I started reading his book Breath, and he made the starting claim that, in essence, you could choose to be either energetic or restful by picking one nostril to breathe out of for awhile. (Naturally we breath out of one nostril at a time, and the body goes back and forth, but "it's a balance that can also be gamed").
I found this claim a bit... suspicious, and Googled, and didn't find much scientific evidence for this claim. I found a bunch of blog posts by yoga-affiliated people, and the like.
I asked about this on Biology Stack Exchange, unfortunately with no answer.
I would be very curious if any HN reader knows more about this. That said, my impression of Nestor (who is a journalist, and not a scientist) was that he was perhaps a bit too eager to jump to conclusions.
There’s an entire practice around this stemming from yogic philosophy called nadi shoodana—alternate nostril breathing—the theory essentially says doing this can regulate different male and female energies in the body, which are both responsible for different things, including energy levels (hyper vs relaxed).
I can’t personally attest to any of the deeper claims of the theory, but I have used the alternate nostril breathing as part of meditation practice and I can say that focusing on the breath in this way at the very least helps one enter a meditative state, like many other pranayama techniques.
I’ve never dug into the science attempting to prove the proclaimed effects since experientially it helps me enter meditation, which is what I value it for—I’m not so sure its a good use of time trying to validate the overarching theoretical claims of ancient sources—the practices can still be highly beneficial even if the claims aren’t correct, and I think the main benefit of controlled breathing practices relate to meditation. (that said the body is an interconnected system so its totally plausible that regulating the breath, thus the heartbeat, thus the flow of blood throughout the system could have system wide effects).
If nothing else, hopefully these terms help you in your research.
If anyone else was confused (I was and had to google), the practice of alternate nostril breathing entails physically obstructing alternating nostrils with a finger as you take breaths.
There's a joke in Russian quite popular among small kids: "The hedgehog learned to breathe through his butthole. One day he sat down to rest and suffocated".
(Hedgehog is the hero if many slightly absurdist jokes).
Let me actually encourage you try this. Imagine you have a third nostril placed between the 2 real (forming a line or a triangle - whatever you like better), visualize and "sensualize" (do your best imagining it in details and feeling it) breathing through 3 nostrils. As a result this may trigger a nasal congestion relief. Try this the next time you catch a cold.
Not going to lie: "Naturally we breath out of one nostril at a time" had me looking very confused! I even tried contorting my face to get one of my nostrils to close, haha
If you pay attention, one of the nostrils are likely to be more active (as measured in air flow) at a given time and the active nostril will switch side from time to time, perhaps something like every couple of hours.
If anyone wants to experience this kind of breathing in the context of a Yoga class, I really recommend this Sivananda class. It combines sun salutations with breathing exercises for really interesting experience. I have no idea on the science, but it has been a positive addition to my life.
I haven't tried the one nostril approach except briefly in yoga class, but you can control your energetic/restful activation level by controlling the length of inhalation and exhalation.
> Naturally we breath out of one nostril at a time
I don't understand how anyone can make that statement with a straight face. Unless one nostril is blocked, we use both simultaneously. There's no balance to be gamed.
That's not actually true. If you research it, you'll find that most people's nostrils alternately dilate and contract (the tissues reduce/swell). Most of us breathe primarily through only one nostril at a time, and it switches approximately every half hour. This is entirely unconscious and we're generally not aware of it.
There is a little bit of airflow in the constricted nostril, but nowhere near comparable to the other. You can test this by covering up your nostrils individually and comparing how easy it is to breathe through them. Then wait a half hour and try it again. (Note that a minority of people do not have this.)
However, this is not something you can consciously control or override, any more than you can override contractions in your intestine.
Came here to say the same. I was completely unaware of the nasal cycle until I got further into my meditation practice, but you totally can notice which nostril is taking in more air if you practice training your awareness on it. It was surprising to me when I first noticed it.
One of my yoga teachers has us find the one that is currently dominant in the cycle before we practice nadi shodhana pranayama, and then select the starting nostril based on that.
> This is entirely unconscious and we're generally not aware of it.
I wonder if I'm unusual in that I can consciously control which nostril is open or closed. Most of the time the switching from side to side is unconscious but if I concentrate, I can cause it to happen consciously. This is really useful when I have a cold and a blocked nostril and I want to get some relief when blowing my nose doesn't help - I just focus on allowing that side of my sinuses to open and after a few minutes it will happen.
It’s more like one nostril is high-velocity and the other is low-velocity, not that one is completely blocked. The evolutionary reason is thought to be that it aids the perception of low PPM volatile organic compounds (i.e. bad smells = rot, toxic chemicals) because the ‘blocked’ nostril is used as a sense chamber which lets the air spend more time within, thus increase the effective sensitivity of your sense of smell.
If you do not have this behaviour (which can disappear with certain neurological diseases or just idiopathically not exist) you also likely have a reduced sense of smell.
Can confirm that I "smell" through one nostril at a time. I can smell more sensitively than others (for example, realise that milk is rotten before others do). I have noticed that when I try blocking one of my nostrils, my sense of smell is considerably lower, and it is not always the left nostril or always the right nostril. It kind of alternates, and I don't know the pattern. It might be that both nostrils alternate doing the task of smelling at different times.
Yep, one of my nostrils always feels blocked but my fiancée’s nostrils are always wide open on both sides. I’m practically green with envy. Only being able to breathe using half of your nose is frustrating.
It's weird how much we take for granted without ever expecting it to be different for others. I thought you guys were just screwing with me re: having an alternating congested nostril. Like, I only experience that during severe nasal congestion, and it seems mostly to stick with one side or the other depending on which side I'm laying on.
It never even occurred to me that people would experience something like that _all the time_!
I literally spent most of the day after reading this yesterday testing, and they were identical (or near enough as made no difference). Today, same thing.
That's my point - you probably never thought it was any other way, and I never thought it was any other way, and we're both just like "wait, what? you LIVE like that?" That fascinates me! I think the last time I experienced this was the blue/black white/gold dress thing or when I first found out some people wipe standing up and some people wipe sitting down and everyone is shocked when they find this out for the first time.
My takeaway: The nervous system is super complicated and has various rhythms. For example the circadian rhythm makes you sleepy at night and alert during the day. There are a bunch of other rhythms that are not yet well studied. The nervous system alternates activity in left and right sides of the body on a rhythm of about 1.5 hours. The nasal cycle is part of this rhythm. One can influence this rhythm by forcing the body to breathe through one nostril.
"Klein, Pilon, Prosser, and Shannahoff-Khalsa (1986) assessed cognitive perfor- mance during different phases of the nasal cycle. They observed significant rela- tionships between the pattern of nasal airflow and spatial and verbal performance. Right nostril dominance correlated with enhanced verbal performance, or left brain activity, and left nostril dominance correlated with enhanced spatial performance, again indicating that the hemispheres alternate with the phases of the nasal cycle."
"Leconte and Lambert (1988) demonstrated that subjects who undergo a test of immediate memory every 25 min with two modalities (semantic and graphic) present a fluctuation in performance with a periodicity of about 100min. The two modalities were in opposite phase."
If breathing can reduce emotional problems for some people, then we could possibly predict this effect by measuring peoples' nasal cycles and hemisphere EEG rhythms. I imagine a typical doctors visit would start out with: 1) filling out the questionnaire, 2) measuring weight, temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure, and then 3) wearing the EEG helmet with nostril sensors for a minute.
I use knowledge of this to help me sleep: when I experience nasal breathing issues, I set up, adjust side I am sleeping on, and change my posture to affect the blood-flow to my head. The less constriction, the easier it is to breathe. (don’t need nose strips!)
So weird. My clear nostril just flipped a few minutes ago. I can't believe I never knew about this. Do you know how many times I dug around to clear obstructions out of my nose because I was only able to breathe from one nostril?
There are different degrees of congestion from light to fully blocked. When I was 14 I was 80% congested until i turned 20. I had to have some nose drops or I’d be lightheaded from poor breathing.
What solved it? A trick that an old doctor told
me to do. With one hand hold with thumb on the soft palate and another finger (index or ring) on the forehead where the nose meets the forehead in a grip. Then jiggle the grip. The skull is made out of bones that are not fully connected so a jiggle does move the bones around and releases differential pressure in sinuses. That fixed me
My partner has some sinus congestion issues and we’ e been trying to find a remedy since forever.
We want to try this thing but want to make sure we’re trying it correctly. Have you encountered a more thorough explanation of this technique, preferably in a video?
I need to clarify that i did not have a sinus infection though, i had a persisting rhinitis for which doctors could not provide anything else but prescribe over the nose drops or flonaise
Thanks for the tip, we’ll try it out. Yeah no doctor managed to find the cause of the inflammation yet, even after years of tests. Every doctor is like “yeah you should be fine” its kind of infuriating.
