It's interesting to see these modernization attempts for ancient wellness 'technology' that dates back thousands of years. I am, of course, talking about yoga, and more specifically -- pranayama. Otherwise known as the 'science of breath'.
You don't have to believe in anything to practice different breathing techniques, and the results are absolutely there. I have met freedivers who build up their lung capacity strictly through pranayama exercises.
If you suffer from anxiety or a stress disorder, pranayama can be extremely helpful in managing both your mental state of mind and the response that your body has to uncomfortable feelings.
Look for "baba ramdev + pranayam". There are a ton of videos online with him teaching pranayam. Like with all things of this nature there's a whole lot of junk surrounding it (marketing etc) that he also indulges in but the exercises themselves are good. Here's what I could find.
You might find some books at patanjali[1]. They have a good list of exercises although the BS part does appear in some books.
"""
Clarity about the required procedures, the appropriate tools and their use will allow one to tread the path of self-cultivation with the minimum of setbacks. Confusion will result in the multiplication of these setbacks, and the accumulation of injuries and disappointments will eventually result in the collapse of ones undertaking.
"""
> first 3-7 years of intensive physical practices then only begin to investigate pranyama.
I would say this is slightly far stretched and discouraging for newcomers along with being misleading.
Being regular with yoga for a few months (if not weeks), one can start doing pranayama. Having a person to guide you along is highly recommended but saying that investing multiple years and then exploring as a suggestion makes it sound like some mumbo-jumbo which it's not.
If you are not ready and still somehow do it, you can pretty much know the results immediately.
There will a turmoil within generally due to heartburn leading to sleeplessness and fever.
For this reason, it's really better to find a guru who will guide the practitioner.
.. accurate folk advice, if a bit on the conservative side, but not wrong.. Cardiac health is a long time to develop, and a long time to recover.. mental health stability is indicated by long, stable practice.. both mental health and cardiac health are directly relevant !
Don’t try all the exotic practises in the initial 1 or 2 years. Initially it is recommended only to observe breath, and may be the 4/4/4/4 technique mentioned in another comment, you can try the 4/4/4/4 technique by inhaling through one nostril and exhaling from the other. And gradually increase the count from 4 to whatever you are comfortable with.
Recent Yoga teachers, try to teach all types of Pranayama to a beginner, but when reading books written 100 years back, it is mentioned that mind and breath are linked tightly, and practising techniques which isn’t recommended for your condition, by an experienced guru, can actually make you mad.
The more extraordinary the claim, the stronger the evidence required. The claim that trying to learn Pranayama from an "experienced guru" can "actually make you mad" is an extraordinary claim indeed.
Agree! Pranayama and other yoga practices are very powerful and effective. It's very important to have an experienced teacher rather than trying to do it yourself. These practices can have very strong effects and can be misused. There is a lot of misinformation floating around. I recommend finding an experienced teacher in the Krishnamacharya/Viniyoga tradition.
There could be many different issues that could arise, it depends on the person. I will note an experience that I had.
I had been doing a Viniyoga practice for 1 or 2 years. I do pranayama in my asana (the physical exercises) and at this time I was not doing a separate pranayama practice. My teacher changed the pranayama in my practice and I became ill as if having a bad flu and I had some nasty boils break out on my legs. In retrospect, I needed to do some detoxing before doing this type of pranayama. My teacher kept me away from doing that pranayama for one or two years. Now I can, and have, been doing advanced pranayama for many years with no issues. I do this mostly in my asana practice but I do have seperate pranayama practices that I can do as well.
I practice on my own. In our tradition, yoga is taught one to one. There are some classes you can find, but the intent of these is to introduce people to the tradition and for people to get to know the teacher a bit before doing private sessions. Yoga is taught this way so that the program that a person follows has been customized for their situation. This can have a great effect.
Back to your question. My teacher is fully booked and not taking new students. He mostly does seminars and teacher trainings. His name is Chase Bossart and he studied with TKV Desikachar over a 20 year period.
I've had almost 12 years of study with Chase and I'm now teaching on a limited basis. There are other students of Chase here in the SF Bay area and there are many people who studied with Desikachar around the world.
Cool. The Desikachar and Krishnmacharya people seem really good and very practical. I have done some trainings with Gray Kraftsow and I would love to have someone with that depth of knowledge guide my practice.
A few years ago I did teacher training (RYT-500 plus a few hundred more hours), taught for a few years. I have studied with a lot of people like Kraftsow, Rod Stryker and others but I haven't found a teacher who is knowledgeable and provides individual training. I am practicing myself but I wonder how much progress I could make with a good teacher.
Thoughts:
1. What tradition did you study?
2. I think a good teacher would make a difference if you studied a different tradition/line of teachers.
3. I'm interested to know what you are practicing.
4. As I mentioned before there are people doing private mentoring, but you have to look for them and find one that you like. We need to get a directory going, but that will take time. If you want, you can ping me here: ab@iw401fi.33mail.com
and I can try to help you find someone.
orhmeh09, there's no link for me to reply to your comment. So I'll post here.
My understanding of things like boils is that the body is not able to release the toxins quickly enough through the digestive system, so it releases them through the skin.
