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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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What are the negative effects people get when they don't work with a teacher?
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 !
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.
Can you suggest an intro to practicing pranayama specifically, as opposed to generic mindfulness or meditation?
Perhaps, but did you read the article.
It merely tested that people recalled smells better when they didn't have a clipper put on their nose. The title is highly spurious.
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.
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.
Do hou have a link for a beginner ?
Are there any great books or videos that teacH Pranayama effectively?
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.
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
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.
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.
[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...
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
They are establishing a link between the nose and smelling.
I don't find that useful or interesting.
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.
lifetime anxiety sufferer here.
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 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.
You are now breathing manually.
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).
Any habit change involves manual action for a time until the new habit takes hold.
What you are really saying is "changing your breathing is not worth the effort", and offering no evidence.
Two thoughts:
- 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.
> "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.
Psychology experiments are hard.
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.
Have you been to an ENT specialist?
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!
You might be overbreathing:
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:
I can't either. I've always thought it was due to allergens but I really don't have evidence to support that. I've never seen a doctor for it.
have you tried fluticasone propionate (aka flonase)?
I had similar issues albeit alot less severe and it helps a lot.
n=24 in this study. I'm not disputing the benefits (there appears to be historical evidence), but is that enough to make a claim like this?
If a person was ressurected after being crashed with a truck on his head, then n=1 would be enough to claim it's possible.
Given the kind of claim, surprisingly small N can be adequate.
'unique' indeed.
this is a curiosity at best, recognizing odors is not what i would call an essential skill anymore.
Quick, someone grab the domain cosanostril.