Watched a program on TV where a professor demonstrated stereoscopic olfactory ability. A person was blindfolded and knelt on a grassy area where an invisible smell trail was laid out. The person was able to track the trail because of this ability.
The key part is your sinus cavity slightly closes one nostril creating a differential air flow. This difference allows us to figure out the direction the smell via the difference in intensity between nostrils which our brain uses to sense direction.
Cover each nostril in turn and breathe in through your nose. One nostril will be easier to breathe in through. Now try it again a few times over a day.
I believe the reason your body does this is to allow your olfactory system to pick up a greater range of smells: Some chemicals are easier to pick up when the air is traveling slower.
I have always one nostril blocked (not completely thought) and according to "Kundalini Tantra" book that I read it's usual state for most people. In the book it was connected to the activity of brain laterals (one is dominant) and forcing yourself to breath equally through both nostrils will make both halves more balanced. Not sure if the explanations were correct, but the practice itself provided me with some really high states. Breathing is extremely powerful tool.
That is totally not correct. I thought I was an anomaly until I heard a podcast by the Breathe author. I've noticed it for years, but I always attributed it to allergies (I attribute everything anomalous to them, because they are such a huge influence in my life).
What is totally confusing is what causes the flip from one nostril to another. I have no idea what the mechanism is.
I’m not sure you are paying any attention to your body. That our air preparation apparatus (i.e. the nasal cavity) would run at reduced capacity when less air is needed makes perfect sense and is a well established medical fact. Just google “nasal cycle”.
One of my nostrils is almost always partially restricted. Yes, I have airflow through both of them, but it's almost never equal. Right now easy breathing through the left with some resistance in the right. It slowly shifts back and forth throughout the day.
It's very obvious when I have a cold. I often have one fully-plugged nostril and one not, which also shifts back and forth seemingly randomly.
I think what I'm describing is actually the norm but I haven't exactly surveyed the population.
I’ve found that doing it has helped me sleep when I’m restless at night - I think it’s more about giving you something concrete to focus on in order to make you more conscious of your body’s sensations, not necessarily something special about breathing through specific nostrils.
As far as personal experience, I find breathing exercises should be slow and deep, generally with breath retention that is extended over time, as opposed to just deep breathing in and out at a 'regular' speed. Traditional yoga usually emphasizes this (as opposed to the new-age westernized yoga). I think many people who find no results just breathe deep but dont slow it down. You should feel like your breath has been 'stretched' by the time you're done. Id also find a good teacher if you're serious because you can definitely overdo it/do it wrong.
This helps validate me. I swear every yoga class I've been to I'm breathing at like 3/4 speed of everyone else in the class and so the flow moves too fast for me.
> I swear every yoga class I've been to I'm breathing at like 3/4 speed of everyone else in the class and so the flow moves too fast for me.
Heh, you're doing better than me: every yoga class I've been in (more than a few) I've lost track of the breathing in the first few minutes, but whenever I do manage to tune back into it I always find it way slower than what feels natural.
Maybe I should make more of an effort, rather than being like "welp, I can't breathe like that, back to just my body do what it wants".
This even after going multiple times a week for 6 months.
It comes from yoga, alternate nostril breathing. There is no scientific basis for the regulation claim afaik and the idea here is that both nostrils are linked to nadis, energy channels. While the nasal cycle does seem brain connected, Ive seen no proof it actually works upon the nervous system (as claimed) apart from the fact the practice is relaxing.
This is interesting and I'd love to hear some kind of real-science debunking (as I'm sure it would be the case)... or conversely, showing someone (via video and some kind of monitoring device) directing air in and out of one or the other nostril at will.
"Just try it" is interesting and can be fun. But it is a messy path to truth, because we humans are inherently terrible data collection machines. Likely the OP recognizes this and was looking for more objective data.
This practice exists in traditional eastern Yoga - breathing out of one nostril and in with the other. A similar explanation is given about it having a calming and energetic effect.
I know that doesn't provide the evidence you were looking for, but hopefully it provides some context on where this might have originated from.
I've dropped my blood pressure significantly in minutes with diaphragm breathing. Measured it. - Also, if you face the palms of your hands up, it mysteriously opens the lungs and allows for deeper more relaxed breathing.
As to your comments about the author's claims, I too am weary about a few.
That's not what it is at all. The placebo effect tells us that the thing we were doing did not cause the measured effect. If it's a placebo effect causing us to feel calmer, we could as easily hold a can of beans and be calmer if we believed it to cause us to become calmer.
No the placebo effect tells us that if we ask some people if some things are working, they tell us that they are working, when those things are not in fact working.
With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself.
I started yoga before it became mainstream and with a lot of the practices I tried them for myself. For example I noticed that some pranayama practices work for me and others don't. Back then pretty much every "serious" scientist or doctor would have told you that all this is nonsense. Same for meditation.
Try it. there is not much to lose. It doesn't cost anything and won't harm you. Worst case it doesn't work.
This. The purpose of science is to discover the truth, not make the truth. You don't science to confirm everything before you try it. With things like breathing where you know it's not going to cause harm, just try it for yourself.
The problem is that you're biased - confirmation bias, expectation bias, selection bias, optimism bias, observer expectancy effect, the list goes on - and you end up learning all things except the truth.
As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is? Placebo may play a role in it but once again, what do we care about here, whether something is beneficial or whether it can be explained why it is beneficial? For some the former and for some the latter, ofc depending on perspective.
You can't easily measure if something is beneficial. Which is precisely why a bunch of plants that people were taking before for different ailments were found to have absolutely no medical value when tried through a scientific method.
And in the age of social media, individual confirmation bias and a megaphone is the best way to promote non-science to hordes of people.
Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. Easing suffering, thus reducing stress levels, which in turn help body to function better.
But you are quite right, individuals with strong confirmation bias and a large social media following are harmfull.
Still, that does not mean individuals should not perform harmless experiments. Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths.
> Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual.
It depends what you refer to when you talk about a placebo. What people call the "placebo effect" is in practice "regression to the mean" in most cases, which is the fact that you would get better over time even if you did absolutely nothing. You will notice that placebo 'effect' works best in contexts where the illness has a psychological component (mental illnesses and the like), but absolutely fail to show any effect at all in other contexts like viral infections.
> Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths.
I agree, but how can you prevent people from claiming that something worked for them if they are absolutely convinced of it. It's an unsolvable problem.
Do I understand correctly that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills because they might accidentally get better, and a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople?
> that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills
Nope, I am for individual freedoms as long as it happens in their private sphere.
> a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople
the problem is that bullshit takes a lot more time to debunk that it takes to spread. So you end up with hoaxes, false claims, rumors, confirmation bias spreading through other people's minds with extreme speed because of how we communicate right now. And my point is that as long as you can't make people understand that "anecdotal evidence" means absolutely nothing, you can't stop this from happening: it means you will end up with bullshit spreading everywhere and good Science being ignored or simply drowned in a torrent of unfounded claims.
I used to be of the opinion that it doesn't affect me directly so I don't care. But as more of us don't care, it becomes more common place, and then our (more gullible) relatives start taking in this information and will not listen to you because everyones knows it works! Whatever "it" is.
So no, I believe that we must actively fight false information. Not "we" in an individual sense, but "we" as a society, and that means regulation.
Maybe there are more reliable ways to achieve the benefit for a greater number of people. Science offers an approach to discovering this, and the "why" - the theory - is what drives science.
Yes it's beneficial if something works, but I want to know why it works too and not just believe in random pseudoscience. Also, determining if something really works is hard.
I want to understand the mechanism. If there's something true there then you may be able to use that directly, you can also avoid untrue things that are harmful (history is full of these harmful 'treatments'). [0]
Without this people just end up wearing energy crystals, while dismissing real medicine for homeopathic nonsense that can lead to death [1][2].
Humanity has used the scientific method to barely rise above the collection of hocus pocus explanations. It's worth the effort not to fall back into that. [3]
Not knowing how it works does not make it pseudoscience. It is enough if you can show through double blind that it works. For quite a few established medications which work we do not known how they work.
Just because you don’t know how something works doesn’t mean it’s pseudoscience. You just might not understand the mechanism.
There’s a greater risk that something you think works actually doesn’t though if you don’t test it.
There’s also a greater risk that claims people make about things in this untested space are more likely to be false.
Part of the reason it’s important to test and understand the mechanism is that people are good at deluding themselves with all sorts of biases and made up false explanations.
There's a big difference between wearing crystals because you believe it improves your life, and doing a physical exercise that changes your mental state.
If one can't confirm changes in their own mental state, especially profound changes, I'd suggest that's a far bigger and more pressing problem than anything you've listed.
> I'm sure people believe they confirm 'profound changes in their own mental state' from energy crystals too.
Not sure about you, but if someone tells me "I've been exercising lately and mentally I feel much better" I don't say "but does homeopathy really work" and wink at them.