The pranayama I was doing was pushing my body to get rid of toxins. After doing some juice cleansing, I was able to do this type of pranayama.
Pranayama is typically fast breathing, and sometimes continuous in/out breathing. it's very different from the 4x4 breathing mentioned in this thread.
I am healing trauma and my experience with pranayama is that it doesn't help. Pranayama excitest he nervous system, thus causes more upset. Pranayama is something you should do when you are emotionally stable.
You can see that it excites the nervous system because you get tingly sensations coursing in your arms, or legs, or various places.
What I found from personal experience having done meditation and vipassana before, is that it isn't necessary to deliberately work with the nervous system.
If anything, I'd recommend the opposite to anybody. Try to RELAX as much as possible again and again. The extent to which you can not fully relax and sink into your sofa at the end of the day, AND forget about everything and be fully engaged in the present and what you're watching (if you're watching tv)... THAT is the extent to which there are tensions in the body that are in fact TIGHTENING and constricting the flow of energy. And by energy I mean here, science doesn't have words for that yet. Go figure, I think it's mostly blood flow but some of it can be nervous system related as well.
Put it simply: rather than excite the nervous system to supposedly make it stronger, you relax the bodily tensions so that the VITALITY that is already present and always there can move unimpeded. This is admittedly a view closer to that of bioenergetics, and I find it matches VERY closesly to my experience healing trauma.
That is why anxiety is the way it is. If it was a "charge" in the body, then you'd spend it and be done with it. And yet, it seems endless. It's seemingly endless because it's always created right there in the moment. It is the very vitality of the nervous system that is continually impeded by bodily tensions. The mind is what keeps those tensions in place.
Yoga in a sense also excites the nervous system by opening up the tensions, but it's much softer and safer than pranayama.
I know for fact that it excites the nervous system since I am healing trauma I can feel the agitation in me after each yoga class. First, it feels good but by the time I'm home 1h later... I feel agitated... I have to force myself to settle down and then relax with the tv for 30min to an hour. WHich is a very good practice. I suspect a lot of people don't realize that dimension of yoga because as soon as they're out of the class they keep getting busy. If you however try to be still after yoga, then it can be a good practice to try and relax into it.
So TLDR don't do pranayama (fast breathing) with SIGNIFICANT (ie. many years) anxiety and/or depression. While you may have a few pleasant highs, you'll end up adding more tension and cause more agitation.
My advice is to find a good yoga class, and do the slow breathing throughout the whole class. Typically breathing in and out in sync with slowly opening/closing arms/legs/whatever posture it is.
Whatever pranayama does for you, the signs of coming out of a state of vigilance in the body are:
- vision feels like it opens up, more panoramic
- colours sometimes feel more vibrant, blacks look deeper
- you notice smells you didn't notice before
- you feel areas of the body more than you used to
- hands feel very soft
- hands are warmer, more often than before, sometimes REALLY warm which is super nice then you can rest a hand on your chest or diaphragm area
- the mind calms down
- in general due to all of this you feel more "anchored" in present experience for lack of better world
respectfully, no. There are dozens of techniques under the name of Pranayama.. what you are describing (at length) is not the whole picture.. for example, a pattern of "out 8 steps; in 1 long step" is calming and also "pranayama"
Agree! teachers in the system of BKS Iyengar are skilled as well.. For the skeptical or drive-by practitioners.. think for a moment on all the states of activity the human body is capable of .. from the deepest rest, to the most active fight or flight and multitudes of others.. breathing has to connect to each, both following (support that metabolic state) or leading (change state quickly) .. next, think for a moment on the greater numbers of illness in the mind and body.. following, or leading.. short answer, you can invoke the breath of the athletes, or of the dying, in the extremes.. heart-attack in the infirm, panic and confusion in the unstable, etc.. Please be careful with pranayama or breathing practices !
The renowned author Michael Pollan said in his book about psychedelics that breathing exercises can get you part the way there without any drugs at all.
Actually, I think this book[1] you might find useful to get started. It's really concise, has a digital version, and totally tailors to the notion of starting slowly.
The breathing exercises, in particular, are divided into weekly segments, sometimes more. You start with 2-3 breath counts on week 1 and then continue to build.
A lot of the comments here are so far over the edge of sanity for me. If folks want to believe you need to train for X years before learning breathing techniques that is up to them, but no one is backing those claims up.
If you are looking for a simple and not particularly woo woo guide to this breathing technique (and yoga in general) the yoga with adrienne Youtube channel is a great resource.
In general, learning good breathing techniques and some basic yoga are the single best things you can do for net improvement of physical and mental health in my opinion.
You can get many of the benefits of asana/insert type of yoga here without investing in expensive courses or devoting yourself to any non provable beliefs - which is also clearly my opinion.
One breathing technique and why I think the some of the Yoga works is pretty simple. I am not sure if Yoga would reset the fight/flight response further. 4x4 breathing. It mimics deep sleep and presses the reset button on the sympathetic nervous system. This helps with anxiety a lot. The technique is simple. Breath in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds , breath out for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds. I notice I do tend to do this through my nose, which probably helps.
edit: meant to add this is also taught to Navy SEALS to help them in high stress situations. A lot of the training is to recognize when you are OBE (overcome by events) and how to deal with that to make clear decision.
