As a surfer, I've done a few breathwork classes even though I've never been close to being in conditions that really needed it. There is a tremendous amount of training that you can do to basically change your conscious thoughts in an instant. Going from 180bpm heart rate and anxious panic to a static breath hold for up to a minute while being ragdolled and disoriented, is basically ego death. If you watch some gnarly big wave surfers talk about breathwork, they talk about rapidly flushing out your air in 3-4 big breaths, calming your heart rate, and even laughing, all right before or in anticipation of a pounding. Plus the whole Gerry Lopez yoga and meditation era of the 70s made it clear how important breathing and mental state were.
In any case, this is something every single surfer beyond a certain level is required to master, so I'd love to see data from that kind of cohort. The old lady freedivers of Jeju Island would be cool too.
For someone with no connection to surfing at all, could you elaborate? Why is surfing special, or different from other sports, in needing to control your breathing?
Because panicking when you're being rag-dolled by even smallish waves can kill you, let alone waves of consequence. I don't have the words to describe what it feels like to be pushed to the bottom of the ocean by a wave, then just as you feel like you're running out of air be pushed back down by the next wave, and the next wave. You have no idea which direction is up and which is down, or how long it's been since you stopped breathing. 30 seconds will feel like death if you're not properly trained. Your very large very stiff board will be tumbling with you and could knock you unconscious or split your head open at any time.
My girlfriend got to be a decent surfer (~5 years practice and a former competitive swimmer) but never invested in learning the ocean. In 2018 she went out in a break she didn't know, in conditions above her league. Nothing too big (maybe 5 feet) but strong and relentless. Conclusion: She got sucked into the washing machine during a set and nearly drowned. Had to have the water beaten out of her lungs to restart breathing. Now she has panic attacks just getting into a flat ocean for a swim.
The sea is no joke. I encourage everyone to try surfing, it's a great hobby. But less than 10% of it is riding waves.
Lie down, do a push up, then jump up to your feet, upright, arms raised (Burpee). Repeat in rapid succession twelve times, then immediately shut your mouth and close your nose with your hand. Hold it. Close your eyes and imagine you are under water and don‘t know how long it will take till you can resurface.
You will feel an immediate urge to breath, a very unpleasant feeling in your throat, nose, ears, etc, and an immediate feeling of panic. That feeling is AFAIK caused by heightened CO2 levels [1].
Imagine trying to fight your way to the surface, in a panic, but the turbulence of the wave is too strong and keeps you down. Instead you have to accept the feeling of panic without acting on it, converse your energy while being rag dolled and pounded, trying not to dislocate your joints, keep or regain your sense of orientation, and wait for the moment that the turbulence subsides to the point it is possible to surface again.
You have little control over when that moment finally comes. And while seconds start to feel like eternities you might start telling yourself to never go surfing again. As time drags on, your resolve increases, to the point you might act on it once, and if, you finally resurface.
You can get hit by multiple waves in succession while surfing, preventing you from breathing for up to a minute. If you're at 180bpm and not breathing for a minute, you won't be coming back up
If I need to hold my breath underwater for a longer period of time I'll hyperventilate on the surface just a little before diving. In my experience your lungs don't "burn" as quickly and so you can dive a little longer.
Personal anecdote: I do freediving, so CO2 tolerance training is common, and I've done it on and off. Basically you do breath holds to train your body to get used to high leves of CO2.
I've found that brief high C02 levels are very good for activation, and to get out of a lethargic state. I don't know if a mix of cortisol and vasoconstriction and dive reflex triggered by the CO2, but I feel like it's a tool I have on my toolbox whenever I need to so something difficult or that requires a lot of will power.
It's not for everyone tho, because many people can't get past the initial urge to breathe, and would probably freak out with the first involuntary contraction.
I also tend to use my freediving experience for the opposite, when I'm highly stressed I tend to do one or two short (full exhale) breath holds to calm down. This works amazingly quickly and let's me refocus.
Note, this will probably not work for untrained individuals.
I wouldn't characterize it as a near death experience but an activation of the mammalian dive reflex. It's a pretty profound physiological set of changes that most people have never experienced, oddly.
You don't get near death experiences just by holding breath, not even close. You might eventually be able to make yourself pass out though, so never ever practice long breath hold under circumstances where a loss of consciousness would be a danger, e.g., while driving, close or in water, close to streets or high drops or stairs, etc.
Lethargic states stop you from doing what you want to do and to manage your time effectively. Allocate time being in such states for resting or sleeping hours.
I've had this described to me as basically the combination of neuro+psychological effects of hyperventilation (respiratory alkalosis) in a peaceful/positive environment (as opposed to anxiety-attack-driven or etc.), plus the meditative effects of deep breathing, plus the meditative/brain-entrainment effects of rhythmic movement of a major central/core muscle (diaphragm). Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.
Could someone who is more familiar with it affirm, adjust, or deny that as a general (medically-grounded/secular) summary of breathwork?
I have a degree in building science, so maybe I can chime in. Note of caution: you will find yourself breathing heavily after reading this. It's normal.
We do a terrible job at ventilating our indoor spaces. As a cave-dwelling species our brains are quite comfortable with tuning out bad smells and tolerating stale air -- but the effect of it on our mode and well-being is almost immediate. You don't notice the effect, but it is there.
That's why they tell you if the airplane's cabin depressurizes, put on your own mask first. People who don't manage to that quickly enough their eyes stay open, they don't even feel anything is wrong, but they are physically unable to put on their masks until they pass out.
If not eating proper food kills you in 3 weeks, not breathing proper air kills you in 3 minutes. Yet, people spend thousands of dollars on a new diet, but have no idea what kind of stuff are going into their lungs.
The situation is not life and death. It's feeling nice versus feeling low. People end up with indoor air that is often stale and full of volatile compounds. We often make it worse by using essential oil diffusers and not using the vent hood when cooking.
When you do a breathing exercise, all of a sudden you are giving your starving brain a dose of what it could be like. When you have a walk in the nature, you do the same.
So yes, breathing exercises are great, but it's even better if we fix our indoor environments to feel great at all times.
The FAA puts on workshops around the country with a portable reduced oxygen training enclosure (PROTE). You sit in the enclosure (looks like a sealed vinyl tent), they reduce the available oxygen and simulate hypoxia. You've got a clipboard with some basic math problems, a maze to trace, etc. The trainers continually engage you for 3-4 minutes as you slowly get more hypoxic.
As a pilot, it was eye opening to see first-hand what happens to me when experiencing hypoxia. The trainers were talking to me, and I was replying, but was unable to tell them what 17 minus 4.5 was. My pulse oximeter was in the low 70s. Two sips of oxygen from a mask and I was right back to normal. I learned that my first symptom (the clue that something is really going wrong in the cockpit) is tunnel vision.
Destin from Smarter Every Day (YouTube) has a wonderful video demonstrating this effect [0]. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but you can see how much of an effect it has starting around the 6:00 mark.
>Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.
