problematic, and without any mention of the many other studies - is not a very strong discussion point.
I appreciate the time you put in, but I think we're so far apart that I don't see any reason to continue this thread.