= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RichardKennaway comments on Vipassana Meditation: Developing Meta-Feeling Skills - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (106)
It does. When I meditate, my breathing rate drops to about 2 to 4 breaths per minute.
The irresponsibility in this thread is shocking. Deliberately slowing your breathing is not safe! If you're too good at it, you could induce hypoxia, which causes brain damage. Ordinarily you'd pass out before that could happen, but that is not guaranteed when you're putting your brain into altered states at the same time. If you really want to experiment with this, put on a fingertip oximeter first.
I haven't heard of people getting into trouble that way from meditation, though it seems theoretically possible. Do you have evidence, or is this a theory-based concern?
In my experience (I don't deliberately try to slow my breathing when I meditate), meditation leads to deeper, slower breathing. I don't know how well it would work to slow one's breathing to induce a meditative state.
I have deliberately slowed my heartbeat to go to sleep. The process is to notice my heartbeat, then imagine a slightly slower beat.
I do not believe this is dangerous.
I do believe that if there were measuring and competition, deliberately slowing one's heartbeat could be dangerous.
Theory-based. But I am not confident that incidents of slight hypoxia would be reported if they happened.
It may be that it's impossible to slow your breathing by enough to cause damage. However, even if that were true, there's still required a due diligence requirement. Four people reported having tried slowing their breath without even mentioning the possibility of injury, even to dismiss it.
... two breaths per minute doesn't seem sustainable.
I tried breathing as slowly and deeply as I comfortably could, and got 2 minutes 20 seconds for four full breaths without much effort. And I'm not even very athletic. Maybe I should try to keep it up for 10 or 20 minutes to see if there's any trouble.
ETA: 11 breath cycles in 6 minutes, then I got bored. It's very deliberate breathing, filling my lungs as much as possible with each inhalation, but doesn't feel uncomfortable in any way.
You can do 2 minutes 20 seconds for ZERO full breaths reasonably comfortably. :P
It isn't, but 4 is.
ETA: I have a string of meditation beads, 108 beads long. If I use it to count breaths, it takes more than half an hour.
Oh, that's a good idea. I've been wanting an excuse to make something like that for a while. But it does seem to contradict the keeping-still-ness.
What I do is curl fingers.
Count to 10 and back, curl 1 finger. When all 10 are curled, I begin uncurling. A full curl-uncurl cycle takes about 25 minutes for me, and is a good substitute for an alarm, I think. Little less stressful & abrupt at the end.
I guess I have the same question--how does this interact with the priority of keeping still?
I'm not sure. I'm very much new to it. I don't seem to notice any major difference between when I use an alarm and the finger curling.
2 actually is possible. I have even achieved it and that was without excessive training. At least, as I discovered later, without excessive training while I was awake. On a related note it is also possible to sustain 1 breath per 50 meters while running.
With both of the above it isn't a matter of mere psychology. The changes may have to occur down to the physiological level, along similar lines to altitude training. The oxygen absorption of the blood itself is altered.