Comment by graderjs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graderjs | Hacker News Reader

Yes that's why yoga is so good at calming you down and making you healthy. It soothes and calms the parasympathetic nervous system, and helps relieve and release many held tensions in the body.

It's no good just to do meditation and calm your mind if your body and nervous system is still holding on to so much stress.

The body remembers many things and "embodies" many emotions. You can notice this if you do part-by-part relaxation. Lie down in corpse pose and close your eyes, and relax each part of your body by turn. From right toes, through feet, ankles, calves, shins, knees, thighs, hips. Then the left leg. Then right fingertips and the rest of the right arm. Then left arm. Then abdomen. Then chest. Then spine. Then head.

The more granular you go with relaxing each part of the anatomy, the more intense (and longer in duration) it is. [E.g. in feet you can do: relax each toe, toe nail, first joint of the big toe, ball of the big toe, next toe. Then soul of the foot. Then inner side of the foot. Then outer side. Then top of the foot. Then inside the foot. Bones and joints in the foot. Muslces and tendons in the foot. Nerves of the foot. Skin of the foot.] Relax each part. Let of any tension in each part. And move on.

Anyway, you can just do a level of anatomical granularity you are comfortable with. But what you will probably notice is that as you go over your body doing this, your mind will wander, and stuff you hadn't thought about the entire day (or longer) will come up. Some annoying or painful or traumatic moment or whatever will arise, as you hit on some particular body part. And it will interrupt your relaxation. So you just stay with it, and then keep going, relaxing your body. Skeptical folks will probably doubt that there's a correlation between a body part and a "stored" emotion or experience, but in that case I encourage you to try it. Relaxing the body in this way really relieves and releases many things stored in it, that without bringing awareness to them in this way, you would not have realized.

> It's no good just to do meditation and calm your mind if your body and nervous system is still holding on to so much stress.

I just want to point out that for nearly all of its history yoga is primarily about meditation, with the asanas being preliminary, quickly covered material in most classic texts.

The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali are a good reference for anyone curious (though the sections on the siddhis is... interesting).

Exactly. Was created to support meditation. But doesn't mean you have to meditation. You can get the benefits without it...although maybe not the magical powers! Haha. Although...the postures are pretty powerful! :)

> It soothes and calms the parasympathetic nervous system

Wouldn't you want to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system? Not calm it?

I think the non-scientific explanation is that with conditions such as anxiety and chronic stress it's consistently engaged, but only slightly (like background noise).

You need to fully stimulate it for it to relax afterwards. That can also be accomplished with breathing exercises, ice baths, etc.

That can also be accomplished with breathing exercises, ice baths, etc.

Or yoga...That stretching! And posture.

The parasympathetic nervous system is a control mechanism over the sympathetic nervous system. When the latter is stimulated, you become anxious and excited. When the former is stimulated, it tamps down on the latter, causing you to relax. Either one or the other is active.

“Relaxing” the parasympathetic system would therefore free the sympathetic nervous system to activate more strongly, thereby making you more anxious.

It’s distracting and disorienting when people appropriate medical and scientific language to explain their internal experience of the world. One is measured through experiment, the other through direct perception.

Is it really tho, a control mechanism? Not really.

Tamps down on? That's not true. Either one or the other is active? They're both continuously active.

Relaxing would free it? No, that's not true. When you relax a nervous system it becomes more effectively active, because the signals are more coherent. Yeah, more anxious? No.

Hahaha! Distracting and disorienting? Hahah! Medical and scientific? You mean like you're doing? You're the one misappropriating meanings here.

Internal experience of the world? Or their internal experience of a textbook, that you've misinterpreted anyway? Well look, internal experience is what you have to rely on. Otherwise you end up with these sort of uh, twisted textbook definitions where you don't have the experience.

You need to have the experience first. Only then will you know the meaning of those words. That’s why yoga is so important: it gives you more experience—of who you are, of your body, of how it works.

Perception and experiment? Very clever, haha :) Well look, I see you're trying to make a point. I see you're trying to contribute. But the problem is here, you just don't know. You don't have the experience to know what these words really mean in this context. And so, you know, you're not useful here. I'm sorry. Your contribution is not useful anyway.

Maybe you have a bad experience with yoga or a teacher or something. In the past, I don't know. It's possible. A girlfriend left for someone she met in the class or you felt like the class humiliated you. Look, it can happen. You can have bad teachers or bad classes. I feel sorry for you if that's the case. But you just don't know in this context. So, I encourage you to give it another shot. Give yoga another shot and give it a try. I got super lucky. I had a great teacher. So, I encourage you to try to find a really great teacher. Best of luck to you.

Hehe. The linguist has identified a distinction. Whatever works for you: maybe some stimulation, maybe some relaxation. :)

We calm it and maybe it isn't active. We stimulate it and then it's relaxing us. I see what you're saying.

Is there another side to it? Isn't calm and soothed a form of stimulation? An active, easy coherence?

Maybe we don't want to be over-stimulated. Stimulated in the right way creates coherence, in the wrong way, chaos. We can be calm--and active. Or we can be stimulated--and uneasy.

You don't have to worry that it won't be stimulated in the right way when it's calmed and soothed: it will be. And that's what you want.

So, I don't think you can go wrong with a calm and soothed parasympathetic nervous system. That's the way to go. For me, soothes and calms is coherence. And that's good for your body, and good for you, it's what you'll feel when you do yoga.

I would argue that the verb forms of calm and sooth connote stimulation, whereas the adjective form of calm might be a lack of stimuli. I'm not sure there is a present tense adjective form of sooth? But certainly one might say, "this music is very calming" so in that case the stimulus is causing the non-stimulated (by my definition) state... Offsetting the anxiety causing stimuli? I am neither a linguist nor a medical professional, but you got me thinking! Thanks.

Someone smarter than me please let me know :D

Haha! Yes, I’m sure. Very clever, very smart. Good thought :D ;p xx

That’s actually not what the paper is saying. It’s only comparing heart rate changes to anxiety.

Haha :) This is not a summary of the paper. This is how it relates to something you can use to be healthy now.

Wouldn't a nicotine patch to sync para- and sympathetic systems help?

I don't know. Nicotine can produce that intense relaxation. But why take a toxin for what you can get with just your body and some intelligent practices? All upside. Except it takes effort! :) But the longer term effects are way better for yoga than nicotine. Those two paths diverge pretty quickly by a lot I think.

Nicotine is only toxic in high doses, which naturally greatly exceed that which you get from a patch. You could say the same thing about basically anything; say someone recommended eating a banana to cure cramps. Potassium is also toxic in high doses. I agree yoga is a great practice but that doesn’t exclude the beneficial effects nicotine can provide. For example, I can chew nicotine gum during exams but I can’t do yoga.

For example, I can chew nicotine gum during exams but I can’t do yoga.

But if you're doing yoga the benefits extend in time far beyond the session. So say you're doing hatha yoga 3 times a week. You're going to be relaxed and calm; your nervous system is going to be more resilient to stress; You're going to be more focused; you're going to sleep better and need less sleep -- for that whole week. So the "half-life" is a lot longer compared to nicotine.

Nicotine is only toxic in high doses

But also...acutely toxic at high doses. It's still a toxin at low doses. And I wouldn't say how it's giving you the relaxation it is healthy for you at low doses. But yoga is.

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