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Fun things to try with breathing: - When lightly exercising, close eyes and focus on breathing. Note effects on heart rate. - Get into an uncomfortable (but safe) position such as a deep squat, crab position, etc. Close eyes and focus on breathing. Note effects on feelings of discomfort, and effort to maintain the position.
After reading Wim Hof and James Nestor a couple years ago during the pandemic, I used their techniques in full while battling long Covid. I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oxygen Advantage is a great book. I'd recommend James Nestor's - 'Breath' [0] as a first read, however. I feel like the book has more real world application and I picked up a number of things outside of what I learned studying Hof breathwork. I also studied, prior to both books, with Wim Hof in Poland in 2017 on one of his week long expeditions. The in person experience of group breath work is something to experience…
Wow, you studied with Wim Hof in 2017, thats pretty damn cool! Its funny you say to start with 'Breath' because I was thinking you should start with Oxygen Advantage and then go to Wim Hof, but you sound like you have a much better background for legit recommendations. I had never heard of 'Breath' before. I'll definitely look into it. Is the Wim Hof experience just something one can sign up for? How did you end up t…
In my case for a medical experiment that got published in PNAS.
WHM is the only thing I did. I’ll take a look at the book recommendations.
My wife has white coat syndrome. There was a time (~7 years ago). We were living in NYC. The doctors office was at the top of 5 flights of stairs and the elevator was out. Having just climbed 5 flights of stairs and telling the doctor she has white coat syndrome, they _immediately_ take her blood pressure. Noting it’s (unsurprisingly) high, suggests she go on blood pressure medication. A decision that would surely ha…
My wife has white coat syndrome. There was a time (~7 years ago). We were living in NYC. The doctors office was at the top of 5 flights of stairs and the elevator was out. Having just climbed 5 flights of stairs and telling the doctor she has white coat syndrome, they _immediately_ take her blood pressure. Noting it’s (unsurprisingly) high, suggests she go on blood pressure medication. A decision that would surely ha…
> TL;DR - doctors will kill you. Personal opinion only but I think that in 100 years we will look back on the standard prescription drugs of the current era with the same mixture of horror and fascination that we feel today when we look back on the medicine of the 19th century.
They started following breathing exercises (Pranayam) as told by Indian yog Guru Ramdev on television for 30-60 mins a day and they have mostly controlled it now for last 18 years.
For anyone searching on youtube, he and other gurus make lot of tall claims and say irrational things, sell snake oil and are in general against western medicines, you'll have to ignore it.
Anecdote. My mother had asthma since age of 30 and my father developed high bp at age of 50. Mother had a very strict diet ( inhaler weren't popular in Indian middle class) and father was supposed to take a pill for life. They started following breathing exercises (Pranayam) as told by Indian yog Guru Ramdev on television for 30-60 mins a day and they have mostly controlled it now for last 18 years. For anyone search…
That's the insidious thing about those gurus: they often couple genuinely healthful practices like mindful breathing and exercise and healthy diet with horrible things like snake oil remedies and religious intolerance - essentially using the former to try to legitimize the latter, and many who follow them are not equipped to distinguish one from each other.
This is called Pranayam. We are doing this in India since ages... Good to see that 'experts' from Western countries taking baby steps to learn. Good for you guys! Keep it up. Note 1: Some 'expert' took my comment on their ego and downvoted my comment. Guys, my comment was encouraging. Taking it on your ego is your personal choice.
>This is called Pranayam. Does Pranayam involve high-resistance inspiratory breathing? Anyway, this is about scientific investigation, not received wisdom and cultural or religious practice. Conceivably they could have found no effect; would you have "congratulated" them then?
Yes, Pranayama is vast. So many different exercises for different purposes. But keep in mind that I'm a German and my knowledge is from books and some videos only. I'm no expert ...
One thing all sources I've read or seen are very clear about is that those exercises are advanced exercise. Also, Pranayama does very precisely assign exercises to specific conditions.
One thing we "western" guys can improve on is patience. I see it with myself every second of my life :-).