One method I like is breathing up into sinus for x seconds from one nostril whole holding other closed, then breathing out through the previously closed one. Then reverse it, ping ponging from one nostril to the other.
That's a good one. When I did this first time, just trying to be aware of and to control my breath caused some anxiety but with some practice it got easier and now my breath is much more even. I am also able to bring my heart rate after exercise down quicker just by conscious breathing.
This technique appears to habe cured my physical anxiety. I learned of it six weeks ago, and had had such anxiety for two years post burnout. Now it's gone. I'm amazed.
There were a couple other things that may have helped. I wrote down my main source of worry, and considered it in depth, worst case, odds, how to recover, and it became clear that it's not actually an urgent problem.
Don't know which one had the greater effect, I did both at once. But I could feel the 4*4 breathing blocking a physical anxiety response in the middle of one happening.
"Don't know which one had the greater effect, I did both at once. But I could feel the 4*4 breathing blocking a physical anxiety response in the middle of one happening. "
To me it feels the other way. I feel the breathing opens up something that allows me to release the anxiety. In the end it's probably the same just from a different viewpoint.
Basically before the anxierty happened liked this:
1. Minor negative stimulus appears. I could feel the body react.
2. When I inhaled, and not before, my neck would feel some tension. This would persist a bit.
I had ried breath holding before, but that just delayed the stress feeling. Instead, I:
1. Held breath and counted to 4
2. Exhaled sharply
3. Inhaled a bit, and counted to four
4. Repeat if necessary
Thr new elements were counting, and the exhale before inhale. Followeed byna knowledge that I had two more steps to do: inhaling and counting. Rather than merely an uncontrolledminhalation and hope of no stress.
Interestingly, I rarely need the breathing now. My bosy changed its reaction to the minor stresssors. Maybe I’m just less on edge and less reactive, and the breathing helped my body come down from that reactive state.
I think the experience of it is subjective based how you perceive fight/flight (anxiety). What we know is this pushes some buttons in the nervous system, and I think how we perceive that can vary a lot, but the objective result is similar for a lot of people. What is cool about this technique is you can’t cheat it. It will cause the reactions due to the way breathing works in the body and the automatic responses wired to that.
Is this technique supposed to be uncomfortable to do? I've come across this and tried it multiple times now and holding my breath is not particularly pleasant. I've seen this suggested to help one fall asleep but it's never helped me and my response is usually mild discomfort. Not sure if this is intended.
You don't necessarily have to do 4x4 to make this work. For example, I sometimes do 8x4 (I guess I count double-time) breath-hold. Or sometimes I do 4x1, where there's just a slight pause at the hold.
I think a big piece of breathwork is changing the focus of the conscious mind. When you're focused on your breathing and counting, you're not focused on whatever else is out there.
You could also argue that is has nothing to do with breathing.
But rather it's conditioning to switch to a less anxious mode. So if you practice doing anything physical while becoming calmer then eventually you'll imprint conditioning on yourself . So that when you go through those motions, regardless of it they are a way of breathing, moving your fingers, walking, whatever, just something very specific then you'll trigger the emotional change too.
Not to say the technique doesn't work. Just that it's difficult to isolate what actually makes things work and we often jump to an unsupported conclusion.
It also hits your HRV. My Garmin watch (Fenix 5X) has a deep breathing timer (relax timer). It will definitely increase my HRV when I do it (lowering the watches real time stress score, which is measuring HRV). So it is physiological and psychological.
I just wanted to say great thanks for sharing this technique. I tried it yesterday when I played live poker tournament and it was amazingly helpful in being focused and calm down emotions. I also noticed that it simply could be used for meditation because it keeps the brain so focused on counting numbers that it simply does not go anywhere else.
It's great to see that a focus on correct breathing is getting more acceptance. It seems the yogis were really onto something. Same with gut health. Ayurveda states there is a connection between gut health and general health and slowly mainstream medicine also seems to acknowledge that connection. There is also a lot of nonsense in Ayurveda and Yoga but I am happy that a lot of their good parts are getting more respect.
I like to think of the various ancient techniques as abstraction layers that were developed around a black box. In that there are definitely useful outcomes even if the traditional reasoning may be flawed.
It's also possible the traditional reasoning is the same kind of abstraction layer developed around a similar black box, not necessarily most helpful to be taken literally.
Are there books about pranayama and neuroscience that one can point me to? For meditation I found Search Inside Yourself to be a good book. I wish there was a book like that for yoga.
I meditate a lot and I think you got me for a half a breath. Then I just “let the breath happen.” It’s pretty weird to be able to do that (I have only been meditating for a few months).
This is the one part I specifically struggle with one I am meditating and focusing on my breaths. They are never happening on their own but run in manual mode.
I can’t even remember when, but at some point I was just beside my breath and not controlling it. Guided meditation can help here. Sam Harris (Waking Up) is good. I found some of the concepts in how to meditate he presents lead to some noticeable improvement in my practice.