It must vary between people, because no matter the environment if I breath too eager, whether on purpose or accidentally (like working out) it just becomes really hard to think, everything starts to tingle and all my muscles lock up. A very not-fun time. Also dangerous with weights.
The tingles and muscle cramps (tetany) are a normal byproduct (basically your neurons on your smallest muscles and under your skin get more excitable due to a molecular rube goldber machine set off by lower CO2 balance in your blood). It's uncomfortable, but unless you are suffering from epilepsy not dangerous and there's no lasting effects.
That said when facilitate breathwork sessions i trade the peaceful hippie music for edm (and it actually works better because it encourages people to stay with the rhythm and get into the same mildly trance-like state you might get into while exercising to repetitive music).
What you described is indeed true. There are breathing sessions at the Lifetime gym provide exactly the condition. People involved were amazed by the effect on their metal state.
I'm a philosopher, not a medical professional. But I can tell you that philosophy and deep breathing are inextricably linked. Breathing deeply in of itself is a philosophical exercise, one that centers and grounds oneself in the here and now of the universe that surrounds you, and the universe that lies deep within you. It's a cosmic balance between the metaphysical and the empirical. As a philosopher, one must be able to breathe deeply, so one can breathe in, hold, and spew out the deepest and most esoteric pearls of knowledge unto the masses.
i am a (former) neuroscientist and breathwork facilitator (mostly conscious connected breath) — AMA.
the effect of decreased co2 concentration on vasoconstrictions (and also alkalosis-induced tetany, ie your muscles cramping, which happens a lot during breathwork) are well known [1], but i've never seen them quantified in such a clear way. It's cool to see mainstream science give it a closer look!
This is a bit off topic, but what do you think about people doing nitrous recreationally? It's always concerned me that people are inhaling close to pure nitrous oxide and holding it in. I've always wondered if this creates damaging low-oxygen conditions without the normal reflexes kicking in, and if this can cause brain/neuronal damage.
I believe in medical settings it's delivered in a mixture with O2, but in recreational settings it's usually inhaled directly.
I see a lot more talk about the risks of vitamin B12 depletion, and not much talk about O2 deprivation, so not sure if everyone else is crazy or if it's me who is the crazy one.
I'm not one to tell people not to have fun, but i also lost a friend to respiratory failure after prolonged nitrous abuse, and had more then one start having auditory hallucinations. I think it's waning in popularity compared to 10 years ago, but maybe I'm just out of touch with what the kids get high on these days
I was being treated with nitrous medically. I asked the anaesthesiologist about how it works recreationally and his answer was that yes, it was mostly just hypoxia.
As a Neuroscientist and breathwork facilitator, do you think there is any harm in intentional apnea (e.g. free diving, static holds, ect)?
At what point does cell damage (not necessarily death), kick in? As someone involved in these sports, I operate under the assumption that any damage would kick in after loss of consciousness. For example, if I hold my breath, even for 4 or 5 minutes but dont pass out, that is an indication I am still in the range of safe practice. Anecdotally, I know many people who have spent their lives doing breathholds, and they dont seem any worse for wear.
Are there any high quality studies that look at potential brain damage prior to loss of consciousness?
Does this help? I am a physicist with interest in these subjects and have always been wary of breathwork because of tetany and the following studies. What do experts closer to this field make of these?
Ref. [2] is especially concerning to me in pushing in any sort of static apnea training or breathwork: "The time to complete the interference card test was positively correlated with maximal static apnea duration (r = 0.73, p < 0.05) and the number of years of breath-hold diving training (r = 0.79, p < 0.001)."
Intense but did you get any lasting change from it? Are you still practicing? I did some breathwork and disturbed something with my natural breathing pattern. For about two weeks I had insomnias and was constantly lightheaded. Im reluctant to try again..
I used to teach various pranayama’s (yogic breathwork) and we tend to go easy, especially if you are not going to go into a 3 year seclusion as a lifetime yogi.
All practices were 3 breaths only. If you really enjoyed one or the other, you can do them a few times a day.
Because exactly as you say, you don’t want to disturb the natural pattern. If you have an unhealthy breathing pattern, the idea is that yoga, rest and relaxation will take care of the rest.
Beyond that we are not doctors, so if I noticed something peculiar with someone’s breathing, or it came up, I would direct them to a professional.
I never liked the Hof method, it works on the wrong side of the nervous system for me, as it’s too activated. I feel it’s good perhaps if you got to do something stressful and you need resilience.
I did it when I was really working on myself emotionally and it was for a limited time. It could be a bit scary because of the extreme feeling of lightheadedness. But it did cause a pseudo euphoric feeling too. Afterward I felt invigorated.
But yeah it had a layer of
unpleasantness that made me not continue long term.
Worth noting that a decrease in end-tidal CO2 pressure (i.e., decreased amount of Co2 in an exhalation) is not in itself a statement about the amount of Co2 in tissues. A rudimentary analysis might even say that lower Co2 as measured in exhalation implies that more Co2 is retained in the tissues.
Bohr effect and others corroborate the idea that Co2 is not just a "waste gas" produced by respiration but has an important biological role in its own right.
Ingestion of baking soda, which supplies Co2 to tissues, is so effective at countering the effects of lactic acid from muscle overexertion that its administration is banned in horse racing.
It stands to reason that higher Co2 can protect against lactate throughout tissues, perhaps even including the brain, especially in a condition where the brain favors fermentation over respiration (as in cancer, per Warburg effect, and depending on who you ask, in mental illness/depression)
I rarely practised breathwork in my life but during my final year of high school I was basically locked in my house, and got a vitamin D deficiencey (quelle surprise) so I took up doing breathing meditation in a public park, and that really worked for me in a highly stressful period of time in my life, which got me some very good results, aced my exams, got into a decent college. I don't think I have applied myself as dedicated to anything as intensely as I did. I regret not making it a daily habit in my life, unlike gymming. Although I still sort of deep exhalations in highly stressful situations but thats about it. Also if you count breathing in and out during heavy lifts, that helps a lot too in my form, especially during squats.
What kind of breathwork? Is it kind of the same as box breathing? That’s breathing in for four seconds, holding it in for four, exhaling and pausing all for four seconds.
In the occult community altered states of consciousness are something we regularly pursue in order to affect consciousness on an ongoing basis after a return to baseline. The sort of breathwork talked about in this article (tummo/bellows breath) are big parts of a lot of people's practices, myself included. We also do physical ordeals, flow states, and psychoactive drugs in efforts to take manual control of our perceptions of things. Personally, I meditate for about 20 minutes, then lift heavy weights or do medium-distance high intensity cardio (20-30 minutes of going as hard as I can) then smoke marijuana, then play hand drums and hyperventilate in an effort to induce a ritual mindset, then use mantras and sigils to try to create a mindset that's more conducive to my goals. I can't say empirically that it works, of course, but anecdotally before I started doing this I was a 30 year old obese, hopeless college drop-out pillhead living in my childhood bedroom and now I'm a 40 year old married homeowner full stack engineer with 10 years off pills who can benchpress his dad and I've learned to play the banjo and the drums in the mean time. All of those good things I've listed came to me through tons of mundane effort, smart decisions and good luck but also at least correlated with me using the ritual structure I outlined above to choose them as goals to focus on and rewrite myself into the kind of person who picks goals, focuses on them and completes them.