There's a lot of evidence that exercising is healthy and helps people improve their mental state so that analogy doesn't work.
The point is if someone says they're getting a benefit from something that doesn't have a ton of evidence around it - my first instinct would be to be skeptical but curious.
When someone takes that skepticism and implies that the "far bigger and more pressing problem" is that I can't determine the obvious benefits it makes me more skeptical, not less.
How skeptical I am comes from how far it is from my priors. Breathing exercises being helpful seems likely, choosing energetic or restful based on which nostril you're breathing out of sounds like bullshit so I'm more skeptical by default.
If someone tells me they're breathing out of their right nostril to become more energized - I'd probably tell them that sounds made up.
It's weird though, because exercising physically can increase stress in the short term and can greatly elevate heart rate. Exercising is really unpleasant to me and I would really rather not do so.
The only reason I choose to exercise anyway is because of the people online and the scientific evidence saying that exercise is better for you in the long term. I certainly don't feel like it in the moment, and in fact sometimes worry if my heart is going to give out as I exercise. But if I am going to believe that exercise is beneficial overall, but that you can't experience the benefits it brings until it's too late to change things, I don't really know what else to do except listen to them and keep exercising, while getting over the unpleasantness and complete draining of energy and motivation to do things I'd rather do that it causes.
Maybe that's what some things in life come down to. It either comes down to eating diets like ones with plants prioritized and getting over the fact that they don't taste as pleasant as foods with refined sugars, or accepting the impact on your health by choosing the latter. Maybe some people just make their own peace with the taste of such foods, somehow.
I don't have a tactful way to say this - but perhaps you are exercising too hard?
It might be wiser to take a progressive approach - i.e. start with a five minute walk, the next day/week/month increase it to a ten minute walk or increase the pace.
> There's a lot of evidence that exercising is healthy and helps people improve their mental state so that analogy doesn't work.
There's actually a lot of research out there. Did you try to search for any? It's not scepticism to compare something you cannot believe because you haven't bothered to investigate, with well known falsities such as crystal healing.
Not only does the research support the existence of a nasal cycle where one nostril is dominant at different times, it also supports a different pathway to the brain and a different neurological response. On top of that, psychological research shows links between breathing patterns and emotional response, in both directions, and then there's the wealth of meditative research. This stuff isn't controversial.
From [Taste and Smell]:
> The FN model may also explain the observation by Sobel et al. [36] that, when performing an odor threshold test, humans sniff longer when using the nostril with the lower flow rate. (Subjects usually have different flow rates in their two nostrils because of cyclic changes in the size of their nasal cavities.)
From [Nature]:
> The flow of air is greater into one nostril than into the other because there is a slight turbinate swelling in one. The nostril that takes in more air switches from the left to the right one and back again every few hours
From [Stanford News]:
> Michael Leon, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California at Irvine said… [the] data suggest, that the olfactory system maximizes the ability of its distributed receptor neurons to encode differentially absorbing odors.
From [Measuring and Characterizing the Human Nasal Cycle]:
> Nasal airflow is greater in one nostril than in the other because of transient asymmetric nasal passage obstruction by erectile tissue. The extent of obstruction alternates across nostrils with periodicity referred to as the nasal cycle. The nasal cycle is related to autonomic arousal and is indicative of asymmetry in brain function. Moreover, alterations in nasal cycle periodicity have been linked to various diseases.
From [Hemispheric lateralization in the processing of odor pleasantness versus odor names]:
> These findings are consistent with previously demonstrated neural laterality in the processing of olfaction, emotion and language, and suggest that a local and functional convergence may exist between olfaction and emotional processing.
From [Respiratory feedback in the generation of emotion]:
> This article reports two studies investigating the relationship between emotional feelings and respiration. In the first study, participants were asked to produce an emotion of either joy, anger, fear or sadness and to describe the breathing pattern that fit best with the generated emotion. Results revealed that breathing patterns reported during voluntary production of emotion were (a) comparable to those objectively recorded in psychophysiological experiments on emotion arousal, (b) consistently similar across individuals, and (c) clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness. A second study used breathing instructions based on Study 1’s results to investigate the impact of the manipulation of respiration on emotional feeling state. A cover story was used so that participants could not guess the actual purpose of the study. This manipulation produced significant emotional feeling states that were differentiated according to the type of breathing pattern. The implications of these findings for emotion theories based on peripheral feedback and for emotion regulation are discussed.
I could go on.
As to meditative practices, there's been extensive research for nigh on 50 years now, and for the past 20 (at least, as far as I'm aware) they've been using fMRI scanners to provide objective results[Oser] on the link between meditation as a practice and mental state.
Thanks for the links, a lot of interesting stuff there.
I think this is actually a good example of the point I'm trying to make.
There appears to be an underlying mechanism here that's worth understanding that may have real effects. None of this suggests that left nostril 'relaxation' and right nostril 'energy' is a real thing. The closest may be that last link which I don't have access to.
The reason understanding the underlying mechanism is important is because it allows you to differentiate what could be real (potentially switching airflow in nostrils because "the olfactory system maximizes the ability of its distributed receptor neurons to encode differentially absorbing odors.") and what is pseudoscience "you could choose to be either energetic or restful by picking one nostril to breathe out of for awhile.".
The latter sounds suspicious to me and these links don't seem to really support it. I'm extra suspicious when there's a strong interest in motivated reasoning (yoga-affiliated people being bought into it) to find it correct. It doesn't mean it isn't true, but it's less likely to be so.
The cycle can still be a real thing, there may still be real effects, and the left/right relax/energy thing can still be nonsense. That's why understanding what's going on is useful.
Humanity has historically taken a trial and error approach to most things - medicine, engineering, cooking, etc. Advances in technology are usually the result of tinkering as opposed to directed research or science. The science usually comes later (if and when someone funds it) to explain why it works.
It's ugly, but it's how we usually lumber along. And yes, many mistakes and pseudoscience take place along the way.
I was recently reading how jet engines were developed even though no one really knew exactly how they worked (there were theories, of course).
This is the closest thing I could find on the topic online:
I think we agree - trying things you think might work is a good place to start, then you can attempt to confirm that empirically.
Predictions have to start somewhere.
What bothers me about the comment I replied to was the hostility to trying to understanding the underlying mechanism. "As long as it does something beneficial who cares after all what the bias is?" is not a good position. That kind of thing leads to people doubling down when it turns out their pet hypothesis is actually shown to be wrong (not saying that's the case here).
It can also lead to people thinking they see benefits where none exist (or where the activity is even harmful), it can lead to people making up explanations (most of human history).
It's good to be willing to try new things, but also to have a healthy skepticism.
I am usually a skeptical person and am aware that there is a lot of pseudoscience floating around. But, I think that is not necessarily a bad thing. People try things and what works is later scrutinized and better understood in a scientific way if you will. What doesn’t work will get itself out of the way eventually. You are free to practice whatever you think is understood(and also be aware that current understanding is bound to change, sometimes it does take 180’ turns). But you risk missing out on things that are not yet understood and yet beneficial. Sure, all people are at risk of wasting their time with a quack theory or practice. Again, I dont think that is a bad thing, more people may become skeptical that way
Thanks - I think that's fair, but it doesn't necessarily get out of the way without casualties.
I'm bothered when something that is still uncertain is put forward as true, I think people are generally over confident where they should be less certain. Even this can be harmful in ways people don't expect [0].
It becomes really harmful though when stuff known to be false is pushed as true (conspiracy theories like not getting cancer treatment). This leads people to not pursue treatment they desperately need. In their case they won't have the opportunity to become more skeptical afterwards.
There's also the risk of political influence pushing certain things as true that aren't and real knowledge can be lost (though I think that's less likely to happen today).
In this specific breathing case, it's benefit being real or not is probably not that big of a deal - but the underlying value of wanting to understand why something is really true or not I think is important.
> Advances in technology are usually the result of tinkering as opposed to directed research or science.
In older times yes, but you can easily demonstrate that scientific progress was WAY faster once we developed actual methods to test things in a reliable way.
It's hard to pin scientific progress to reliable testing. We also had dramatic advances in communication, travel, collaboration, computing power, and access to education, for instance. Not to mention more and bigger wars which always moves things along in certain directions (for the wrong reasons, but nevertheless)
Wrong about what exactly? I'd say I'm mostly a breathing skeptic, but if it makes you feel better, then... it makes you feel better and you aren't wrong for feeling better.
If someone observes measurable benefits after (e.g.) breathing through one nostril for a while, I'd consider it important to know exactly why. Maybe there are important things about the mechanics of respiration that we haven't understood yet. Dismissing such phenomena with "If it feels good, who cares why?" seems counterproductive in the long run.
OTOH, if no one sees measurable benefits, then the various anecdotes from practitioners really are just bias in action, and (IMO) are not worth expending further thought on.
