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One hour of slow breathing changed my life

theguardian.com

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Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#61

Post by dmje »

binarymax wrote: post #6

Isn't this meditation? What is the difference? EDIT: rereading this - yes, it is meditation. Why is it being rebranded and written about as if it is some new discovery?

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#62

Post by prox »

givan wrote: post #51

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, fo…

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#63

Post by retrac »

dcuthbertson wrote: post #46
impendia wrote: post #32

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 th…

> 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.

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#64

Post by hourislate »

martindbp wrote: post #4

> 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.

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).

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#65

Post by 08-15 »

binarymax wrote: post #6

Isn't this meditation? What is the difference? EDIT: rereading this - yes, it is meditation. Why is it being rebranded and written about as if it is some new discovery?

It seems to also cause oxygen deprivation, in which case it has roughly the same effect as sniffing glue. Definitely life changing...

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#66

Post by lrnStats »

spaceisballer wrote: post #30
lrnStats wrote: post #23

Mental health Tangent- 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?…

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 r…

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#67

Post by lrnStats »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #28
lrnStats wrote: post #23

Mental health Tangent- 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?…

> 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.

But you can say the same about civil engineering. We don't know about macro effects until it's too late.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#68

Post by mtalantikite »

crazygringo wrote: post #52
dcuthbertson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#69

Post by MisterTea »

dcuthbertson wrote: post #46
impendia wrote: post #32

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 th…

> 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.

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.

Re: One hour of slow breathing changed my life

#70

Post by Barrin92 »

martindbp wrote: post #41
throwaway_USD wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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