I've experimented with holotropic breathwork, and was quite amazed at the experience. Unfortunately, as much as I've tried to re-create the experience while not lead, I find my mind just doesn't want to go beyond about 5-10 minutes of breathing, vs the 30 minutes I did in breathwork sessions.
Having said that, I think the design of this study could be much improved. It shouldn't be too difficult to create a double blind group environment using headphones (think like a silent disco) where both participants and researchers don't know who is listening to guided or not.
I'm also not sure if the biomarkers are the best. DMT can apparently be detected in saliva, and I believe the theory is that during holotropic breathwork, the pineal gland releases more DMT than normal.
" find my mind just doesn't want to go beyond about 5-10 minutes of breathing, vs the 30 minutes I did in breathwork sessions."
Same for me. I did a workshop with Wim Hof and the breathing exercises were great with really profound effects. But I couldn't make myself practicing at home with the same intensity regularly. I also developed a pretty bad cough after a few weeks. Probably from the dry air where I live.
it's an incredibly hard workout, depending on the style you're actually using a lot of muscles that you don't typically exercise, so your body wants to naturally give up after a while. it took me probably 6-8 sessions until I could reliably do one myself.
I hate getting startled, even when I realize right away that there is nothing to worry about. But the physiological effects, once set in motion, carry on. My heart seems to skip a beat and then rev up to a high rate and it's uncomfortable, taking some time to come back down to normal.
Some years ago, I discovered a technique to suppress the effect of being startled. I just breathe in sharply, using mostly my diagphragm, before my heartrate goes up and it keeps things normal as usual. I wonder if this is also using the vagus nerve to suppress being startled?
> I wonder if this is also using the vagus nerve to suppress being startled?
I don't know about vagus nerve, but I can propose a different explanation. Emotions can change the state of your body, your brain feels the state and triggers emotions. It can become a self-reinforcing loop. In particular, diaphragm contractions or tension can be such a state. For example, I have sometimes issues with getting rid of anxiety, and when it happens, it is because of my diaphragm. It becomes tensed, I feel it and so I feel anxious. To get rid of anxiety I need to a) rationalize it away and b) keep my diaphragm relaxed.
When you overload your diaphragm with some irrelevant activity you may be breaking the self-reinforcing loop. Or maybe this movements of your diaphragm trigger some other response that wins. As a wild guess, your organism expect that after a deep breath you'll hold your breath for some time, and so it limits the heart-rate to not burn oxygen too fast.
> "Our findings identify physiological boundary conditions for ASCs to arise in a non-pharmacological context, shedding light on the functional mechanisms of breathwork as well as its potential as a psychotherapeutic tool."
Such a great topic for study; these findings are unsurprising to me, but I'm delighted to see them published by Nature.com
This reminds me of James Nestor book on breathing, I should give it another go. While the evidence in the article are not that clear, the book really helped with my sleep and if anything I believe controlled breathing plays a huge role in health.
From my personal experience, nothing scientific or proven here.
I sit in a small office since last few years. A year or so ago I started to get less mentally active, as in things were going on in automatic mode.
And I did not feel good in general, a friend who practices Yoga advised me to do breathing exercises.
15-30 mins of deep breaths in open space in early morning, after shower, before breakfast. Followed by 3-5 min of rapid breathing. And finishing with taking as much air as I can and holding it for 30 sec to a min and repeating it for 2-3 times.
I do feel active after that, I wonder if it's related to these studies.
I encourage you and everyone else interested to attend a Holotropic Breathwork session to truly grasp the profound impact your breath can have on your mind. This is nothing like your regular five-minute yoga breathing exercise, boxed breathing, or even the Wim Hof breathing. It's a completely different level. These sessions typically last 3 to 5 hours and take place in a safe, supportive setting with a dedicated sitter and experienced facilitators.
For several years in a row, I was living every day suffering from severe sleep deprivation. I was not merely homeless, but living on the streets, and I became really intent on walking around all night, rather than trespass or sit down for a rest, in someplace where I didn't belong. Or I would sit in the IHOP, and drink 2 pots of coffee and stare, zombie-like, until the Sun rose. So I lost a lot of sleep and I dozed whenever possible, and not in a bed, but often seated at a table, with my arms folded, and my face buried in those folded arms, while others made chit-chat and the music played around me.
Well, I'd get into an enclosed space with lots of people, and I'd begin to pass out. It happened a lot in church. We'd be singing and standing and sitting and kneeling, and I'd be just ready to conk out and go to sleep. And I would do crazy things like, lunging for the thermostat because it felt so warm and close in there. I thought everyone was feeling the same stale, stuffy air as I was. I don't know. It would also happen in the coffeehouses, but sleep was guaranteed to overcome me during liturgies.
But I came to believe that it was a CO2 buildup sort of situation. With a lot of human bodies in a closed space, and we were all vocalizing for an hour or so, and it was winter so perhaps the heat was on, or the air conditioning was turned off. And so CO2 buildups were the most likely thing.
Once I was housed, and able to catch up on sleep, it doesn't happen anymore. I did complain to my doctor and I asked him if I may have COPD. He insisted that I breathed better than he did. He brought in two young Medical Assistant ladies to do this breathing exercise so that he could prove there's nothing wrong with me. Of course we didn't get to that point of discussing sleep deprivation, because you can't medicate that. Well, a psychiatrist could try, with extra-drowsy meds. And they did try. I resented that.
Surveying people is pretty important in a study like this, and valid science.
Regardless, if you read the paper, you'd learn that they did do objective measurements, namely etCO2 levels and bio-markers from saliva.
Of note: "when etCO2 fell below approx. 20 mmHg, it was virtually guaranteed to trigger at least some (and often a strong) departure from ordinary waking consciousness. This effect is particularly intriguing because in non-breathwork-related circumstances, an etCO2 of 20 mmHg or less would be considered a sign of severe physiological malfunctions, e.g. of the heart or lungs"
But anyone who tried breathwork, especially in group settings with accompanying music, knows such practices can lead to intense trance-like states.
In yoga breath work which happens there is directly tied into the rest of the practice. it isn’t taught enough in America, but if you find an actual good teacher, of which there do not seem to be many, the benefits are wonderful.
Anecdotally and from personal experience, they say that when beginning a consistent practice you will often feel a great euphoria after practicing for 60 or 90 minutes. Can confirm; and it lasts for a couple hours also.
At what level do you experience euphoria? Say on a scale of a low dose of codeine to a standard dose of heroin? Or is it more like the euphoria you get from running? Or the euphoria you get from tripping? Or the euphoria associated with some strains of cannabis? Or the euphoria associated with amphetamines? Or the euphoria associated with ethanol consumption?