But even if you think you’re right you may be wrong. All current understanding is bound to change when better understanding is achieved. Sometimes things that are scientifically thought to work in a certain way take turns, sometimes going into opposite directions. So even if you think you understand something, it’s healthy to keep a bit of skepticism and a bit of open mind.
We don’t even understand the placebo effect, there is little hope in learning the truth in regards to human biology as it would be too complicated, expensive, and unethical to try.
That's only a problem if you are trying to generalise your discovery and say write a paper or sell a product about it. If it's just "a thing you do" and it makes you feel good, then biases don't really matter as much as the end result.
I suspect you learn less by doing nothing. This kind of advice is probably good for normal people, but the people who need it least seem to be the ones most paralyzed by it.
> With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself.
I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. If something is potent enough to deliver benefit, it can also be potent enough to deliver harm. You can't have it both ways.
Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise.
Just like with McMindfulness, I wish some of this kind of instruction required licensing.
You're over-reacting. Neither the benefits nor the harm is fast enough so that you don't have time to adjust. If you continue doing something despite it causing active harm, that's just on you (as in generally).
That assumes adverse reactions will have a gradual, reversible onset. By that token you could keep taking acetaminophen as long as you don’t feel like your liver is failing.
Breathing practice is the most simple thing in the world. Sit, breathe, relax - definitely doesnt need a license. Sounds like you’re confused of the purpose of it.
Just because it is simple in your experience doesn't mean that is universally true for everyone. Certainly not for anxiety disordered or PTSD suffering people for example.
See my reply to comment below which cites studies when these sort of practices backfire in a non-trivial fashion. Like I said, it is either too trivial as sit, breathe and relax which won't do much good, or it is potent enough to do some good in which case it also has the potential of doing some harm.
I have multiple problems with this statement. First, the problems you are describing are external to breathing. If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also?
Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits. Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
You're fighting several strawman arguments but I am still going to assume good faith.
> If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also?
I am not talking about triggering based on some external stimulus. I am talking about a nilly-willy prescription of a pscyhoactive exercise that has a non-trivial chance of interacting/activating pre-existing conditions.
> Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
My perspective doesn't come from the article, I merely put it there as it gives a readable summary to the otherwise terse scientific papers.
Regarding the particular study, that study has tons of citations to other studies and meta studies, a good chunk of which complains about *adverse effects are not sufficiently mentioned", which I'm doing here. I'm not claiming that the score is settled on this matter, but the fact that there is no talk on adverse affects deserves attention.
> Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits
So does psychedelic mushrooms or circumcision. The good thing about science is we can systemically study traditional practices instead of taking their word for it. I don't think tradition is an infinitely robust source of truth, especially in comparison to scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, I value traditional knowledge too, but you can't claim traditional information and its context have propagated to our day sufficiently well (e.g. is circumcision a rite-of-passage anymore?), including the knowledge/caution on what to do with adverse reactions.
Contrasting merits of scientific processes with traditional knowledge is not scientism. If anything claiming tradition is an infinitely robust source of knowledge is some sort of dogmatism.
You said that tradition doesn't stand scrutiny over time. It wouldn't be a huge leap to suggest you subscribe to the thought that science is the only way to approach any type of validation.
I don't agree with that statement, I think there are cases where the lab doesn't translate into real world and suggesting that scientific experiments are always the best representation of the real world is just naive, I-M-H-O.
Ergo, I don't see us agreeing on the topic and it is best left there.
Regarding the straw man spam - it would help if your claims were correct and not removed from context. I didn't suggest that all tradition is infinitely robust, I suggested tradition concerning breathing is more robust than the limited scope paper you referred to. Context matters.
> You said that tradition doesn't stand scrutiny over time
No, that is not what I said. I said knowledge transmission through tradition is lossy and as such it is not systematic, it doesn't carry context and it doesn't cover the fine print. In that, the content of a memetic proposition that made it to our day might as well have truth value, but it doesn't mean it is readily applicable by anyone who reads about it on the internet. Or we might have memetic behavior that is divorced from context (e.g. circumcision) and is questionable as to why we should follow it. That's why rigorous scientific study is important.
> I think there are cases where the lab doesn't translate into real world and suggesting that scientific experiments are always the best representation of the real world is just naive, I-M-H-O.
I have not suggested any of these things (and this will be 3rd time in a row I'll be bringing up you strawmanning.)
Lab science is not the only science, experimentation is not the only component of scientific method. Yes science can't explain a lot of things yet but science has the best methodology in working for an objective truth. So ignoring evidence science can produce, especially if it's conflicting with tradition, is going to be naive at best.
> I didn't suggest that all tradition is infinitely robust, I suggested tradition concerning breathing is more robust than the limited scope paper you referred to. Context matters.
I didn't suggest you said all tradition. I still stand by my argument that you are defending dogmatism of tradition, even in the limited context of breathing exercises. Besides, that paper is not the only source I've cited, breathing is studied in a multitude of psychological domains as I mentioned, so indeed context matters.
> Regarding the straw man spam
Please refrain from inflammatory language. You made your point that you don't think you're committing straw man, and I still think you do and that disagreement is fine. No need to retort underhanded attacks, let's keep it civil and intellectually honest.
You don't go through your medicine cabinet and try everything there because "changing nothing" can backfire. You read/learn about the complications, side-effects, adverse reactions and make an informed decision based on that.
Inaction argument is a strawman, I'm not arguing for doing nothing at all, I am just against informal prescription of rather potent, psychoactive exercises without due respect, especially in the form of "just try it, can't do any harm". If you want to get serious with it, find people/sangha/teachers/therapists who know their stuff and train in that context. But assuming no harm can come while assuming benefits can come is a contradiction and wishful thinking.
>Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise.
A good meta study is: Lindahl et al (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. This vice article recaps it: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-po...
I'll list just the titles of select deep dive citations from the first study to give an idea, you can find detailed citations in the paper itself;
- "Meditation-induced psychosis" (several with this title)
- "Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review."
- "Adverse effects of meditation: a preliminary investigation of long-term meditators."
- "The unveling of traumatic memories and emotions through mindfulness and concentration meditation: clinical implications and three case reports."
- "Meditation in association with psychosis"
- "Precipitation of acute psychotic episodes by intensive meditation in individuals with a history of schizophrenia"
- "Psychiatric complications of meditation practice."
This is a citation tree from just one study on meditation.
To be clear, I know the term meditation is not strictly equivalent to breathing exercises but definitely a good chunk covers & includes them; e.g most frequently practiced meditation style (vipassana), breathing sensation is the most common object of focus.
If you're interested in non-meditation studies, the term "relaxation induced anxiety" will bring a wider selection of papers. If you are interested in studies about psychoactivity of breathing, search for "panic disorder breathing" which has again tons of studies that investigate the link (contents of which doesn't necessarily limit to panic disordered populations).
And to be clear, I am not saying meditation or breathing exercises are bad. But they are potent. They can create altered states. And as such I am against bold claims like "they can do no harm, just do on your own". As studies above demonstrate, even with a proper educational context they can backfire. Especially considering the fact that the population segment that would be most interested in trying these exercises would likely to be the people already suffering from stress, anxiety or mental health problems.
...all day long - just append certain keywords and you'll find many articles and studies to feed your subjective belief and win arguments.
I did and talked with a lot of people doing mindfulness meditation and none of them warned me against it. I don't doubt your claims but I think they are exceptions and just about any activity can be found to be dangerous when looking at the exceptions.
> - "cycling is dangerous", "hiking is dangerous", "swimming is dangerous", "running is dangerous"
The difference is all of those are physical activities, and a reasonable person can easily infer the risks.
That's not the case with these prescriptions of rather potent, psychoactive exercises. A better comparison would be psychedelic mushrooms; it certainly wouldn't kill you but any reasonable prescription would have also cautioned about the importance of set & setting and to stay away from it if you have certain preconditions/proclivities.
Sorry you can’t compare breathing with mushrooms. It’s more like reading an intense book or watching a horror movie. There is a psychoactive effect but it’s pretty small.
> There is a psychoactive effect but it’s pretty small
The research I cited claims otherwise. If you have citations to back your claim, I'm happy to revise my position. And sure, it will be OK for a good majority of the population but it is not universally true to the extent of easily claiming "just try it, no harm can come" on a public forum. To give more context, 30% of US population will be clinically anxiety disordered at least once in their lifetime [1]. 17% to 53% of people will experience relaxation-induced anxiety [2].
Looking up just one of the papers in your example [1], and it looks far from convincing.
The paper is about the correlation between two separate manic episodes after meditation with two different methods. It further cites other papers - but in common for them is episodes occurring after meditation in patients with severe mental illnesses who in several cases are off their medication.
The paper goes on to give a case study of the patient, who had a manic episode the first time after a full weekend yoga retreat, and secondly again two months after entering a Zen retreat that she had been associated with for two years.
