> With a lot of these things I would highly recommend to just try it. If it works for you, good. If not, don't do it. It doesn't cost anything and you won't harm yourself.
I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. If something is potent enough to deliver benefit, it can also be potent enough to deliver harm. You can't have it both ways.
Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise.
Just like with McMindfulness, I wish some of this kind of instruction required licensing.
You're over-reacting. Neither the benefits nor the harm is fast enough so that you don't have time to adjust. If you continue doing something despite it causing active harm, that's just on you (as in generally).
That assumes adverse reactions will have a gradual, reversible onset. By that token you could keep taking acetaminophen as long as you don’t feel like your liver is failing.
Breathing practice is the most simple thing in the world. Sit, breathe, relax - definitely doesnt need a license. Sounds like you’re confused of the purpose of it.
Just because it is simple in your experience doesn't mean that is universally true for everyone. Certainly not for anxiety disordered or PTSD suffering people for example.
See my reply to comment below which cites studies when these sort of practices backfire in a non-trivial fashion. Like I said, it is either too trivial as sit, breathe and relax which won't do much good, or it is potent enough to do some good in which case it also has the potential of doing some harm.
I have multiple problems with this statement. First, the problems you are describing are external to breathing. If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also?
Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits. Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
You're fighting several strawman arguments but I am still going to assume good faith.
> If you suffer from PTSD and get an episode at the grocery store, do you want to regulate grocery store visits also?
I am not talking about triggering based on some external stimulus. I am talking about a nilly-willy prescription of a pscyhoactive exercise that has a non-trivial chance of interacting/activating pre-existing conditions.
> Why would you obtain your perspective from a click-driven Vice article referring to a study of 73 people instead of the infinitely more robust source of truth?
My perspective doesn't come from the article, I merely put it there as it gives a readable summary to the otherwise terse scientific papers.
Regarding the particular study, that study has tons of citations to other studies and meta studies, a good chunk of which complains about *adverse effects are not sufficiently mentioned", which I'm doing here. I'm not claiming that the score is settled on this matter, but the fact that there is no talk on adverse affects deserves attention.
> Second, breathing has multi-thousand year old legacy spanning multiple cultures and eras touting it's benefits
So does psychedelic mushrooms or circumcision. The good thing about science is we can systemically study traditional practices instead of taking their word for it. I don't think tradition is an infinitely robust source of truth, especially in comparison to scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, I value traditional knowledge too, but you can't claim traditional information and its context have propagated to our day sufficiently well (e.g. is circumcision a rite-of-passage anymore?), including the knowledge/caution on what to do with adverse reactions.
Contrasting merits of scientific processes with traditional knowledge is not scientism. If anything claiming tradition is an infinitely robust source of knowledge is some sort of dogmatism.
You said that tradition doesn't stand scrutiny over time. It wouldn't be a huge leap to suggest you subscribe to the thought that science is the only way to approach any type of validation.
I don't agree with that statement, I think there are cases where the lab doesn't translate into real world and suggesting that scientific experiments are always the best representation of the real world is just naive, I-M-H-O.
Ergo, I don't see us agreeing on the topic and it is best left there.
Regarding the straw man spam - it would help if your claims were correct and not removed from context. I didn't suggest that all tradition is infinitely robust, I suggested tradition concerning breathing is more robust than the limited scope paper you referred to. Context matters.
> You said that tradition doesn't stand scrutiny over time
No, that is not what I said. I said knowledge transmission through tradition is lossy and as such it is not systematic, it doesn't carry context and it doesn't cover the fine print. In that, the content of a memetic proposition that made it to our day might as well have truth value, but it doesn't mean it is readily applicable by anyone who reads about it on the internet. Or we might have memetic behavior that is divorced from context (e.g. circumcision) and is questionable as to why we should follow it. That's why rigorous scientific study is important.
> I think there are cases where the lab doesn't translate into real world and suggesting that scientific experiments are always the best representation of the real world is just naive, I-M-H-O.
I have not suggested any of these things (and this will be 3rd time in a row I'll be bringing up you strawmanning.)
Lab science is not the only science, experimentation is not the only component of scientific method. Yes science can't explain a lot of things yet but science has the best methodology in working for an objective truth. So ignoring evidence science can produce, especially if it's conflicting with tradition, is going to be naive at best.
> I didn't suggest that all tradition is infinitely robust, I suggested tradition concerning breathing is more robust than the limited scope paper you referred to. Context matters.
I didn't suggest you said all tradition. I still stand by my argument that you are defending dogmatism of tradition, even in the limited context of breathing exercises. Besides, that paper is not the only source I've cited, breathing is studied in a multitude of psychological domains as I mentioned, so indeed context matters.
> Regarding the straw man spam
Please refrain from inflammatory language. You made your point that you don't think you're committing straw man, and I still think you do and that disagreement is fine. No need to retort underhanded attacks, let's keep it civil and intellectually honest.