> "Whether nasal, as opposed to mouth, breathing can improve people’s long-term memories unrelated to odors — or otherwise enhance cognition — is still in doubt"
It seems an odd choice to use scent here (if they intended any generalization), since there is direct influence in scent from breathing through mouth or nose. Even having something plugging your nose (even if you breathed through your mouth normally) I imagine could influence your memory temporarily.
The study design seems silly. The subjects did better recalling scents after one hour when they had that whole hour to continue smelling any lingering particles of the scent. That's surprising?
While I'm not a scientist in the given field, my personal experience is that people get used to smells very quickly. That's also why historically manual dry rot searchers were notorious for running around buildings fast — once your body gets used to the scent, it's filtered out. I doubt an hour in a given environment would give you much advantage over say five minutes.
It’s actually one of the clearest showcases for humans’ astonishing talent of adapting to their surroundings. You can throw humans in shit-filled holes and, after a few hours, they just won’t care about the smell. It shows, at micro level, the sort of skill that led our species to planet domination.
I think accustomisation differs considerably by person and mood, and probably other factors?
I don't seem to be able to accustomise to ticking clocks, but other sounds I can. Some smells to me are anathema, but farmyard smells not so much (I grew up in the country).
As your senses dull with age it gets easier to block things out IME.
Yeah, it sounds suspiciously like the real finding might be "putting a peg over the nose for an hour in advance is a suboptimal way of preparing somebody for a smell-based recollection test", which is almost Ig-Nobel worthy
- breathing is life. It's no surprise it taps in tons of important places. Also oxygen is sensed everywhere, the theory is better breathing => better oxygen % => happier system => happier brain. I believe there's a parallel effect that our mind maps intakes and well being, that's why smoking is addictive, breathing + nicotin effect could piggyback on the all the breathing related brain areas.
- I thought smell wasn't in the nose but at the junction between nose and mouth..
I agree with the opinion on smoking, to a degree, but initially it's quite the opposite, because, well, it's just disgusting. Only after becoming desensibilized can a negative feedback loop kick in, where the sod cools the vessels (directly or indirectly, I wouldn't know), and the smoke warms it. I still wonder what positive effect a little smoking can have, like maybe supercharging the waste removal. After all, humanity was raised by the fire.
Edit: If a lack of sensitivity implies dead nerve cells, that's going a little too far, though.
I’ve been working on breathing through my nose more over the last few weeks. One area where I’m noticing improvement is better sleep. When I used to breathe through my mouth I would dry out my mouth severely multiple times during the night. This possibly reduced sleep quality because I would roll over to drink a glass of water whenever the dryness got uncomfortable. Maybe it was increasing dehydration, too.
I resisted breathing through my nose because my left nostril seems slightly deviated. Forcing myself to breathe through my nose while I jog or do yoga seems to help. My hunch is that the nostril is just closed up a bit from lack of use.
Same problem here - deviated septum is such an annoyance. I find I often have to breathe out of my mouth as breathing out of my nose is sometimes not possible as one or both nostrils are frequently unusable.
Curious how others work around this ? I understand there is a surgery that can correct a deviated septum , but surgery is always a last resort in my view.
I tried the Buteyko method about 10 years back.. I wouldn't believe any of the theories of action, but the method worked to nose breathe and have tolerable sinuses.
One observation from Buteyko materials that sounds right (and would be easy to verify) is that only one nostril should be active when you aren't exercising, and there is a ~3? hour cycle where they swap dilation repeatedly through the day and night. When you are healthy you won't notice this (unless someone asks you to gently test), if you panic and fight to keep them both open, it will cause you more trouble.
> One observation from Buteyko materials that sounds right (and would be easy to verify) is that only one nostril should be active when you aren't exercising, and there is a ~3? hour cycle where they swap dilation repeatedly through the day and night.
Completely anecdotal experience: a year ago, after getting started with meditating regularly, I realized breathing "deeply" (through the nose and "with the belly") for more than 5 minutes straight, had a big impact on my energy levels and focus for a few hours. So I decided to do it the whole day for a full week.
It was incredible, my mind was completely clear all the time, I felt great, and my wife noticed that I even stopped snoring.
Since then I've done it again a few times, but can never sustain it for more than a few days.
It's super simple, but building the habit is very hard.
I was not even aware many people breathe through the mouth apparently, until now. As a young child I did too, and was taught to use my nose. Since then I presumed that that was the norm, and everyone did that.
mouth breathing is the first step towards hyperventilation, which is a state of excess oxygen that can cause symptoms of confusion and panic. I would guess that some of the people in this study simply had reduced cognition due to prolonged hyperventilation.
Maybe not, but it's always strange how these articles focus on just one theory and not another one that is widely known to be a thing.
Not to be too trite, but I’d guess there’s a reason (in the US at least) that calling someone a “mouth-breather” is an insult, generally implying that someone is uncouth and of low intellect.
I remember learning in high school biology class the physiological benefits of breathing through the nose. There’s a whole series of processes that go on in the nose — air filtration, warming, pheromone scent triggering, etc. that’s bypassed when we breathe through the mouth.
