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Comment by ponderingfish | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing but praNayaama packaged in a fancy journal paper. It's been practised in India for > 4000 years as part of Yoga.

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.

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To be fair, "this is nothing but [ancient spiritual practice] but with science backing up the claims" is more valuable than this comment might imply. There's an awful lot of ancient spiritual practices that have no benefit and lots of harm and are still practiced today in the name of ancient spiritual practices (stuff like rhino horns). So having some science behind it is worth a lot more than "packaged in a fancy journal paper".

Agreed, but I also think it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine has been around for a long time now, yet why has there been so little attention paid to the issue of healthy breathing? Why do doctors not assess a patient's breathing rate just like they would their heart rate or blood pressure? It's astounding that an advanced medical science would bypass something so foundational for so long.

Nope - that just supposes that 5000 years of practise was done for fun and had no health benefits. And, now it is upto a few scientists to discover what 5000 years of sustained practise could not. They could have just referred to Sushruta Samhita or patanjali's yoga-sutras where praNayama and its benefits are dicussed in detail.

Well, blood-letting had 2000 years of practice and authors discussing its benefits in detail. and turned out that was done for fun and had no health benefits (in fact, it was harmful).

For some diseases and conditions it is actually healthy. You of course have to be careful with it.

And what of the hundreds of other practices? Shall we take all old things at face value and never study them? We study things we "already know" all the time. Often we discover new things while doing so, but still prove our previously held beliefs more true.

More personally, why aren't you just happy to see extra validation of something you believe in?

You are still assuming 5000 years of sustained practices have health benefits..

You're assuming studies conducted today with minimal or no replication of results are evidence of health benefits. If 5000 of scientifically less-than-perfect evidence is not worth anything, then this study is also worth nothing.

As karatinversion already pointed out, some traditional health practices have been shown to be ineffective, or even actively harmful.

There is no substitute for the scientific method.

I'm not citing it as a substitute, rather I'm saying that it isn't something you can entirely discount either. And we know for a fact that a lot of published "scientific" studies turn out to be not reproducible too, but people will continue to believe them for a long time regardless.

Nothing to assume.

Yoga and Ayurveda have proven benefits.

What method was used to prove their benefits if it wasn’t the scientific method?

I was referring to the word “assume”.

Doing it.

[replied to wrong comment]

From the introduction:

> 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 are two very different ways to use breath in yogic traditions.

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.

It's even older in other parts of the world, of course.

There is indeed quite a lot of written evidence in palm scripts as well as books and works that are a few thousand years old.

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.

Without science, all you have is superstition. Also, science lets you extract what wisdom there is in a tradition/ritual instead of throwing the whole baby out with the bathwater.

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?

“ 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.

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