Notably there's no evidence of causation at all, of course, but more importantly there is also no reliable pattern of repetition despite her persistent involvement with meditation:
She was involved in meditation extensively over a long period before the second episode, she recovered without medication and re-entered the retreat. Of course we don't know if she further episodes, but that the case study only mentions two is a strong indication.
There's no discussion in the case study about other causes other than suggesting insomnia as a result of the practice as a possible cause. But the paper does not present any information to suggest any data on sleep deprivation was collected from the patient.
Maybe the other papers are more convincing, but this paper basically boils down to:
* Some reports of correlation have been made.
* Here's another example of correlation... Where the second incidents happened months into intensive practice, and with patient going back into intensive practice, yet no suggestion it happened more.
If anything, the low number of incidents the author uncovered has further convinced me of the safety of meditation. Maybe people with serious mental illnesses should be a bit careful.
[1] Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review, Graeme A. Yorston.
I don’t see what is so controversial about this. Lots of people take up exercising as a lifestyle and say they are much better for it. I don’t see what saying ‘yes but there is only one you, maybe you would have felt better without the exercise in this span if time...’ - which means statistics 101 really is not blindly applicable to all venues life. Also why bayesian statistics are sometimes much better in real life situations...
That’s how most of life is. Do you get scientific measurements before having friends or having a family? Most of what we do is highly subjective. We are not as rational as we like to think.
Absolutely. You do need professional who understands the benefits and potential side effects. If done wrongly, it can mess things up.
Anecdotal, but I tried anulum vilom ten years back as a remedy for general anxiety, went overboard with no proper guidance, and my BP shot up. It took me a while to understand that the key is to go slow and increase your practice slowly.
> Hindus considered breath and spirit the same thing
It's funny, because I just realised that πνεύμα(pneuma)/spirit in Greek has the same root as πνεύμων(pneumon)/lung: the verb πνέω(pnéo), which means I breathe.
This is not Mr Portokalos talking from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, people: πνέω is traced to the older Indo-European stem pnew- , and the whole point of my comment is that there is a lot of heritage in language through the eons from older cultures and civilizations.
Trivia: the suffix -μα (like in the words pragma, dogma, trauma etc) generally means “the result or the carrier of the verb's actions”, so like pragma (“thing”, what is/has been made/done), dogma (what one believes in; the firmness of the belief is irrelevant to the ancient word), trauma (“wound”; the result of being wounded), pneuma would be what is being breathed; and there's another connection to old roots: alcohol is «οινόπνευμα» (spirit/fumes of the wine), and alcoholic drinks are called “spirits”.
No one seems to have mentioned Wim Hoff here (https://www.wimhofmethod.com/). He’s got some claims that verge on the suspicious but the actual method itself is worth doing purely if you’re an interested sort.
Before, I can do about 40 seconds held on an out breath, after, about 2:40. That’s kinda interesting.
I’d also recommend trying it if you’re a meditator. Do a WH session first, then sit. It’s really great for finding mind space: a bit buzzy, a bit like a natural high, but for me it meshes pretty well with a breath following meditation.
Are you referring to the hyperventilation technique? I ended up at one of his workshops randomly and tried that.
It’s actually an old technique to increase the ability to hold the breath. The hyperventilation clears carbon dioxide from the system (hypocapnia). That’s what the buzz is.
The one interesting thing I have seen related to Hof is that he apparently was able to suppress the immune response to an endotoxin. Though it would be interesting to see that same study done on his twin.
I remember this technique also releases some stress hormone. This could indeed solve some health symptoms (for example cortisone is used agains astma). But I'm not sure what the long term consequence is of always releasing this stress hormone into your system.
The claims do sound pretty loopy at first blush, but there have been several studies at this point, and the science PDF they host on his website is pretty interesting.
The article mentions the first class the author took taught them Sudarshan Kriya, which is a particular kriya that the Art of Living Foundation teaches. From what I understand a large part of the kriya involves bhastrika pranayama, which is pretty much what the beginning Wim Hof method is, except he adds a kumbhaka (breath retention/hold) at the end of the 30 breath cycle. I appreciate what Wim Hof is doing, but a lot of these techniques have quite a long history in yoga.
What I find nice about his technique, is that it is much simpler than yoga and pranayama. He does not, for example, emphasise inhaling or holding or exceeding for a particular count of seconds. I find that it is easier to perform the
Wim Hof technique because of this.
The breathing technique which is closest to Wim How is that of Tummo. You can find videos of this on YouTube:
I’ve never tried Wim Hof’s techniques — I’d like to — but I have practiced bhastrika a good amount and do nadi shodhana every morning before meditation. Does his technique really resemble tummo? I’ve tried to find a tummo teacher (haven’t found one), but I’ve read “The Bliss of Inner Fire” and from what I understand a fundamental part of it involves mula and uddiyana bandhas being engaged in conjunction with the “vase” breath. Does Wim teach these things? I’ve seen photos of him practicing and he’s definitely doing uddiyana bandha, but I’d be surprised if he teaches that, it requires deep transverse abdominis activation to do. I only started getting that awareness in that layer of muscle after a couple years of yoga practice.
If he’s not teaching the bandhas then the technique really is just bhastrika with retentions. It’s a totally great practice, but I’d say it’s just the beginning step in the path of pranayama practice.
You make a great point. I think you are right in your classification. But the basic point in my comment was that the Wim Hof technique is simpler than Pranayama, and is highly beneficial in itself. Pranayama is very technical, and I am always worried that I am "doing it wrong".
The YouTube channel Medlife Crisis, run by a practicing cardiologist in the UK, did a fairly long video reviewing the Wim Hof method and the science surrounding it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E
This article is very relevant to what I've recently experienced. I haven't experienced the sweating but I've experienced the serenity that follows controlled breathing.
I'm reading an English translation of Ramana Maharshi's Upadesa Sara with commentary and verses 11-14 talk about controlling the breath (pranayama). A few relevant points made in those verses:
* Controlling your breath can help quieten the mind.
* There are such things as harmful breathing patterns so it's important to seek the guidance of experts to avoid them.
* The simplest breathing exercise that's easy to do right without an instructor is to observe the breath as it is.
I've made a conscious effort to observe the breath randomly throughout the day and it has a calming effect. These past few days have felt good. Observing the breath before sleep has made it easier to fall asleep.
FWIW, the verses also mention that, as far as being serene is concerned, pranayama is a short term solution to a long term problem (and the gist of Upadesa Sara is on the long term solution but I digress).
I'm prone to anxiety, and find myself hyperventilating often. Is this what you mean by "harmful breathing patterns"?
I've tried the "box breathing" with little luck, but have adapted a version where the exhale is 2-3x longer than the inhale. (inhale for 2 seconds, hold it a couple seconds, exhale slowly for 4-6 second, hold again).
I've also found better luck at inhaling into my belly, instead of letting my rib cage expand. It seems to release the tension/anxiety that I'm holding in my chest better.
> I'm prone to anxiety, and find myself hyperventilating often. Is this what you mean by "harmful breathing patterns"?
I meant "practicing breathing exercises incorrectly" (and I see now that's what I should've written in the first place, thanks for pointing that out). Upadesa Sara doesn't expand upon what it means to practice breathing exercises incorrectly or mention what the side effects are. Much of Upadesa Sara is concise so much is left up to the reader to reason or learn about.
After I read your comment, I spent too much time thinking about how I breath (whether thru the belly or chest) and started breathing weird haha. After a few hours, I figured out that I mostly breathe through the belly. I think. Anyways, genuinely happy to hear you found something that works for you.
I once ended up intensely enjoying my breath through the night (Did not sleep). I don’t recommend it. I wonder if that’s a type of discouraged breathing.
I find that chest breathing increases my anxiety and whenever I am stressed I find myself breathing shallow breaths through the chest. As soon as I notice that I can slowly make it go away by breathing slower and deeper and just taking a short break from whatever I am doing.
> I've made a conscious effort to observe the breath randomly throughout the day and it has a calming effect.
If and when you’re able to, do attend a free 10-day introductory Vipassana meditation course (see dhamma.org for locations and schedules). The practice starts with observing the breath, and then moves on from that.
This course requires the participants to be silent for the 10 days, and has some other restrictions too. Some people find that impossible to deal with. So do consider that and also any emotional or mental health issues/barriers that may be a deterrent to participation.
> Observing the breath before sleep has made it easier to fall asleep.
Every night when I go to bed, I deliberately slow my breathing.... I find that it immediately gets me into a meditative state and more likely fall into a hypnagogic state
Conscious breathing and conscious hearing are both techniques for practicing mindfulness (some kind of meditation). It's really overwhelming how it can calm your mind, when practiced regularly.
I have found breathing exercises to strengthen my diaphragm hugely helpful for acid reflux. I lie down with weights on my abdomen and breathe from the diaphragm for about 10 minutes a day. I’ve been able to stop PPIs completely by doing this regularly.