And yet, we’re ill-equipped at diagnosing why children might mouth-breathe.
In my own case, this year I finally discovered a life-long moderate tounge-tie that prevented me from resting my tongue on the roof of my mouth. This led to a tongue thurst that resulted in a prominent mouth and a maxilla that was down and back relative to where it would otherwise rest given tongue pressure - I presented with a mild version of long face syndrome. That in turn resulted in a narrow airway (behind the maxilla), which made nose-breathing constricted and difficult.
I have been able to correct this with effort and attention, but it’s crazy to me that pediatricians, dentists, orthodontists and even ear-nose-and-throat doctors missed this underlying cause throughout my life. I have to credit orthotropics and myofunctional therapy for the ultimate discovery.
Worse still, a variety of factors mean this is becoming more common, eg it is implicated in sleep apnea which is rising. I speculate that there is willful ignorance on the part of the medical industry, as the alternative to this understanding is expensive treatment or surgery. I myself went through 2 rounds of braces, a deviated septum “correction” surgery, and nearly had tubes in my ears as a child. See here for an example of a description of the problem and treatment written with ignorance to the cause:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_face_syndrome
If your baby has trouble breast-feeding, definitely ask nurses and pediatricians repeatedly about tongue-tie. A posterior tongue tie is particularly easy to miss in a kid (and there are still some docs who say it's not possible, or something). Not only can you potentially avoid all the problems the parent poster here mentions, but the kid and mom (if trying to breastfeed) can be saved a lot of short-term grief if such a thing is found and treated!
As per my mother over Thanksgiving break, I did not have trouble breast-feeding, just to be clear that that is not alway present, particularly in mild-moderate cases.
A tendency to mouth-breathe and ear infections are both symptoms in youth.
I've been breathing through my nose since a kid after television taught me that there are revolving brushes in your nose that cleanse the air [1]. Excellent series anyway.
An injury and the result of subsequent surgery left me with severe, chronic congestion. Actually, the injury just made the airflow uncomfortably asymmetric. It was the surgery that really stuffed things up.
I lost my ability to achieve "hyper-focus". I remember more than fondly how my body would gradually settle down and into it. I'd feel a "oneness" in my body and purpose, including and especially the air flowing in and out, through my nose.
It turns out, surgery of the nose and area is known for this. (And I sought out one of the top surgeons in my area.) Don't use it unless you really need to. And then, make sure you achieve truly informed consent, with your surgeon.
I would never choose elective surgery, i.e. a "nose job".
No idea why I'm often unable to breath through my nose, it's clogged. I have a history of chronic rhinitis. Even when I blow my nose and remove what's in it, it seems the inside of my sinus is completely swollen. I already have done allergy tests, without results. No idea if it's a result of hygiene, or some chemical that it's a soap or food, acarians, some fungi, or else.
I've read that a deviated septum is a common problem.
The worst thing is that breathing through the mouth can also make dental problem worse.
Not to mention I'm completely unable to breath in only using my nose when running. Not sure if it's normal.
What is certain is that I grew up in the center of a large city as a kid, and it might have done some damage to my respiratory system.
I grew up with chronic nose issues. When I was about 12 years old I was told I had enlarged adenoids which should be operated on. However, mostly due to my own laziness and the fact that you can get by without the surgery, I didn't get the procedure done. Every single year, I suffered from what seemed like perpetual flu for 6-8 months. I never remember being able to breath from both my nostrils. When I slept at night, my watch with a sleep monitor would report just 2-3 hours of sleep since I had to keep switching sides every half an hour or so (if your right nostril is blocked and you sleep on your left, then it will slowly unblock itself but then the left one might block itself). Basically, life sucked.
So just last month (after a really bad flight where I ended up with blood in my eardrums because my insides were incapable of equalising pressure), I bit the bullet and got a CT scan done and went to an ENT. The doc took one look at my scan and basically said "I can't believe you can actually breath at all". I had a really bad DNS (deviated nasal septum) and chronic sinusitis. On his recommendation, I got a FESS + septoplasty procedure done. The surgery itself was fairly short (~1 hour) but the post-op follow ups were somewhat unpleasant..
However, I would highly recommend the procedure to anyone who suffers from similar problems. Even though it has been little more than a month since the surgery and I can't give final judgement, I can breath from both my nostrils for the first time in my life. I am sleeping much better and I think my stamina has gone up a little as well. Probably the most important thing is that having flu like symptoms made me extremely cranky and short tempered in the past, and that is gone now. Life just seems better!
Your nose will not be clogged if your co2 levels rise. Beynd a certain level.
If these levels drop, yout body will try to prevent this by closing the inlet/outlet system so to speak.
Google the Buteyko method for more information. This trick may help you:
For anyone interested in the topic, I strongly recommend reading "What Doesn't Kill Us" [1], by Scott Carney. Scott is an investigative journalist who initially planned to debunk Wim Hof's [2] (aka the Iceman) methods, and ended becoming one of Wim's biggest followers, and publishing a NYT best-selling book telling his journey.