You don't go through your medicine cabinet and try everything there because "changing nothing" can backfire. You read/learn about the complications, side-effects, adverse reactions and make an informed decision based on that.
Inaction argument is a strawman, I'm not arguing for doing nothing at all, I am just against informal prescription of rather potent, psychoactive exercises without due respect, especially in the form of "just try it, can't do any harm". If you want to get serious with it, find people/sangha/teachers/therapists who know their stuff and train in that context. But assuming no harm can come while assuming benefits can come is a contradiction and wishful thinking.
>Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise.
A good meta study is: Lindahl et al (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. This vice article recaps it: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-po...
I'll list just the titles of select deep dive citations from the first study to give an idea, you can find detailed citations in the paper itself;
- "Meditation-induced psychosis" (several with this title)
- "Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review."
- "Adverse effects of meditation: a preliminary investigation of long-term meditators."
- "The unveling of traumatic memories and emotions through mindfulness and concentration meditation: clinical implications and three case reports."
- "Meditation in association with psychosis"
- "Precipitation of acute psychotic episodes by intensive meditation in individuals with a history of schizophrenia"
- "Psychiatric complications of meditation practice."
This is a citation tree from just one study on meditation.
To be clear, I know the term meditation is not strictly equivalent to breathing exercises but definitely a good chunk covers & includes them; e.g most frequently practiced meditation style (vipassana), breathing sensation is the most common object of focus.
If you're interested in non-meditation studies, the term "relaxation induced anxiety" will bring a wider selection of papers. If you are interested in studies about psychoactivity of breathing, search for "panic disorder breathing" which has again tons of studies that investigate the link (contents of which doesn't necessarily limit to panic disordered populations).
And to be clear, I am not saying meditation or breathing exercises are bad. But they are potent. They can create altered states. And as such I am against bold claims like "they can do no harm, just do on your own". As studies above demonstrate, even with a proper educational context they can backfire. Especially considering the fact that the population segment that would be most interested in trying these exercises would likely to be the people already suffering from stress, anxiety or mental health problems.
...all day long - just append certain keywords and you'll find many articles and studies to feed your subjective belief and win arguments.
I did and talked with a lot of people doing mindfulness meditation and none of them warned me against it. I don't doubt your claims but I think they are exceptions and just about any activity can be found to be dangerous when looking at the exceptions.
> - "cycling is dangerous", "hiking is dangerous", "swimming is dangerous", "running is dangerous"
The difference is all of those are physical activities, and a reasonable person can easily infer the risks.
That's not the case with these prescriptions of rather potent, psychoactive exercises. A better comparison would be psychedelic mushrooms; it certainly wouldn't kill you but any reasonable prescription would have also cautioned about the importance of set & setting and to stay away from it if you have certain preconditions/proclivities.
Sorry you can’t compare breathing with mushrooms. It’s more like reading an intense book or watching a horror movie. There is a psychoactive effect but it’s pretty small.
> There is a psychoactive effect but it’s pretty small
The research I cited claims otherwise. If you have citations to back your claim, I'm happy to revise my position. And sure, it will be OK for a good majority of the population but it is not universally true to the extent of easily claiming "just try it, no harm can come" on a public forum. To give more context, 30% of US population will be clinically anxiety disordered at least once in their lifetime [1]. 17% to 53% of people will experience relaxation-induced anxiety [2].
Looking up just one of the papers in your example [1], and it looks far from convincing.
The paper is about the correlation between two separate manic episodes after meditation with two different methods. It further cites other papers - but in common for them is episodes occurring after meditation in patients with severe mental illnesses who in several cases are off their medication.
The paper goes on to give a case study of the patient, who had a manic episode the first time after a full weekend yoga retreat, and secondly again two months after entering a Zen retreat that she had been associated with for two years.
Notably there's no evidence of causation at all, of course, but more importantly there is also no reliable pattern of repetition despite her persistent involvement with meditation:
She was involved in meditation extensively over a long period before the second episode, she recovered without medication and re-entered the retreat. Of course we don't know if she further episodes, but that the case study only mentions two is a strong indication.
There's no discussion in the case study about other causes other than suggesting insomnia as a result of the practice as a possible cause. But the paper does not present any information to suggest any data on sleep deprivation was collected from the patient.
Maybe the other papers are more convincing, but this paper basically boils down to:
* Some reports of correlation have been made.
* Here's another example of correlation... Where the second incidents happened months into intensive practice, and with patient going back into intensive practice, yet no suggestion it happened more.
If anything, the low number of incidents the author uncovered has further convinced me of the safety of meditation. Maybe people with serious mental illnesses should be a bit careful.
[1] Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review, Graeme A. Yorston.
I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. If something is potent enough to deliver benefit, it can also be potent enough to deliver harm. You can't have it both ways.
Turns out breathing is rather psychoactive, and without proper educational context one can indeed induce or activate latent issues, anxiety or otherwise.
Just like with McMindfulness, I wish some of this kind of instruction required licensing.