I don't understand: shouldn't hypocapnia or respiratory alkalosis in all forms lead to reports of altered states of consciousness if decreased CO2 saturation is believed to be the cause of this breathwork's effect?
I'm not sure about other forms of respiratory alkalosis, but I do know that it's quite common for people to claim that breath work leads to altered states of consciousness.
I would argue that at least a shitload of people don't get enough air via breathing and that's why they are in whatever state of consciousness they are in.
Shitty posture, 'toxic' (compared to, again, default) air, water, soil, food and constantly being pounded by annoying stuff on the peripheral of perception disrupts our CNS.
I believe we skipped a few important beats in our cognitive evolution because of that and a lot of people would be a lot smoother ... at least less pretentiously pre-modern-evolution "animalistic", or less obedient to and uncritical about liquidity-and-status-based hierarchies, and other stuff that obviously has a net-negative impact on pretty much everything ... ( lots of which has already been quantified ... multiple times over multiple decades )
.. but peeps just laugh and call this world a gangsters paradise or something ...
At some point the reductive paradigm fails: you cannot reduce conscious experience to reproducible isolatable variables. A more wholistic approach is required and I believe Western science can eventually accommodate that.
Advances in AI and big data may help that: a collection of seemingly disparate variables may define a space that correlates with qualia.
Very unlikely. Here's a back of the envelope calculation: The human energy requirement per day is about 9MJ. This corresponds to about 500g sugar (or starch), which releases around 750g CO2. Metabolic activity is reduced at night, so 250g CO2 is the upper limit for a full night's sleep. At typical temperature and pressure, this is < 0.14 m^2 of CO2. Assuming a very small (20 m^3) and hermetically sealed bedroom, you'll end up with a concentration of 0.7%, or less. Serious physiological studies (with divers and submariners) show that CO2 has a measurable effect starting at about 1% concentration and only becomes pronounced at 3% or so. This is consistent with the fact that exhaled air contains about 4% CO2 during normal breathing and can go much higher (>10%) during breath holds. In summary, sleeping in a stuffy room might give you respiratory problems, but no improved CO2 tolerance.
Those astronauts maintain normal CO2 levels, and divers can experience increased CO2 buildup if they don't exhale properly, which is the opposite.
It's not made up. Plenty of people here who tried breathwork can attest to its power to bring you in strong trance-like states.
Try it yourself. Ideally in group setting, because doing this on your own (with a YouTube video or whatever) won't give you the same experience at all, and could be dangerous if you take it too far.
Good observation! Lower co2 concentration isn't caused by simply inhaling more oxygen, but rather by blowing off too much co2.
Co2 is produced by the body, and the rate at which it is produced doesn't change much if you breathe pure oxygen. it's how we get rid of the co2 is what is being modulated during breathwork.
I don't mean to be too critical, but why is breathwork/meditation so popular in Atheist circles? When I would presume rationality is the goal, and this seems like it would alter it in a negative way. (depriving your brain of oxygen, presumably decreases its ability to think rationally, or at least run at full capacity)
I get that someone like Sam Harris, makes bank promoting his meditation app. But his atheist audience is very receptive.
If you presume rationality is the goal, then the rational mind should point to decades of research and anecdotal evidence that shows the positive effeccts of meditation and breathwork on mental well-being. Why are you assuming depriving your brain of oxygen for a short period of time is decreases the ability to think rationally? That could be a short term effect, but a long term adaptive effect could be the brain thinks more clearly. Same with fasting from food, etc.
Well, if one's thoughts can be altered depending on the amount of oxygen the brain receives. How can you possibly be sure about your own rationality. Couldn't you rationally start to question anything you've come to a conclusion about before, as just a byproduct of your brain's oxygen levels at that time.
I used Harris's app, and was a bit surprised to hear him use language that he'd savage anyone else for.
I get the problem there; you're trying to teach what something feels like, and there just aren't words.
It's not surprising that you can alter the brain by various exercises, or that those exercises are counterintuitive. The brain is complicated and our tools for manipulating it are baroque. Still, it was a little weird to hear Harris give in without apparently reconsidering other forms of mental exercise from that standpoint.
Think of meditation more as a physical exercise for the brain, like yoga. Is yoga a religion, even if it strengthens your core? Many people do it without any religious ideas.
Same with breathing, 'low CO2' sounds bad, but we do have the next breath, the goals isn't continued low CO2, it can lead to increased oxygen later.
As to rationality. Meditation helps declutter thoughts, so that helps with rationality doesn't it? Why would being strung out and stressed be more rational?
Atheism isn't specifically "a goal of rationality" it's just not believing in a deity (usually because of a rejection of "trust me bro, now pay your tithing" style pitches). I expect for most people the choice to believe or not believe stories with no evidence is orthogonal to the choice of an altered mind.
It looks like you put atheism and agnosticism in the same boat. There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism. Not in agnosticism. That state of mind is orthogonal to belief is mostly true. On the other hand , there is also a motivation to explain away religious experience as physiological process, which explains the overlap in group membership.
I study cognitive neuroscience. Meditation is extremely evidence-based. It is literally one of the most evidence-based things there is in terms of actions you can take to improve mood, executive function, focus, general cognition, etc., it's almost as backed as physical exercise. Of course, there is also a lot of woo-woo spiritual stuff around it, but you can just ignore that side and use it effectively. Not sure about breathwork, I'm moderately skeptical of many the claims made about it, but I haven't looked super far into it comparatively.
As a surfer, I've done a few breathwork classes even though I've never been close to being in conditions that really needed it. There is a tremendous amount of training that you can do to basically change your conscious thoughts in an instant. Going from 180bpm heart rate and anxious panic to a static breath hold for up to a minute while being ragdolled and disoriented, is basically ego death. If you watch some gnarly big wave surfers talk about breathwork, they talk about rapidly flushing out your air in 3-4 big breaths, calming your heart rate, and even laughing, all right before or in anticipation of a pounding. Plus the whole Gerry Lopez yoga and meditation era of the 70s made it clear how important breathing and mental state were.
In any case, this is something every single surfer beyond a certain level is required to master, so I'd love to see data from that kind of cohort. The old lady freedivers of Jeju Island would be cool too.
For someone with no connection to surfing at all, could you elaborate? Why is surfing special, or different from other sports, in needing to control your breathing?
Because panicking when you're being rag-dolled by even smallish waves can kill you, let alone waves of consequence. I don't have the words to describe what it feels like to be pushed to the bottom of the ocean by a wave, then just as you feel like you're running out of air be pushed back down by the next wave, and the next wave. You have no idea which direction is up and which is down, or how long it's been since you stopped breathing. 30 seconds will feel like death if you're not properly trained. Your very large very stiff board will be tumbling with you and could knock you unconscious or split your head open at any time.
My girlfriend got to be a decent surfer (~5 years practice and a former competitive swimmer) but never invested in learning the ocean. In 2018 she went out in a break she didn't know, in conditions above her league. Nothing too big (maybe 5 feet) but strong and relentless. Conclusion: She got sucked into the washing machine during a set and nearly drowned. Had to have the water beaten out of her lungs to restart breathing. Now she has panic attacks just getting into a flat ocean for a swim.