It's a fascinating story, and covers a lot of the science behind breathing techniques, how our autoimmune system works, and step-by-step process to take advantage yourself.
ps: if you want a TL;DR, here's an interview [3] with Scott that summarizes the book well.
101 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadYou don't have to believe in anything to practice different breathing techniques, and the results are absolutely there. I have met freedivers who build up their lung capacity strictly through pranayama exercises.
If you suffer from anxiety or a stress disorder, pranayama can be extremely helpful in managing both your mental state of mind and the response that your body has to uncomfortable feelings.
You might find some books at patanjali[1]. They have a good list of exercises although the BS part does appear in some books.
[1] https://patanjaliayurved.org/product-category/patanjali-publ...
https://shadowyoga.com/newsletter/pra%E1%B9%87ayama/
""" Clarity about the required procedures, the appropriate tools and their use will allow one to tread the path of self-cultivation with the minimum of setbacks. Confusion will result in the multiplication of these setbacks, and the accumulation of injuries and disappointments will eventually result in the collapse of ones undertaking. """
I would say this is slightly far stretched and discouraging for newcomers along with being misleading.
Being regular with yoga for a few months (if not weeks), one can start doing pranayama. Having a person to guide you along is highly recommended but saying that investing multiple years and then exploring as a suggestion makes it sound like some mumbo-jumbo which it's not.
For this reason, it's really better to find a guru who will guide the practitioner.
https://www.banyanbotanicals.com/info/ayurvedic-living/livin...
Recent Yoga teachers, try to teach all types of Pranayama to a beginner, but when reading books written 100 years back, it is mentioned that mind and breath are linked tightly, and practising techniques which isn’t recommended for your condition, by an experienced guru, can actually make you mad.
I had been doing a Viniyoga practice for 1 or 2 years. I do pranayama in my asana (the physical exercises) and at this time I was not doing a separate pranayama practice. My teacher changed the pranayama in my practice and I became ill as if having a bad flu and I had some nasty boils break out on my legs. In retrospect, I needed to do some detoxing before doing this type of pranayama. My teacher kept me away from doing that pranayama for one or two years. Now I can, and have, been doing advanced pranayama for many years with no issues. I do this mostly in my asana practice but I do have seperate pranayama practices that I can do as well.
Back to your question. My teacher is fully booked and not taking new students. He mostly does seminars and teacher trainings. His name is Chase Bossart and he studied with TKV Desikachar over a 20 year period.
I've had almost 12 years of study with Chase and I'm now teaching on a limited basis. There are other students of Chase here in the SF Bay area and there are many people who studied with Desikachar around the world.
My understanding of things like boils is that the body is not able to release the toxins quickly enough through the digestive system, so it releases them through the skin.
The pranayama I was doing was pushing my body to get rid of toxins. After doing some juice cleansing, I was able to do this type of pranayama.
I am healing trauma and my experience with pranayama is that it doesn't help. Pranayama excitest he nervous system, thus causes more upset. Pranayama is something you should do when you are emotionally stable.
You can see that it excites the nervous system because you get tingly sensations coursing in your arms, or legs, or various places.
What I found from personal experience having done meditation and vipassana before, is that it isn't necessary to deliberately work with the nervous system.
If anything, I'd recommend the opposite to anybody. Try to RELAX as much as possible again and again. The extent to which you can not fully relax and sink into your sofa at the end of the day, AND forget about everything and be fully engaged in the present and what you're watching (if you're watching tv)... THAT is the extent to which there are tensions in the body that are in fact TIGHTENING and constricting the flow of energy. And by energy I mean here, science doesn't have words for that yet. Go figure, I think it's mostly blood flow but some of it can be nervous system related as well.
Put it simply: rather than excite the nervous system to supposedly make it stronger, you relax the bodily tensions so that the VITALITY that is already present and always there can move unimpeded. This is admittedly a view closer to that of bioenergetics, and I find it matches VERY closesly to my experience healing trauma.
That is why anxiety is the way it is. If it was a "charge" in the body, then you'd spend it and be done with it. And yet, it seems endless. It's seemingly endless because it's always created right there in the moment. It is the very vitality of the nervous system that is continually impeded by bodily tensions. The mind is what keeps those tensions in place.
Yoga in a sense also excites the nervous system by opening up the tensions, but it's much softer and safer than pranayama.
I know for fact that it excites the nervous system since I am healing trauma I can feel the agitation in me after each yoga class. First, it feels good but by the time I'm home 1h later... I feel agitated... I have to force myself to settle down and then relax with the tv for 30min to an hour. WHich is a very good practice. I suspect a lot of people don't realize that dimension of yoga because as soon as they're out of the class they keep getting busy. If you however try to be still after yoga, then it can be a good practice to try and relax into it.
So TLDR don't do pranayama (fast breathing) with SIGNIFICANT (ie. many years) anxiety and/or depression. While you may have a few pleasant highs, you'll end up adding more tension and cause more agitation.
My advice is to find a good yoga class, and do the slow breathing throughout the whole class. Typically breathing in and out in sync with slowly opening/closing arms/legs/whatever posture it is.