Do you have more info on this? I’ve suffered from GERD for a long time now and have found ways to mitigate the effects but this seems like an interesting potential treatment.
I can’t find the video I followed originally but what I do is pretty simple. I lie on the floor with one hand on my chest and one hand on my belly (just below the sternum). Then I breathe paying attention that only the lower hand moves, ie that I’m using my diaphragm. I put the weights (small metal plates) under the lower hand to add resistance. I recall seeing some papers explaining the mechanism being related to how the diaphragm kind of wraps around the oesophageal sphincter, so strengthening it helps it close.
Not the same thing, but I believe the parent commenter because I’ve seen multiple studies done where it was found that breathing exercises seemed to help with reflux: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807765/
> We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much.
How is one conditioned to breathe too much? We eat too much because there is so much available to us and it's engineered (by trial and error) to be as delicious as possible. That has not been done to air.
> people with anxieties or other fear-based conditions typically will breathe way too much. So what happens when you breathe that much is you're constantly putting yourself into a state of stress. So you're stimulating that sympathetic side of the nervous system
> you can over breathe when people at a gym or when people are jogging you see them really going to get the maximum amount of oxygen in that's not what is happening to your body so you are offloading the co2 by offloading too much co2 you're causing constriction in your circulation
I heard Nestor's interview with Joe Rogan, was intrigued and I decided to try it on my runs (~7 miles 2-3x per week), where I typically breathe through my mouth.
While running I breathed exclusively through my nose. My expectation was that I wouldn't be able to sustain it for the entire duration of the run. Surprisingly I was able to.
Overall I felt less winded that I typically do when breathing through my mouth. I thought my overall pace and/or avg heartbeat might be slower when breathing nasally but, according to my activity tracker, that's not the case. The other thing I noticed is that the 'runner's high' I typically get after a run was somewhat muted when breathing nasally.
I'd love to see more research in this area. I wonder if I'm depriving my brain of needed oxygen or if there are benefits to getting more CO2 than usual.
I never get runners high, but have always attributed that to me just being weird, as usual.
Ever sunce I was little I have a habit, reflex, or whatever one should call it, to breath quite slowly and deliberately during any extended exercise. Never thought it could be related, but maybe it is?
That first one feels very chicken and egg - if you're anxious your sympathetic nervous system is going without the breathing. Can breath be used to relax you? Absolutely, but that's as much about focusing the brain on the breathing instead of the anxious thoughts as anything else.
It's a reasonably well established principle of psychology (real science, not pop-sci) that a surprising amount of what you perceive to be your emotional state is mediated through your body. That is, you experience a stressor, so the "low level" portions of your brain activate bodily reactions to that stress, and what your high-level brain perceives as stress is actually the bodily reaction rather than the original stressor. Exerting such control as you can on your body (since it is non-zero, but not total either) is a legitimate way to control your (perceived) emotional state, which then feeds back into the entire system.
(This also factors in to how hard it is for some people to figure out why they are stressed; the part of the brain trying to work that out isn't necessarily as connected to the stressor as you might intuitively think.)
I've been having some low-level morning sleep paralysis lately (it has come and gone my entire life, & it has never been remotely as bad as I've heard some people describe); recently I've discovered an easy way out of it is to just hold my breath (or really, just stop inhaling), which triggers just enough stress to break through the paralysis. YMMV.
I had sleep paralysis as a child once in a while (which isn't uncommon), but as an adult I only get it after a period where when I've consumed cannabis with some regularity, then stopped.
It may or may not apply to you, but my friends that have sleep paralysis say this anecdote holds true for them as well.
Similarly, I get it if I've been drinking a few days in a row, then stop. Both of these drugs suppress REM sleep so my theory is that the sleep paralysis is a rebound effect.
I went snorkelling for the first time, in Mauritius. Flat water, no fear to speak of. But I was breathing incorrectly through the snorkel. Which one does the first time they snorkel. Overly deep, heavy breaths. Suddenly my heart was racing, and I went into a panic. It felt like I couldn’t breath at all. I started hyperventilating, breathed in some water, and started to get tetany which of course made everything worse.
This was all brought on by my breathing wrong. Not out of stress. Simply because the snorkel messed with my normal rhythm, and caused accidental hyperventilation.
Breathing is directly connected to the autonomic nervous system. Inhaling activates your sympathetic nervous system speeding up your heart rate and increasing the amount of electrodermal activity in your skin. Exhaling activates the parasympathetic nervous system slowing down your heart rate and decreasing the amount of electrodermal activity in your skin.
You can measure it with HRV and skin conductance sensors.
Anxiety is irrational. addressing your physical symptoms in the moment is FAR superior to being introspective. Save that for your personal retrospective after the anxiety subsides.
This concept that people breath too much when exercising never really made sense to me. I generally do believe it because I have experienced it myself, but why would the body default to a less effective form of breathing? Shouldn't we feel that breathing more steadily through our nose is more natural than trying to take big gulps of air when running?
Mouth breathing or chest breathing. When you breath from your chest you take more breaths and if it is through your mouth you often over oxygenate.
When breathing (normal) it's important to use the nose to both inhale and exhale. It helps regulate the amount of oxygen you take in (keeps your mouth from getting dry).
You should also try to breath from your abdomen/stomach instead of your chest. Abdominal breathing creates a stronger respiratory system and core where chest breathing creates a weaker one (my observations).
Mimicing others growing up. We know that even adults mimics each others breathing patterns, I think it's safe to assume a baby/child will try to mimic parents/care takers breathing patterns.
Probably something to do with shallow breathing so you inhale and exhale more often the one should without maximizing oxygen intake per breathe nor efficiently regulating oxygen/co2.
But how could we be "conditioned" to breath in a certain way? It reads like a conspiracy to me but maybe that's not what they meant?
To me, breathing is a highly personal thing, I doubt there is any outside force able to change how we breathe for the worse. I just don't see the attack vector. We breathe how we feel we need to breathe.
>But how could we be "conditioned" to breath in a certain way?
bad posture, overweight, too little exercise, too much stress. Not much of a stretch to think that the behaviour that gives countless of people snoring, backpain, or high BP may also negatively effect how we breathe.
I've done a lot of breathing exercises due to freediving. I think the main benefit for me was that it's almost like meditating.
While lying there and breathing up or holding my breath, my mind is completely clear. No thoughts, just staying as relaxed as possible focusing on my diaphragm. No scrolling on my phone thinking about my day, nothing. Just relaxing. Except the last minutes when the body screams at you to breathe because of the co2 buildup, heh.
But not sure if there's anything more to it than that? I don't do it as often anymore, but get the same focus from working out.
I wonder every time I see things like this whether more conventional exercise will also do the same thing. I'm a recreational runner, and as I become more fit, I notice that my body is capable of entering deeper and deeper states of relaxation. When I go to sleep at night, my breathing and heart rate slow to rates that I never could have sustained before getting in shape. Being conscious and in control of my breath is important, especially at high altitude. And a long run out in nature definitely puts me in a meditative state.
I wonder if this kind of conventional exercise might provide more "bang for your buck" than just controlled breathing in isolation.
There's a great book called Bird Therapy - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43804073-bird-therapy - where the author talks about how birdwatching helped enormously with his mental health. He talks briefly at one point about two runners who "birdwatch" while running, and who find the same kind of meditative peace that he does from a long walk with birdwatching points along the way. I've only just started trail running, but I find the mix of nature and running definitely multiplies the benefits of exercise and meditation rather than just adding together. (That is, if there aren't too many people around - I live in a relatively crowded part of the country unfortunately, so despite being surrounded by lovely countryside there are often quite a few people about!)
I think it makes sense you would be able to enter deeper states of relaxation. I've heard in animal studies they've shown that if you disable the parasympathetic nerve into the heart then it just beats a constant, quite high rate. Marathon runners have considerably lower resting heart rate. It seems to be the parasympathetic nervous system acts as a brake that pumps on an off (connected to inhalation/exhalation) to keep it lower than it's default max speed. So that it's constantly lower means more parasympathetic bias?
Exercise will certainly accomplish similar objectives. After a few months of intense circuit training, I started to realize that I could get away with breathing a lot less frequently. Once my resting heart rate dropped below 50BPM, it was like having a mental switch I could throw on demand to enter into a state of calm. Just a few seconds of focus and I could deal with a monster of a stressful situation with ease. I really need to get back into it. The time investment is substantial, but exercise always pays really good dividends.
One of my pet theories is that regular exercise strengthens your core muscles and allows you to recruit those core muscles more effectively.
This is what allows the diaphragm to expand more and thus facilitates deeper breathing. More oxygen per breath, and fewer heartbeats required to circulate it through the bloodstream.
Could be total rubbish, but I'd be interested to see a study either way.
