One hour of slow breathing changed my life • Hacker News Board

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#311

Post by bayindirh » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

nprateem wrote: post #303

bayindirh wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#312

Post by waihtis » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #307

waihtis wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't subscribe to scientism, so best end the debate here.

You could indeed end debating with the strawman. 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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#313

Post by ZeljkoS » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathwork

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#314

Post by spaetzleesser » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #295

chimen wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "cycling is dangerous" - "hiking is dangerous" - "swimming is dangerous" - "running is dangerous" - "cycling complications" - "running complications" ...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 clai…

> - "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…

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#315

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

lima wrote: post #96

jodrellblank wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and, as a result, they come to me. Why do they go to you? (Your profile suggests you're a web developer, rather than a doctor).

It seems to be a quote?

From where? It's not a quote from the article.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#316

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

katzgrau wrote: post #300

ekianjo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

> pin scientific progress to reliable testing.

The dramatic advances you refer to happened after a time we developed reliable scientific methods.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#317

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #204

ekianjo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try it. there is not much to lose. And since you can't really measure things well with n=1 you end up with confirmation bias at the end of the day.

Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery. 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 st…

> Confirmation bias or actual personal discovery.

And you would not be able to actually figure out which one it is.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#318

Post by acituan » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

waihtis wrote: post #312

acituan wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could indeed end debating with the strawman. 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. Erg…

> 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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#319

Post by Imanari » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #31

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#320

Post by acituan » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #314

acituan wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - "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…

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].

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241686673_OA1401_Re...