Whatever pranayama does for you, the signs of coming out of a state of vigilance in the body are:
- vision feels like it opens up, more panoramic - colours sometimes feel more vibrant, blacks look deeper - you notice smells you didn't notice before - you feel areas of the body more than you used to - hands feel very soft - hands are warmer, more often than before, sometimes REALLY warm which is super nice then you can rest a hand on your chest or diaphragm area - the mind calms down - in general due to all of this you feel more "anchored" in present experience for lack of better world
The breathing exercises, in particular, are divided into weekly segments, sometimes more. You start with 2-3 breath counts on week 1 and then continue to build.
[1]: https://www.yogaindailylife.org/system/en/
If you are looking for a simple and not particularly woo woo guide to this breathing technique (and yoga in general) the yoga with adrienne Youtube channel is a great resource.
In general, learning good breathing techniques and some basic yoga are the single best things you can do for net improvement of physical and mental health in my opinion.
You can get many of the benefits of asana/insert type of yoga here without investing in expensive courses or devoting yourself to any non provable beliefs - which is also clearly my opinion.
edit: meant to add this is also taught to Navy SEALS to help them in high stress situations. A lot of the training is to recognize when you are OBE (overcome by events) and how to deal with that to make clear decision.
There were a couple other things that may have helped. I wrote down my main source of worry, and considered it in depth, worst case, odds, how to recover, and it became clear that it's not actually an urgent problem.
Don't know which one had the greater effect, I did both at once. But I could feel the 4*4 breathing blocking a physical anxiety response in the middle of one happening.
To me it feels the other way. I feel the breathing opens up something that allows me to release the anxiety. In the end it's probably the same just from a different viewpoint.
Basically before the anxierty happened liked this:
1. Minor negative stimulus appears. I could feel the body react.
2. When I inhaled, and not before, my neck would feel some tension. This would persist a bit.
I had ried breath holding before, but that just delayed the stress feeling. Instead, I:
1. Held breath and counted to 4 2. Exhaled sharply 3. Inhaled a bit, and counted to four 4. Repeat if necessary
Thr new elements were counting, and the exhale before inhale. Followeed byna knowledge that I had two more steps to do: inhaling and counting. Rather than merely an uncontrolledminhalation and hope of no stress.
Interestingly, I rarely need the breathing now. My bosy changed its reaction to the minor stresssors. Maybe I’m just less on edge and less reactive, and the breathing helped my body come down from that reactive state.
I think a big piece of breathwork is changing the focus of the conscious mind. When you're focused on your breathing and counting, you're not focused on whatever else is out there.
Play with it, find something that works for you.
Not very unpleasant mind you. Same level as seeing how long you can hold your breath, except much less intense.
Use a timer, don't count. Don't think about stuff while you're at it, just watch the timer and keep it smooth.
But rather it's conditioning to switch to a less anxious mode. So if you practice doing anything physical while becoming calmer then eventually you'll imprint conditioning on yourself . So that when you go through those motions, regardless of it they are a way of breathing, moving your fingers, walking, whatever, just something very specific then you'll trigger the emotional change too.
Not to say the technique doesn't work. Just that it's difficult to isolate what actually makes things work and we often jump to an unsupported conclusion.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog...
It also hits your HRV. My Garmin watch (Fenix 5X) has a deep breathing timer (relax timer). It will definitely increase my HRV when I do it (lowering the watches real time stress score, which is measuring HRV). So it is physiological and psychological.
It merely tested that people recalled smells better when they didn't have a clipper put on their nose. The title is highly spurious.
Given the kind of claim, surprisingly small N can be adequate.
This is the one part I specifically struggle with one I am meditating and focusing on my breaths. They are never happening on their own but run in manual mode.
What you are really saying is "changing your breathing is not worth the effort", and offering no evidence.
It seems an odd choice to use scent here (if they intended any generalization), since there is direct influence in scent from breathing through mouth or nose. Even having something plugging your nose (even if you breathed through your mouth normally) I imagine could influence your memory temporarily.
Psychology experiments are hard.
I don't seem to be able to accustomise to ticking clocks, but other sounds I can. Some smells to me are anathema, but farmyard smells not so much (I grew up in the country).
As your senses dull with age it gets easier to block things out IME.
- breathing is life. It's no surprise it taps in tons of important places. Also oxygen is sensed everywhere, the theory is better breathing => better oxygen % => happier system => happier brain. I believe there's a parallel effect that our mind maps intakes and well being, that's why smoking is addictive, breathing + nicotin effect could piggyback on the all the breathing related brain areas.
- I thought smell wasn't in the nose but at the junction between nose and mouth..
Edit: If a lack of sensitivity implies dead nerve cells, that's going a little too far, though.
I resisted breathing through my nose because my left nostril seems slightly deviated. Forcing myself to breathe through my nose while I jog or do yoga seems to help. My hunch is that the nostril is just closed up a bit from lack of use.
Curious how others work around this ? I understand there is a surgery that can correct a deviated septum , but surgery is always a last resort in my view.