I have often wondered if controlled breathing was actually a big part of what smokers find relaxing. When I gave up smoking I noticed sucking air through a small paper tube was also relaxing.
That makes a lot of sense! Especially the breathing out part could compound the direct effect of the drug. These long and pleasant breath-outs that you do when you got something done and can finally kick back.
If anyone had a chance to read a book – is it just exploring and describing observation about breathing or it attempts to answer how different breathing actually works and effects the health?
I remember watching this amazing TEDx talk which gives an on state demonstration of how breathing directly affects blood flow / pulse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xc3XdOiGGI
There is another interesting video I've watched years ago with some hints that breathing directly influence mitochondrial activity, but it's in Russian, so not sure if it's worth sharing. Another thing indirectly mentioned was that breathing is the only "low-level" body function that we control conciously to some extent, so its effect on health is a neat byproduct and can be used for "hacking" metabolism and low-level body functions.
Anyway, I'm wondering if there is something more than "conscious breathing can do amazing things to your health" in this book?
I am at the beginning of the book, but for my taste it's too much storified (if that makes sense). He talks a lot about how he found something out and his personal experience with learning about breathing.
Also similar to OP here [1] I was super curious about his claim that you can influence a lot of stuff in your body by picking one nostril you breath with. I googled for confirmation and wasn't satisfied with the results. Later he also recommends oxygen deprivation (breathing very shallowly while running and warns about blackouts)
He doesn't cite studies in a usual science like way. So I decided I won't read the book in full.
James Nestor’s podcast episodes with Ben Greenfield and Joe Rogan both are very interesting. Obviously there is some material crossover between the two, but I found unique things from each.
I really the breathwork will become the new fad, but for good reason. It’s amazingly powerful.
Anyone interested in the topic should learn about the Buteyko technique and the work of Konstantin Buteyko. He was a Russian scientist who studied the negative effects of chronic hyperventillation, the positive effects of healthy breathing, and developed a technique to restore healthy breathing.
For example, he developed a way to measure the health of someone's respiration through a simple test called the "control pause." To measure your control pause, bring your attention to your breath and without changing your breath, stop breathing at the end of your next natural exhalation. Start a timer, and see how long it takes before your body generates any minor uncomfortable signal in an urge to breathe (an urge to swallow, any kind of muscle contraction, anything subtle expressing a demand to breathe). As soon as you reach such a signal, stop the timer. People who breath healthily (according to Buteyko's research) have at least 40 seconds on the timer. (This is NOT a breath holding test, and if your regular respiration gets faster or deeper after you complete it, you did it wrong.) Most people certainly are not even close to 40 sec. And that, according to Buteyko, is because most people severely overbreathe. The consequence of this dysfunction, of being in a constant state of chronic hyperventillation, is that the blood vessels contract, and surprisingly, less oxygen is transferred to the cells because CO2 is a necessary catalyst for the transfer of oxygen to the cells, and hyperventillation drains the blood of CO2. Healthy breathing, according to Buteyko, is minute and nearly visually imperceptible.
I'm curious to read the book. I've practiced breathing techniques from yogic and meditative traditions for maybe 15 years now. Even just a minute of deeper, slower breathing has a calming effect on my mind and body, for the most part.
The breathing practices/exercises are, for the most part, useful and interesting. I have to let go of a lot of the metaphysics in these traditions though, there is a certain amount of "woo" to wade through.
I'm a recovering thyroid cancer (good cancer) patient. My breathing and immunity had become bad due to my surgeries/treatment but also stress, occasional hookah smoking, etc. After suffering from severe bronchitis and cough for the first months of this year, I started doing the breathing exercises in this video (https://youtu.be/iUKjuni-6l8?list=PLxdtWIiZAUhoD6mxvZ0gO9ohE...) regularly (4-6 times a week) based on a HNer's recommendation. All my symptoms have completely disappeared, my breathing has become slower and I have become a much calmer person. My lungs feel really clear. Highly recommend doing these breathing exercises regularly (every day for the first month if possible).
I've recently started listening to the audio book "Biofeedback and Mindfulness in Everyday Life" [0] by Inna Khazan, a clinical pscyhologist[1]. For the more skeptical minded who want the data/ more exploration, she references a bunch of studies attesting to the efficacy of breathing techniques and how it impacts health etc. I won't say the book has changed my life mainly because I am still listening to it and there's a l ong way to practise these but so far the results are encouraging ( More peace of mind , great sleep (experience) plus data on my Apple Watch app and energy levels)
I once had a friend who was out of sync with her inner rythm ... so to speak.
After identifying the problem, we've sat down for an hour and I've taught her how to breathe properly, especially - but not only - slowly.
It changed her life ... with a catch.
People noticed she was calmer and happier. People liked her more. She got promoted. She started earning more. Her life improved significantly, for months.
And then it hit her. Her ego inflated so much, she started overworking herself. She lost her sense for her limits. Her ego couldn't handle the relative increase in energy, which got even worse due to the relative increase in self-confidence.
Burnt herself out. At least one month hospital.
Breathing techniques are no joke. When you're doing it "wrong" all your life, the sudden increase in energy when you begin doing it "right" can be both quite massive and very lasting.
Dr Artour Rakhimov claims that breath starvation (breathing slowly and less) is key to higher oxygen absorption; and definitely not deep breathing! "Take a deep breath" makes sense if you have been hyper-ventilating, but not ALL the time.
I found his site via his "How to unblock a blocked nose in 1 minute" video, a technique which works even when both nostrils are clogged:
I read the book it was pretty good. He talks about his experience and a lot of history of breathing techniques and at the end of the books has basically a reference guide and things to look up. Might be worth looking for a digital copy to just cut right to that.
Have to watch when applying this. I was dehydrated and in the ER. Very stressed. I hate needles and giving blood. Had to do that. Then had a sit up, stand up test. Stated to panic. Counted. Then started to pass out.
A friend of mine had pneumonia 30 years ago, and a physiotherapist told him to breathe with the abdomen as part of his treatment. I tried it for my asthma, and it worked pretty well. After a while, it came naturally and I mostly breathe this way all the time. Slowly, and from the belly :)
I was taught this as a way to control some very acute anxiety from hypochondria that took over my life for ~6 months before I could get treatment. Apparently it worked, since I haven’t suffered from that type of anxiety since.
Might as well ask it here, since goolgling this leads me down the hypochondriac nuts hole.
I've noticed I yawn ALOT. Furthremore when I yawning I feel like only 1 out 5 yawns are "proper complete" yawns that actually get enough air in (that's the best way I can explain).
I was thinking this might be a sign my nose is too stuffed normally and I'm not getting enough oxygen, but reading this thread I might be over oxygenating?
Some extra information, I've noticed this a while but I have been exercising a lot lately, and lost about 20 pounds, so I do feel relatively healthy and active.
I don't yawn much at all, but sometimes (usually in bed) I do get an uncomfortable urge to have deep yawns. It is frustrating because most of the yawns feel unsatisfying, like I didn't get a deep enough breath with the yawn. It feels as if there is some tension around my lungs or diaphragm. After about 10-20 minutes of this and consciously trying to relax these muscles, I may get in a couple of big satisfying yawns, but it takes a while to get to that point.
I was skeptical about breathing exercises but turns out focusing on something as trivial as breathing can and does help in relaxation and anxiety relief. (not a substitute for medication/therapy of course)
This is easy for anyone to test empirically -- just YouTube "relaxation exercises".
I happen to like this one from the University Health Network in Toronto, which helps me fall asleep (I've never gotten to the end awake)
6 seconds in and 12 out is my ideal breath-up. Shallower breathes for meditation. The video above has a good exercise for finding your ideal breath-up.
This author seems to be on a PR circuit. Was on Rogan podcast recently. Heard other health podcasts mention the book and that they’ll have him on soon.
3 months ago my gut reaction would be to not even click on this, but having been stressed out at work recently I started doing yoga and meditation again, which in themselves do a bit with breathing. Anecdotally I've noticed some positive changes in my amount of energy and stress. That could all be a coincidence and if nothing else I am gaining flexibility again. What I'm taking too many words up to say is, I am inclined to give this a shot.
A lot of the stuff on Google search and even the so called 'experts' know nothing at all about this science. When you get deep into it you can even unlock psychic abilities (seriously).
I don't know if any of you would be interested in this but after reading a lot of articles like this I programmed a simple app to help you breath while you work on the computer (distraction free). If you wanna check it out: https://github.com/filipeisho/breathe
Any feedback is highly appreciated!
All Europe has gone mad about breathing exercises. For
four or five years I have made money by treating people who
had ruined their breathing by such methods! Many books are
written about it, everyone tries to teach others. They say: "The
more you breathe, the greater the inflow of oxygen," etc., and,
as a result, they come to me. I am very grateful to the authors
of such books, founders of schools, and so on.