The sea is no joke. I encourage everyone to try surfing, it's a great hobby. But less than 10% of it is riding waves.
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You can somewhat simulate it yourself.
Lie down, do a push up, then jump up to your feet, upright, arms raised (Burpee). Repeat in rapid succession twelve times, then immediately shut your mouth and close your nose with your hand. Hold it. Close your eyes and imagine you are under water and don‘t know how long it will take till you can resurface.
You will feel an immediate urge to breath, a very unpleasant feeling in your throat, nose, ears, etc, and an immediate feeling of panic. That feeling is AFAIK caused by heightened CO2 levels [1].
Imagine trying to fight your way to the surface, in a panic, but the turbulence of the wave is too strong and keeps you down. Instead you have to accept the feeling of panic without acting on it, converse your energy while being rag dolled and pounded, trying not to dislocate your joints, keep or regain your sense of orientation, and wait for the moment that the turbulence subsides to the point it is possible to surface again.
You have little control over when that moment finally comes. And while seconds start to feel like eternities you might start telling yourself to never go surfing again. As time drags on, your resolve increases, to the point you might act on it once, and if, you finally resurface.
[1] I have no expertise but this is what I was told and this source seems to somewhat confirm https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3138667/#:~:text=In...
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You can get hit by multiple waves in succession while surfing, preventing you from breathing for up to a minute. If you're at 180bpm and not breathing for a minute, you won't be coming back up
If I need to hold my breath underwater for a longer period of time I'll hyperventilate on the surface just a little before diving. In my experience your lungs don't "burn" as quickly and so you can dive a little longer.
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Personal anecdote: I do freediving, so CO2 tolerance training is common, and I've done it on and off. Basically you do breath holds to train your body to get used to high leves of CO2.
I've found that brief high C02 levels are very good for activation, and to get out of a lethargic state. I don't know if a mix of cortisol and vasoconstriction and dive reflex triggered by the CO2, but I feel like it's a tool I have on my toolbox whenever I need to so something difficult or that requires a lot of will power.
It's not for everyone tho, because many people can't get past the initial urge to breathe, and would probably freak out with the first involuntary contraction.
I also tend to use my freediving experience for the opposite, when I'm highly stressed I tend to do one or two short (full exhale) breath holds to calm down. This works amazingly quickly and let's me refocus. Note, this will probably not work for untrained individuals.
I'm in a bad spot because I love swimming but I can barely hold my breath for 20s.
Is it healthy to get into a near death experience just to get something done?
Why is it "bad" to be in a lethargic state?
Have you ever asked yourself these questions?
I wouldn't characterize it as a near death experience but an activation of the mammalian dive reflex. It's a pretty profound physiological set of changes that most people have never experienced, oddly.
You don't get near death experiences just by holding breath, not even close. You might eventually be able to make yourself pass out though, so never ever practice long breath hold under circumstances where a loss of consciousness would be a danger, e.g., while driving, close or in water, close to streets or high drops or stairs, etc.
Lethargic states stop you from doing what you want to do and to manage your time effectively. Allocate time being in such states for resting or sleeping hours.
What makes you say that breath holding for diving is a "near death experience"? It's pretty safe from what I can see?
I've had this described to me as basically the combination of neuro+psychological effects of hyperventilation (respiratory alkalosis) in a peaceful/positive environment (as opposed to anxiety-attack-driven or etc.), plus the meditative effects of deep breathing, plus the meditative/brain-entrainment effects of rhythmic movement of a major central/core muscle (diaphragm). Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.
Could someone who is more familiar with it affirm, adjust, or deny that as a general (medically-grounded/secular) summary of breathwork?
I have a degree in building science, so maybe I can chime in. Note of caution: you will find yourself breathing heavily after reading this. It's normal.
We do a terrible job at ventilating our indoor spaces. As a cave-dwelling species our brains are quite comfortable with tuning out bad smells and tolerating stale air -- but the effect of it on our mode and well-being is almost immediate. You don't notice the effect, but it is there.
That's why they tell you if the airplane's cabin depressurizes, put on your own mask first. People who don't manage to that quickly enough their eyes stay open, they don't even feel anything is wrong, but they are physically unable to put on their masks until they pass out.
If not eating proper food kills you in 3 weeks, not breathing proper air kills you in 3 minutes. Yet, people spend thousands of dollars on a new diet, but have no idea what kind of stuff are going into their lungs.
The situation is not life and death. It's feeling nice versus feeling low. People end up with indoor air that is often stale and full of volatile compounds. We often make it worse by using essential oil diffusers and not using the vent hood when cooking.
When you do a breathing exercise, all of a sudden you are giving your starving brain a dose of what it could be like. When you have a walk in the nature, you do the same.
So yes, breathing exercises are great, but it's even better if we fix our indoor environments to feel great at all times.
The FAA puts on workshops around the country with a portable reduced oxygen training enclosure (PROTE). You sit in the enclosure (looks like a sealed vinyl tent), they reduce the available oxygen and simulate hypoxia. You've got a clipboard with some basic math problems, a maze to trace, etc. The trainers continually engage you for 3-4 minutes as you slowly get more hypoxic.
As a pilot, it was eye opening to see first-hand what happens to me when experiencing hypoxia. The trainers were talking to me, and I was replying, but was unable to tell them what 17 minus 4.5 was. My pulse oximeter was in the low 70s. Two sips of oxygen from a mask and I was right back to normal. I learned that my first symptom (the clue that something is really going wrong in the cockpit) is tunnel vision.
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Destin from Smarter Every Day (YouTube) has a wonderful video demonstrating this effect [0]. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but you can see how much of an effect it has starting around the 6:00 mark.
[0] https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw?si=LRDtSJSy7jiTIpzy
How do you measure indoor air quality? CO2 levels?
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Sounds like you’re just making the argument for moving to the wet tropics
>Together, those often cause euphoria, altered states of consciousness, and cognitive shifts not too far off from psychedelics.
It must vary between people, because no matter the environment if I breath too eager, whether on purpose or accidentally (like working out) it just becomes really hard to think, everything starts to tingle and all my muscles lock up. A very not-fun time. Also dangerous with weights.
The tingles and muscle cramps (tetany) are a normal byproduct (basically your neurons on your smallest muscles and under your skin get more excitable due to a molecular rube goldber machine set off by lower CO2 balance in your blood). It's uncomfortable, but unless you are suffering from epilepsy not dangerous and there's no lasting effects.
I did a longer writeup on the physiological effects here if you're interested: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RuDv_E9osM1CCFWZMywMru9J...
Very much on point.
That said when facilitate breathwork sessions i trade the peaceful hippie music for edm (and it actually works better because it encourages people to stay with the rhythm and get into the same mildly trance-like state you might get into while exercising to repetitive music).
What you described is indeed true. There are breathing sessions at the Lifetime gym provide exactly the condition. People involved were amazed by the effect on their metal state.
