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Comment by vmurthy | Hacker News Reader

The author's blog post should come with a disclaimer :) .

A while ago I tried a few breathing techniques which were given in a nice book [0]. I really enjoyed the after-effects of the said techniques so I decided to mix and match some of them etc. The effects were awesome .. at first.

After a couple of weeks, I started feeling very low for no particular reason (no dietary changes or anything) and just downright weird. I eliminated one factor after another and checked if my energy levels were OK. I finally gave up the experiment on breathing techniques and restarted what was in the book. I am good, now.

So.. despite a sample size of one and a trial which wasn't random or controlled (:)) , my advice on this whole thing : Get a qualified teacher and do what is taught. YMMV otherwise.

[0] https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B07WSBS5S4/ref=kinw_myk_ro_...

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Isn't that really sort of a turbocharged version of the hedonic treadmill? Anything that makes you feel good, if you do it enough, becomes the new level of 'normal' and you feel worse when you're not doing it. The better it makes you feel, the more intense the effect.

I have a family friend that recently had 2 strokes. The doctors are confused because he has none of the risk factors for a stroke. Really, he pretty closely follows this: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32143344). However, he's been practicing breathing exercises for years and his resting heart rate is ridiculously low.

Are you suggesting that the breathing exercises are to blame?

Well that would require some critical thinking about the pseudoscience.

Breathing exercises (and pranayama) are not pseudoscience. But the claim that they are is pseudoscience.

As OP states you should be careful. Alternate nostril breathing is a good general purpose one.

So is box breathing (aka Navy SEAL breathing).

I don't think the above poster was claiming that breath exercises are pseudoscience, I think they were referring to the practice of claiming certain health benefits without scientific studies backing the claims. There are very real benefits that can be scientifically studied but there is also a lot of grandiose exaggeration and wishful thinking out there, as with every field of medicine throughout human history. It requires great care to sort out such things and that we learned to do so (at some level) is IMO one of the greatest triumphs of the modern scientific method.

Now, whether science has more to learn from things like pranayama is a different subject and I think there still certainly is much to learn. But that means IMO we must be very careful in what claims we make and how we back them up.

Edit: I'm not criticizing anyone or claiming anything does or doesn't work, I'm simply advocating for a scientific approach.

> I don't think the above poster was claiming that breath exercises are pseudoscience,

How do you know? Are you sure? There's a lot of that (dumb reflex skepticism). Seems that's what they're saying.

> It requires great care to sort

Care, a good teacher or information, experience, caution. All agree.

In general I think the Indians really know what they're doing in this space but in my experience a lot of Western teachings of it tries to teach it dislocated from the source of the knowledge and so it can be dangerous or not healthy like in your experience.

All in all breathing exercises are a pretty subtle practice and skill, and easy to do wrong, and surprising how powerful they can be. I think people do need to be careful when they press those buttons, because they have powerful effects and if not done right they may be doing the wrong things for that person: not a perfect analogy but to give people an idea of the respect needed analogous with taking the wrong prescription medicines.

But definitely I think people should do more because it's beneficial. But got to do it right.

> How do you know? Are you sure? There's a lot of that (dumb reflex skepticism). Seems that's what they're saying.

What? I don't know. That's why I qualified the statement with "I don't think". Perhaps I misunderstood. But I agree with the rest of everything you said.

> but in my experience a lot of Western teachings of it tries to teach it dislocated from the source of the knowledge and so it can be dangerous or not healthy like in your experience

Sorry I think there's been some confusion, I made no claims either way about anyone's teachings and have said nothing about my own experience.

> I made no claims either way about anyone's

No that was the second part of my comment where I'm not responding to what you're saying specifically I'm just adding on my own information. Taking the thread as an opportunity, a jumping off point to share what I think.

Sorry, then, I think I understand you better now and I appreciate what you added. Thanks for your replies.

I think the most scientific response would be to take 10 minutes to try it. I hypothesize you will feel something different than you did in the 10 minutes prior. If you're being skeptical of a stronger claim of what these techniques can do, I (and many who have tried breathing techniques) may well agree with you, but you're going to have to be more specific.

I presume you are calling the area of breathing techniques to be pseudoscince. I too was skeptical but some of the Huberman's podcasts and especially the one with Dr. Jack Feldman [1], has changed my opinion about (breathing techniques) and realise some of these do have a scientific basis. 1. https://hubermanlab.com/dr-jack-feldman-breathing-for-mental...

Prof. Huberman is an excellent source of information and it's always worth listening to what he and his podcast guests have to say. But be aware that he has a bias toward action (interventions), which sometimes runs ahead of the science and isn't fully justified from an evidence-based medicine standpoint.

I agree with that.But at the same time probably that's what makes his podcast interesting to me. There are actions that are suggested which I can take to make my day/lifestyle better. As far as I recall most of the actions he suggest are (zero or low risk ones) and there is no harm in trying them. Some of the interventions he suggested (like not drinking coffee as first thing in morning, exposure to sunlight) have indeed helped me.

About 20 years ago people used to say the same thing about mindfulness and meditation. When looking for books at the library or bookstore, you were guided to the spiritual or esoteric section. It's been funny to see them slowly migrate to the medical one.

Today we're living something of a renaissance for psychedelics, with promises of therapeutic benefits for myriad of mental issues. At the time they were forbidden, someone came up with a breathing technique to induce the same therapeutic effects (see Stanislav Grof, holotropic breathwork), which is pretty much an offshoot of the same original techniques Wim Hof expands from.

Connect those dots with critical thinking.

> About 20 years ago people used to say the same thing about mindfulness and meditation

I’d say that about mindfulness and meditation today: https://neurosciencenews.com/mindfulness-problem-14196/

Please don't post shallow dismissals, flamebait, or name-calling comments to HN.

If you'd like to make your substantive points without those things, that would be great.

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