If, for example, we change our breathing, we change the
rhythm of our lungs; but since everything is connected, other
rhythms also gradually begin to change. If we go on with this
breathing for a long time it may change the rhythm of all the
organs. For instance, the rhythm of the stomach will change.
And the stomach has its own habits, it needs a certain time to
digest food; say, for example, the food must lie there an hour.
If the rhythm of the stomach changes, food may pass through
more quickly and the stomach will not have time to take from
it all it needs. In another place the reverse may occur.
It is a thousand times better not to interfere with our machine,
to leave it in bad condition rather than correct it without knowledge.
To work on oneself one must know every screw, every nail
of one's machine—then you will know what to do. But if you
know a little and try, you may lose a great deal. The risk is
great, for the machine is very complicated. It has very small
screws which can be easily damaged, and if you push harder
you may break them. And these screws cannot be bought in a
shop.
One must be very careful. When you know, it is another
thing. If anyone here is experimenting with breathing, it is
better to stop while there is still time.
Gurdjieff G. I. - Views from the Real World (Experiments with breathing talk)
So how do you recommend a layman improve their breathing without fucking themselves up? Is it so complicated that we can't do it on our own without professional help?
This, on the surface, seems to be a load of rubbish spread by a mystic who had a motivation to make things seem complex and difficult so that they can reel you in and teach you 'the right way', while parting with your money and/or attempting to recruit you into their cult.
TL:DR; I'm skeptical, and don't think adding a quote in this manner with no other context/insight is of any value to the overall discussion of this thread.
As someone who has done yoga, I must agree to an extent. Many yogateachers are simply not adept enough nor qualified to teach about breathing.
But there are experts out there and breathing disorders are a thing, so it does pay off to learn more about it especially if you have some complaints that could be derived from breathing wrong. Problem is that few, even GPs are not often well versed in the matter.
That said simply focussing on calm and being relaxed (breathing) carries little harm.
No science here, but anecdotally I find a lot of things that require focus on breathing to be really relaxing. Meditation, yoga, exercise, even things like scuba diving and smoking (I don't smoke regularly, maybe hookah a few times a year).
Are there any online breathing courses or services worth taking? I've read of diaphragmatic/belly breathing before, but I think I need an actual coach to check if I'm doing it correctly.
Breathing works, just as basic spirituality. But, further you get into cultish stuff and "spiritual" experiences because you're basically restricting oxygen.
I practice Zen and, after certain point you don't even watch your breathing. You just become aware of it. So, you restrict nothing.
Unfortunately meditation and spirituality is a very sharp and two edged sword. You need to find the correct people alongside the correct path.
In our way, there's no Spiritual Experience (TM). You just become aware of the issues in your life and with yourself, then you try to solve them. We say that "something is useless if it doesn't improve your real life in a perceivable way".
Advanced Zen practitioners most definitely do report what many would call spiritual experiences. The difference is they let those experiences go instead of chasing them or attaching much significance to them.
See for example the later chapters of "The Mind Illuminated", or the excellent "Science of Enlightenment" audio talk by Shinzen Young.
Your explanation is actually what I've intended to say. We don't cling to them. They're not important as-is and not to be chased.
I've also got my fair share (of experiences) but, I don't remember any of them except one or two odd ones. I remember them because they've proved to be some pivotal moments which my life became better afterwards.
Although it might be done for pure marketing purposes in this case, I think sometimes calling something differently can help losing some "spiritual baggage", and open the topic up to people that would otherwise not engage with it.
Also, "slow breathing" is very descriptive, just reading it I know what to do (even if I might not know how slow), whereas if I wanted to meditate I would have to read up first what I'm supposed to do and which of the many different practices I want to try out.
It's not just slow breathing. It's in one nostril, pump stomach muscles, out the other, pump stomach, repeat. There are YouTube videos demonstrating it.
I haven't read the whole article, but in the beginning the author describes his first sessions as nothing more complicated than breathing slowly.
"The voice instructed us to inhale slowly through our noses, then to exhale slowly. To focus on our breath. [...] The next day I felt even better. As advertised, there was a feeling of calm and quiet that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I"
So does one need the more advanced techniques or do you get like 80% there by just explicitly taking some time out of your day to slow down?
It's more like saying "javascript isn't a website, it's just o common tool for making websites".
Meditation doesn't depend on mindful breathing, even though it's often used. It's possible to meditate without mindfulness on the breath, and it's possible to breathe mindfully without meditating.
No, I don’t think so. Watching the breath is one method - particularly for beginner meditators - but far from being the only one. The breath is a handy “always on” tool for helping to remind a meditator about the rhythms of the body, but as you sit longer, the less (in my experience, anyway) the breath has to do with the actual meditative experience.
All new "thought leaders" just repackage old Buddhist / Stoicism concepts.
Go on Joe Rogan, sell your book of old ideas with new marketing, cash in. Your average millennial would never buy a "self help" book, but Tim Ferriss or Ryan Holiday? Absolutely.
We Hindus don't just consider it as breathing, our world view is different. Breathing techniques in India are called Pranayama which means controlling prana.
This is an excerpt from chapter-3 of Raja yoga by Swami Vivekananda.
Pranayama is not as may think, something about breath. Breath indeed has very little to do with it if anything. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real Pranayama. Pranayama means the control of Prana. According to the philosophers of India the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call Akasha, It is the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha. It is the Akasha that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasha that becomes the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the comets; it is the Akasha that becomes the human body, the animal body, the plants every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Ākāsha. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akāsha.
By what power is this Akasha manufactured into this universe? By the power of Prāna. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prāna the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akāsha, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prāna; in the next cycle, out of this Prāna is evolved everything that we call energy, everything that we call force. It is the Prāna that is manifesting as motion; it is the Prāna that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prāna that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manifestation of Prāna. The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana.
"When there was neither aught nor naught when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akäsha existed without motion." The physical motion of the Präna was stopped, but it existed all the same.
At the end of a cycle the energies now displayed in the universe quiet down and become potential. At the beginning of the next to cycle they start up, strike upon the Akäsha, and out of the Akāsha evolve these various forms, and as the Ākāsha changes, this Prana changes also into all these manifestations of energy. The knowledge and control of this Prāna is really what is meant by Pranayama.
I wonder how far the American Medical Association/physicians have set back medical discoveries.
The traditional solution is Drugs. Some recommend exercise (although a friend recently couldn't get a prescription for Physical Therapy until after trying steroids for 2 weeks). Even fewer recommend diet changes.
Could this breathing method be a drug free solution to various psychological disorders? (Don't get me wrong, people may need drugs, but it's something to consider before a Physician gets someone addicted to Drugs for the rest of their life.)
It just seems like every industry has made huge strides in technological progress and scientific knowledge, then you have medical which is still unknown. Engineering and Medicine are both applied sciences, it seems either bizarre or corrupt that medical is far behind and has low quality outcomes, despite high costs.
> it seems either bizarre or corrupt that medical is far behind).
It’s not bizarre. It’s simply very difficult to conduct experiments with a complex subject such as human beings that can produce clean results linking actions to results.
I mean diet and exercise can have profound effects on your health. My personal experiences have been that doctors I have been to are likely to prescribe something and then toss in “also you should exercise and lose some weight”. I herniated a disc and basically my options were steroid shots or surgery. I opted for the steroid shots just to get rid of the constant numbness and pain down my leg. But there had been no real help on what to do now. “Strengthen your core” um ok thanks. All that to say a lot of time is spent treating the symptoms and not the cause. Meanwhile I’m stuck finding the cause and then trying to remedy it.
Unless you sustained a back injury, the cause is most likely weak core and trunk muscles, which places strain on your spine. Therefore, strengthening your core and trunk is the solution.
I have had excellent results with reverse back extensions [1] and inversion table stretches and crunches.
I definitely recommend Physical Therapy for that. They are Doctors but not MDs, they don't prescribe. They teach exercises, stretches and do massage and that crack that chiropractors do.
Physical Therapy is really what I need most the time, but when I was a kid I was taught to go see a PCP.
Mental health (particularly psychiatric illnesses) is something of an outlier among medicine in terms of how limited progress has been compared to other disease categories.
As for physical therapy, I have also experienced a degree of reluctance in prescribing it. But in my case my doctor has always been even more averse to drugs (aside from things like tylenol). I think I had to go through a couple doctors visits worth of suggesting alternative exercises or other lifestyle changes first. Maybe physical therapy is just expensive and they were trying to protect me from the out-of-pocket costs.
I found this claim a bit... suspicious, and Googled, and didn't find much scientific evidence for this claim. I found a bunch of blog posts by yoga-affiliated people, and the like.
I asked about this on Biology Stack Exchange, unfortunately with no answer.
https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/94651/
I would be very curious if any HN reader knows more about this. That said, my impression of Nestor (who is a journalist, and not a scientist) was that he was perhaps a bit too eager to jump to conclusions.