I'm a philosopher, not a medical professional. But I can tell you that philosophy and deep breathing are inextricably linked. Breathing deeply in of itself is a philosophical exercise, one that centers and grounds oneself in the here and now of the universe that surrounds you, and the universe that lies deep within you. It's a cosmic balance between the metaphysical and the empirical. As a philosopher, one must be able to breathe deeply, so one can breathe in, hold, and spew out the deepest and most esoteric pearls of knowledge unto the masses.
Ah yes, the philosopher’s breath: inhale the cosmos, exhale epistemology. Repeat until the loop collapses or you do.
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Your summary is exact. Medical personnel here
Put on a five-minute song and start hyperventilating. You can tell pretty quick.
i am a (former) neuroscientist and breathwork facilitator (mostly conscious connected breath) — AMA.
the effect of decreased co2 concentration on vasoconstrictions (and also alkalosis-induced tetany, ie your muscles cramping, which happens a lot during breathwork) are well known [1], but i've never seen them quantified in such a clear way. It's cool to see mainstream science give it a closer look!
[1] for anyone interested, I wrote an explainer here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RuDv_E9osM1CCFWZMywMru9J...
This is a bit off topic, but what do you think about people doing nitrous recreationally? It's always concerned me that people are inhaling close to pure nitrous oxide and holding it in. I've always wondered if this creates damaging low-oxygen conditions without the normal reflexes kicking in, and if this can cause brain/neuronal damage.
I believe in medical settings it's delivered in a mixture with O2, but in recreational settings it's usually inhaled directly.
I see a lot more talk about the risks of vitamin B12 depletion, and not much talk about O2 deprivation, so not sure if everyone else is crazy or if it's me who is the crazy one.
I'm not one to tell people not to have fun, but i also lost a friend to respiratory failure after prolonged nitrous abuse, and had more then one start having auditory hallucinations. I think it's waning in popularity compared to 10 years ago, but maybe I'm just out of touch with what the kids get high on these days
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I was being treated with nitrous medically. I asked the anaesthesiologist about how it works recreationally and his answer was that yes, it was mostly just hypoxia.
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As a Neuroscientist and breathwork facilitator, do you think there is any harm in intentional apnea (e.g. free diving, static holds, ect)?
At what point does cell damage (not necessarily death), kick in? As someone involved in these sports, I operate under the assumption that any damage would kick in after loss of consciousness. For example, if I hold my breath, even for 4 or 5 minutes but dont pass out, that is an indication I am still in the range of safe practice. Anecdotally, I know many people who have spent their lives doing breathholds, and they dont seem any worse for wear.
Are there any high quality studies that look at potential brain damage prior to loss of consciousness?
Does this help? I am a physicist with interest in these subjects and have always been wary of breathwork because of tetany and the following studies. What do experts closer to this field make of these?
[1] "Brain Damage in Commercial Breath-Hold Divers" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[2] "Do elite breath-hold divers suffer from mild short-term memory impairments?" https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/apnm-2017-0245
Ref. [2] is especially concerning to me in pushing in any sort of static apnea training or breathwork: "The time to complete the interference card test was positively correlated with maximal static apnea duration (r = 0.73, p < 0.05) and the number of years of breath-hold diving training (r = 0.79, p < 0.001)."
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This feels like one of those cases where science is catching up with something that's been done for a long time already.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pranayama
I got into doing this Wim Hof breathing exercise a few years ago and it was definitely intense. Unsure if this is related but sounds similar.
https://youtu.be/0BNejY1e9ik?si=kgBBUhqMe9HWaKCG
Intense but did you get any lasting change from it? Are you still practicing? I did some breathwork and disturbed something with my natural breathing pattern. For about two weeks I had insomnias and was constantly lightheaded. Im reluctant to try again..
I used to teach various pranayama’s (yogic breathwork) and we tend to go easy, especially if you are not going to go into a 3 year seclusion as a lifetime yogi.
All practices were 3 breaths only. If you really enjoyed one or the other, you can do them a few times a day.
Because exactly as you say, you don’t want to disturb the natural pattern. If you have an unhealthy breathing pattern, the idea is that yoga, rest and relaxation will take care of the rest.
Beyond that we are not doctors, so if I noticed something peculiar with someone’s breathing, or it came up, I would direct them to a professional.
I never liked the Hof method, it works on the wrong side of the nervous system for me, as it’s too activated. I feel it’s good perhaps if you got to do something stressful and you need resilience.
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I did it when I was really working on myself emotionally and it was for a limited time. It could be a bit scary because of the extreme feeling of lightheadedness. But it did cause a pseudo euphoric feeling too. Afterward I felt invigorated.
But yeah it had a layer of unpleasantness that made me not continue long term.
What kind of breathwork did you do?
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Worth noting that a decrease in end-tidal CO2 pressure (i.e., decreased amount of Co2 in an exhalation) is not in itself a statement about the amount of Co2 in tissues. A rudimentary analysis might even say that lower Co2 as measured in exhalation implies that more Co2 is retained in the tissues.
Bohr effect and others corroborate the idea that Co2 is not just a "waste gas" produced by respiration but has an important biological role in its own right.
Ingestion of baking soda, which supplies Co2 to tissues, is so effective at countering the effects of lactic acid from muscle overexertion that its administration is banned in horse racing.
It stands to reason that higher Co2 can protect against lactate throughout tissues, perhaps even including the brain, especially in a condition where the brain favors fermentation over respiration (as in cancer, per Warburg effect, and depending on who you ask, in mental illness/depression)
I rarely practised breathwork in my life but during my final year of high school I was basically locked in my house, and got a vitamin D deficiencey (quelle surprise) so I took up doing breathing meditation in a public park, and that really worked for me in a highly stressful period of time in my life, which got me some very good results, aced my exams, got into a decent college. I don't think I have applied myself as dedicated to anything as intensely as I did. I regret not making it a daily habit in my life, unlike gymming. Although I still sort of deep exhalations in highly stressful situations but thats about it. Also if you count breathing in and out during heavy lifts, that helps a lot too in my form, especially during squats.
What kind of breathwork? Is it kind of the same as box breathing? That’s breathing in for four seconds, holding it in for four, exhaling and pausing all for four seconds.
Box breathing, wim hof, pranayam,
Why not make it a daily habit now?
In the occult community altered states of consciousness are something we regularly pursue in order to affect consciousness on an ongoing basis after a return to baseline. The sort of breathwork talked about in this article (tummo/bellows breath) are big parts of a lot of people's practices, myself included. We also do physical ordeals, flow states, and psychoactive drugs in efforts to take manual control of our perceptions of things. Personally, I meditate for about 20 minutes, then lift heavy weights or do medium-distance high intensity cardio (20-30 minutes of going as hard as I can) then smoke marijuana, then play hand drums and hyperventilate in an effort to induce a ritual mindset, then use mantras and sigils to try to create a mindset that's more conducive to my goals. I can't say empirically that it works, of course, but anecdotally before I started doing this I was a 30 year old obese, hopeless college drop-out pillhead living in my childhood bedroom and now I'm a 40 year old married homeowner full stack engineer with 10 years off pills who can benchpress his dad and I've learned to play the banjo and the drums in the mean time. All of those good things I've listed came to me through tons of mundane effort, smart decisions and good luck but also at least correlated with me using the ritual structure I outlined above to choose them as goals to focus on and rewrite myself into the kind of person who picks goals, focuses on them and completes them.
