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jimrandomh comments on Vipassana Meditation: Developing Meta-Feeling Skills - Less Wrong
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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.