One observation from Buteyko materials that sounds right (and would be easy to verify) is that only one nostril should be active when you aren't exercising, and there is a ~3? hour cycle where they swap dilation repeatedly through the day and night. When you are healthy you won't notice this (unless someone asks you to gently test), if you panic and fight to keep them both open, it will cause you more trouble.
It’s called the nasal cycle.
It was incredible, my mind was completely clear all the time, I felt great, and my wife noticed that I even stopped snoring.
Since then I've done it again a few times, but can never sustain it for more than a few days.
It's super simple, but building the habit is very hard.
I don't find that useful or interesting.
mouth breathing is the first step towards hyperventilation, which is a state of excess oxygen that can cause symptoms of confusion and panic. I would guess that some of the people in this study simply had reduced cognition due to prolonged hyperventilation.
Maybe not, but it's always strange how these articles focus on just one theory and not another one that is widely known to be a thing.
I remember learning in high school biology class the physiological benefits of breathing through the nose. There’s a whole series of processes that go on in the nose — air filtration, warming, pheromone scent triggering, etc. that’s bypassed when we breathe through the mouth.
In my own case, this year I finally discovered a life-long moderate tounge-tie that prevented me from resting my tongue on the roof of my mouth. This led to a tongue thurst that resulted in a prominent mouth and a maxilla that was down and back relative to where it would otherwise rest given tongue pressure - I presented with a mild version of long face syndrome. That in turn resulted in a narrow airway (behind the maxilla), which made nose-breathing constricted and difficult.
I have been able to correct this with effort and attention, but it’s crazy to me that pediatricians, dentists, orthodontists and even ear-nose-and-throat doctors missed this underlying cause throughout my life. I have to credit orthotropics and myofunctional therapy for the ultimate discovery.
Worse still, a variety of factors mean this is becoming more common, eg it is implicated in sleep apnea which is rising. I speculate that there is willful ignorance on the part of the medical industry, as the alternative to this understanding is expensive treatment or surgery. I myself went through 2 rounds of braces, a deviated septum “correction” surgery, and nearly had tubes in my ears as a child. See here for an example of a description of the problem and treatment written with ignorance to the cause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_face_syndrome
A tendency to mouth-breathe and ear infections are both symptoms in youth.
[1]: https://youtu.be/_SVcUKjl5mk?t=241
I lost my ability to achieve "hyper-focus". I remember more than fondly how my body would gradually settle down and into it. I'd feel a "oneness" in my body and purpose, including and especially the air flowing in and out, through my nose.
It turns out, surgery of the nose and area is known for this. (And I sought out one of the top surgeons in my area.) Don't use it unless you really need to. And then, make sure you achieve truly informed consent, with your surgeon.
I would never choose elective surgery, i.e. a "nose job".
I've read that a deviated septum is a common problem.
The worst thing is that breathing through the mouth can also make dental problem worse.
Not to mention I'm completely unable to breath in only using my nose when running. Not sure if it's normal.
What is certain is that I grew up in the center of a large city as a kid, and it might have done some damage to my respiratory system.
I grew up with chronic nose issues. When I was about 12 years old I was told I had enlarged adenoids which should be operated on. However, mostly due to my own laziness and the fact that you can get by without the surgery, I didn't get the procedure done. Every single year, I suffered from what seemed like perpetual flu for 6-8 months. I never remember being able to breath from both my nostrils. When I slept at night, my watch with a sleep monitor would report just 2-3 hours of sleep since I had to keep switching sides every half an hour or so (if your right nostril is blocked and you sleep on your left, then it will slowly unblock itself but then the left one might block itself). Basically, life sucked.
So just last month (after a really bad flight where I ended up with blood in my eardrums because my insides were incapable of equalising pressure), I bit the bullet and got a CT scan done and went to an ENT. The doc took one look at my scan and basically said "I can't believe you can actually breath at all". I had a really bad DNS (deviated nasal septum) and chronic sinusitis. On his recommendation, I got a FESS + septoplasty procedure done. The surgery itself was fairly short (~1 hour) but the post-op follow ups were somewhat unpleasant..
However, I would highly recommend the procedure to anyone who suffers from similar problems. Even though it has been little more than a month since the surgery and I can't give final judgement, I can breath from both my nostrils for the first time in my life. I am sleeping much better and I think my stamina has gone up a little as well. Probably the most important thing is that having flu like symptoms made me extremely cranky and short tempered in the past, and that is gone now. Life just seems better!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16402650
Your nose will not be clogged if your co2 levels rise. Beynd a certain level. If these levels drop, yout body will try to prevent this by closing the inlet/outlet system so to speak.
Google the Buteyko method for more information. This trick may help you:
https://www.normalbreathing.com/art-stuffy-nose-clear.php
More:
https://www.normalbreathing.com/c/sinusitis.php
https://www.normalbreathing.com/c/nasal-congestion.php
It's a fascinating story, and covers a lot of the science behind breathing techniques, how our autoimmune system works, and step-by-step process to take advantage yourself.
ps: if you want a TL;DR, here's an interview [3] with Scott that summarizes the book well.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/What-Doesnt-Kill-Environmental-Condit...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof
[3] https://www.dragondoor.com/interview_with_scott_carney_autho...