I've experimented with holotropic breathwork, and was quite amazed at the experience. Unfortunately, as much as I've tried to re-create the experience while not lead, I find my mind just doesn't want to go beyond about 5-10 minutes of breathing, vs the 30 minutes I did in breathwork sessions.
Having said that, I think the design of this study could be much improved. It shouldn't be too difficult to create a double blind group environment using headphones (think like a silent disco) where both participants and researchers don't know who is listening to guided or not.
I'm also not sure if the biomarkers are the best. DMT can apparently be detected in saliva, and I believe the theory is that during holotropic breathwork, the pineal gland releases more DMT than normal.
" find my mind just doesn't want to go beyond about 5-10 minutes of breathing, vs the 30 minutes I did in breathwork sessions."
Same for me. I did a workshop with Wim Hof and the breathing exercises were great with really profound effects. But I couldn't make myself practicing at home with the same intensity regularly. I also developed a pretty bad cough after a few weeks. Probably from the dry air where I live.
it's an incredibly hard workout, depending on the style you're actually using a lot of muscles that you don't typically exercise, so your body wants to naturally give up after a while. it took me probably 6-8 sessions until I could reliably do one myself.
I wonder if there's a vagal nerve effect from the increased chest pressure while holding your breath in.
I do the 'double sharp inhale' method for the anxiolytic effect occasionally - not really something you can do at the office however.
I hate getting startled, even when I realize right away that there is nothing to worry about. But the physiological effects, once set in motion, carry on. My heart seems to skip a beat and then rev up to a high rate and it's uncomfortable, taking some time to come back down to normal.
Some years ago, I discovered a technique to suppress the effect of being startled. I just breathe in sharply, using mostly my diagphragm, before my heartrate goes up and it keeps things normal as usual. I wonder if this is also using the vagus nerve to suppress being startled?
> I wonder if this is also using the vagus nerve to suppress being startled?
I don't know about vagus nerve, but I can propose a different explanation. Emotions can change the state of your body, your brain feels the state and triggers emotions. It can become a self-reinforcing loop. In particular, diaphragm contractions or tension can be such a state. For example, I have sometimes issues with getting rid of anxiety, and when it happens, it is because of my diaphragm. It becomes tensed, I feel it and so I feel anxious. To get rid of anxiety I need to a) rationalize it away and b) keep my diaphragm relaxed.
When you overload your diaphragm with some irrelevant activity you may be breaking the self-reinforcing loop. Or maybe this movements of your diaphragm trigger some other response that wins. As a wild guess, your organism expect that after a deep breath you'll hold your breath for some time, and so it limits the heart-rate to not burn oxygen too fast.
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That sounds like an excellent theory.
> "Our findings identify physiological boundary conditions for ASCs to arise in a non-pharmacological context, shedding light on the functional mechanisms of breathwork as well as its potential as a psychotherapeutic tool."
Such a great topic for study; these findings are unsurprising to me, but I'm delighted to see them published by Nature.com
This reminds me of James Nestor book on breathing, I should give it another go. While the evidence in the article are not that clear, the book really helped with my sleep and if anything I believe controlled breathing plays a huge role in health.
From my personal experience, nothing scientific or proven here.
I sit in a small office since last few years. A year or so ago I started to get less mentally active, as in things were going on in automatic mode.
And I did not feel good in general, a friend who practices Yoga advised me to do breathing exercises.
15-30 mins of deep breaths in open space in early morning, after shower, before breakfast. Followed by 3-5 min of rapid breathing. And finishing with taking as much air as I can and holding it for 30 sec to a min and repeating it for 2-3 times.
I do feel active after that, I wonder if it's related to these studies.
I encourage you and everyone else interested to attend a Holotropic Breathwork session to truly grasp the profound impact your breath can have on your mind. This is nothing like your regular five-minute yoga breathing exercise, boxed breathing, or even the Wim Hof breathing. It's a completely different level. These sessions typically last 3 to 5 hours and take place in a safe, supportive setting with a dedicated sitter and experienced facilitators.
And please don’t try this stuff alone at home.
Did you check the co2 levels on your office? that could be one reason.
For several years in a row, I was living every day suffering from severe sleep deprivation. I was not merely homeless, but living on the streets, and I became really intent on walking around all night, rather than trespass or sit down for a rest, in someplace where I didn't belong. Or I would sit in the IHOP, and drink 2 pots of coffee and stare, zombie-like, until the Sun rose. So I lost a lot of sleep and I dozed whenever possible, and not in a bed, but often seated at a table, with my arms folded, and my face buried in those folded arms, while others made chit-chat and the music played around me.
Well, I'd get into an enclosed space with lots of people, and I'd begin to pass out. It happened a lot in church. We'd be singing and standing and sitting and kneeling, and I'd be just ready to conk out and go to sleep. And I would do crazy things like, lunging for the thermostat because it felt so warm and close in there. I thought everyone was feeling the same stale, stuffy air as I was. I don't know. It would also happen in the coffeehouses, but sleep was guaranteed to overcome me during liturgies.
But I came to believe that it was a CO2 buildup sort of situation. With a lot of human bodies in a closed space, and we were all vocalizing for an hour or so, and it was winter so perhaps the heat was on, or the air conditioning was turned off. And so CO2 buildups were the most likely thing.
Once I was housed, and able to catch up on sleep, it doesn't happen anymore. I did complain to my doctor and I asked him if I may have COPD. He insisted that I breathed better than he did. He brought in two young Medical Assistant ladies to do this breathing exercise so that he could prove there's nothing wrong with me. Of course we didn't get to that point of discussing sleep deprivation, because you can't medicate that. Well, a psychiatrist could try, with extra-drowsy meds. And they did try. I resented that.
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Am I missing something? It looked like the findings were all done from surveying people instead of actually measuring anything objectively?
Surveying people is pretty important in a study like this, and valid science.
Regardless, if you read the paper, you'd learn that they did do objective measurements, namely etCO2 levels and bio-markers from saliva.
Of note: "when etCO2 fell below approx. 20 mmHg, it was virtually guaranteed to trigger at least some (and often a strong) departure from ordinary waking consciousness. This effect is particularly intriguing because in non-breathwork-related circumstances, an etCO2 of 20 mmHg or less would be considered a sign of severe physiological malfunctions, e.g. of the heart or lungs"
But anyone who tried breathwork, especially in group settings with accompanying music, knows such practices can lead to intense trance-like states.
In yoga breath work which happens there is directly tied into the rest of the practice. it isn’t taught enough in America, but if you find an actual good teacher, of which there do not seem to be many, the benefits are wonderful. Anecdotally and from personal experience, they say that when beginning a consistent practice you will often feel a great euphoria after practicing for 60 or 90 minutes. Can confirm; and it lasts for a couple hours also.
At what level do you experience euphoria? Say on a scale of a low dose of codeine to a standard dose of heroin? Or is it more like the euphoria you get from running? Or the euphoria you get from tripping? Or the euphoria associated with some strains of cannabis? Or the euphoria associated with amphetamines? Or the euphoria associated with ethanol consumption?
Or is it the same euphoria that you are perceiving differently
Sivananda teaches pranayama as part of their core practice. They are based globally with multiple ashrams in the US.
https://sivanandayogafarm.org/
I don't understand: shouldn't hypocapnia or respiratory alkalosis in all forms lead to reports of altered states of consciousness if decreased CO2 saturation is believed to be the cause of this breathwork's effect?
I'm not sure about other forms of respiratory alkalosis, but I do know that it's quite common for people to claim that breath work leads to altered states of consciousness.
Is default a pre-altered state of consciousness?
I would argue that at least a shitload of people don't get enough air via breathing and that's why they are in whatever state of consciousness they are in.
Shitty posture, 'toxic' (compared to, again, default) air, water, soil, food and constantly being pounded by annoying stuff on the peripheral of perception disrupts our CNS.
I believe we skipped a few important beats in our cognitive evolution because of that and a lot of people would be a lot smoother ... at least less pretentiously pre-modern-evolution "animalistic", or less obedient to and uncritical about liquidity-and-status-based hierarchies, and other stuff that obviously has a net-negative impact on pretty much everything ... ( lots of which has already been quantified ... multiple times over multiple decades )
.. but peeps just laugh and call this world a gangsters paradise or something ...
At some point the reductive paradigm fails: you cannot reduce conscious experience to reproducible isolatable variables. A more wholistic approach is required and I believe Western science can eventually accommodate that.
Advances in AI and big data may help that: a collection of seemingly disparate variables may define a space that correlates with qualia.
Question: will sleeping in a badly ventilated room help with CO2 tolerance, somehow?
Very unlikely. Here's a back of the envelope calculation: The human energy requirement per day is about 9MJ. This corresponds to about 500g sugar (or starch), which releases around 750g CO2. Metabolic activity is reduced at night, so 250g CO2 is the upper limit for a full night's sleep. At typical temperature and pressure, this is < 0.14 m^2 of CO2. Assuming a very small (20 m^3) and hermetically sealed bedroom, you'll end up with a concentration of 0.7%, or less. Serious physiological studies (with divers and submariners) show that CO2 has a measurable effect starting at about 1% concentration and only becomes pronounced at 3% or so. This is consistent with the fact that exhaled air contains about 4% CO2 during normal breathing and can go much higher (>10%) during breath holds. In summary, sleeping in a stuffy room might give you respiratory problems, but no improved CO2 tolerance.
Astronauts in the Gemini and Apollo programs breathed 100 percent oxygen at reduced pressure for up to two weeks
There are no reports of "altered states of consciousness" I know of. There would have been rigorous testing before.
Similarly divers, I've never heard of lack/decreased CO2 causing their hallucinations vs nitrogen narcosis or hydrogen narcosis.
This sounds made up, have they been getting high on their own supply?
Those astronauts maintain normal CO2 levels, and divers can experience increased CO2 buildup if they don't exhale properly, which is the opposite.
It's not made up. Plenty of people here who tried breathwork can attest to its power to bring you in strong trance-like states.
Try it yourself. Ideally in group setting, because doing this on your own (with a YouTube video or whatever) won't give you the same experience at all, and could be dangerous if you take it too far.
Good observation! Lower co2 concentration isn't caused by simply inhaling more oxygen, but rather by blowing off too much co2.
Co2 is produced by the body, and the rate at which it is produced doesn't change much if you breathe pure oxygen. it's how we get rid of the co2 is what is being modulated during breathwork.
I don't mean to be too critical, but why is breathwork/meditation so popular in Atheist circles? When I would presume rationality is the goal, and this seems like it would alter it in a negative way. (depriving your brain of oxygen, presumably decreases its ability to think rationally, or at least run at full capacity)
I get that someone like Sam Harris, makes bank promoting his meditation app. But his atheist audience is very receptive.
If you presume rationality is the goal, then the rational mind should point to decades of research and anecdotal evidence that shows the positive effeccts of meditation and breathwork on mental well-being. Why are you assuming depriving your brain of oxygen for a short period of time is decreases the ability to think rationally? That could be a short term effect, but a long term adaptive effect could be the brain thinks more clearly. Same with fasting from food, etc.
Well, if one's thoughts can be altered depending on the amount of oxygen the brain receives. How can you possibly be sure about your own rationality. Couldn't you rationally start to question anything you've come to a conclusion about before, as just a byproduct of your brain's oxygen levels at that time.
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I used Harris's app, and was a bit surprised to hear him use language that he'd savage anyone else for.
I get the problem there; you're trying to teach what something feels like, and there just aren't words.
It's not surprising that you can alter the brain by various exercises, or that those exercises are counterintuitive. The brain is complicated and our tools for manipulating it are baroque. Still, it was a little weird to hear Harris give in without apparently reconsidering other forms of mental exercise from that standpoint.
Depriving? The goal is to oversaturate.
You are mixing up religion and meditation.
Think of meditation more as a physical exercise for the brain, like yoga. Is yoga a religion, even if it strengthens your core? Many people do it without any religious ideas.
Same with breathing, 'low CO2' sounds bad, but we do have the next breath, the goals isn't continued low CO2, it can lead to increased oxygen later.
As to rationality. Meditation helps declutter thoughts, so that helps with rationality doesn't it? Why would being strung out and stressed be more rational?
Atheism isn't specifically "a goal of rationality" it's just not believing in a deity (usually because of a rejection of "trust me bro, now pay your tithing" style pitches). I expect for most people the choice to believe or not believe stories with no evidence is orthogonal to the choice of an altered mind.
It looks like you put atheism and agnosticism in the same boat. There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism. Not in agnosticism. That state of mind is orthogonal to belief is mostly true. On the other hand , there is also a motivation to explain away religious experience as physiological process, which explains the overlap in group membership.
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I study cognitive neuroscience. Meditation is extremely evidence-based. It is literally one of the most evidence-based things there is in terms of actions you can take to improve mood, executive function, focus, general cognition, etc., it's almost as backed as physical exercise. Of course, there is also a lot of woo-woo spiritual stuff around it, but you can just ignore that side and use it effectively. Not sure about breathwork, I'm moderately skeptical of many the claims made about it, but I haven't looked super far into it comparatively.
Just asked ChatGPT to summarise it and it gives this. Just published it to share the link, and will delete in a day or two. https://alwinaugustin.medium.com/how-circular-breathwork-boo...
I can't be bothered to read AI generated slop that long, but that typography is deranged.