[aaisola]

This is something that yogis have been saying for 1000s of years, using breathing techniques like 'pranayam'. It's ironic that how until something is promulgated by or studied by a western university it is discredited.

Now we are seeing an explosion in breathing related practices from Wim Hof, to Kelly Starrett and the Navy Seals essentially taking a practice that people have been doing for millennia and making it seem novel.

[ethanbond]

This is such a tired critique of any science that touches on traditions. There are plenty of traditions that have turned out to be useless, plenty that turn out to be useful. Empirical validation is a good thing and has literally nothing to do with east versus west nor tradition versus modernity. It has to do with knowledge versus suspicion, and the more useful things we can pull forward from suspicion into knowledge, the better off we'll be.

[crazynick4]

I think his point is that it would be more helpful to everyone if people remained agnostic to things that they haven't properly investigated instead of actively denying them simply because the research hasn't been done yet. This kind of attitude keeps a lot of people from researching fringe subjects some of which may have something there. But people are discouraged from looking and ridiculed for their interest because there's no evidence to support it (yet). It's a self-reinforcing cycle and not very productive.

[ethanbond]

Pretty sure every child on the planet has been told to “take a breath” in the middle of a temper tantrum. The assertion that people have dismissed this particular idea is obviously not true, but is also a hard thing to prove in the general case as well.

[613style]

In many things related to mindfulness, breathing, yoga, and meditation, we in western culture have a bad habit recognizing the value of a very small part of a larger practice and then writing off the rest as spiritual mumbo-jumbo. For example, everyone knows that "taking a breath," helps your child to calm down. But we don't often go further into breathing practices, partly because they start to bump up against spirituality, because we as Very Good Scientists are naturally skeptical and usually biased against that.

Mindfulness is another example that we're just a little farther along with. It's now becoming widely known that being mindful for 5-15 minutes a day will lower your stress levels or help you control emotions or rise in the corporate ladder or help with other sorts of problematic behavior. But what happens when you go further? 2500 years ago, people knew that meditating for 1-2 hours a day leads to dramatic, permanent, and wildly transformative changes to your perceptions of reality and your relationship with the sensate world. But words like "awakening" are spiritual mumbo-jumbo so we apply our natural scientific skepticism, largely ignore the deep parts, and do our society a disservice.

So on one hand, you're right that we don't just completely dismiss these things. But on the other hand, we do often dismiss the important parts.

[ImprobableTruth]

>then writing off the rest as spiritual mumbo-jumbo

Because a lot of it _is_ spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

The books "The Mind Illuminated" and "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" occasionally get recommended on here and are pretty mainstream books, supposedly backed by "brain science" and written by two PhDs. Let me give an excerpt from "The Mind Illuminated":

"The first practice involves cultivating the so-called “higher knowledges of the mundane type.” These are: 1. The “higher powers,” which are said to allow a yogi to perform miracles such as walking on water, or walking through walls. [...] 4. Knowing the minds of others, which is a form of telepathy. 5. Recollecting past lives"

And this isn't presented as a "oh, here's this historical context", it's presented without any real comment next to the jhanas.

Or, a nice bit in "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha", talking about pyschic powers:

"On the other hand, it does seem to be possible through powerful intent, strong concentration ability, appreciation of interdependence and careful experimentation to manipulate what we might call “this world”,as well as those in it, in very unusual and profound ways. Yes, I am referring to such things as telekinesis, mind control, reading other peoples thoughts, pyromancy, and all of that. The more you get your concentration and insight trips together and the more you look into the magical aspect of things, the more you will learn about what I will call the magical laws of the universe and how to use your will to manipulate it."

You know why people are skeptical of things like "awakening"? Because it's sold in the same breath as all the religious parts, making it impossible to discern which is what. If the cost of getting to 'the deep parts' means having to not dismiss such obvious bullshit like pyromancy, I think society will do fine with such 'disservice'.

[613style]

I agree that it's difficult to get to the core practical side of these things. Buddhism and related religions/philosophies have had a lock on meditation for so long that it can be hard to disentangle the real stuff from the stuff that got made up along the way.

So when you reach for The Mind Illuminated, which is a 400 page book, and trivialize the 390 pages of good pragmatic instructions on improving concentration and insight skills because you read 10 pages of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, you're missing a powerful opportunity.

The fact is that if you sit quietly and pay attention to your breath for a couple hours a day, some very transformative stuff will eventually start happening all on its own. No books or religion is required. But as a society, we mostly aren't willing to do that because of attitudes like that displayed in your post. We're making progress, though. Brains of advanced practitioners are being put in fMRIs with surprising results, and things are happening slowly. My point was that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in the name of being good scientists.

[crazynick4]

These are scientifically unsubstantiated claims but to claim that they are impossible is to go beyond the scope of the current science. We have a default stance on this, the 'null hypothesis' that states that these are not possible, a hypothesis which we have thus far failed to reject. This is not the same as saying that we've proven the null hypothesis to be true, we never really prove the null when we do hypothesis testing - we either reject it, or default back to it. How can you know that mind control is impossible? If you were truly capable of it, would you advertise it? I know I wouldn't, unless I had a burning desire to end up in a government lab somewhere, which I don't. Real science always rests on a backdrop of agnosticism, which people often forget and get caught up in emotionally charged ridicule.

But all that aside, it's not really about believing or not believing in whatever the claims are. These disciplines are all based on the 'doing' aspect - you do it, and if you feel the slow transformation of your character, then great. Whether or not you become a pyromancer is actually not important, most of these disciplines actually discourage these things even though they believe in them. Their stance is that different strange abilities may come and go but clinging to them is more destructive to progress than anything.

[crazynick4]

I'm just saying that there should be a kind of agnosticism which 'pure' science is very conscious of and therefore chooses its words carefully when it says things like 'we have not found evidence for x'. This is very different from saying 'we have disproven the possibility of x', but this is the way it is generally understood by the general public. Healthy skepticism is important, but it often devolves into emotionally charged ridicule (see Richard Dawkins for an example) which has nothing to do with objective science at all.

[chordalkeyboard]

you're not going to get very far by advocating that people apply skepticism to their own belief systems when they haven't shown the willingness to do so. you're going to find stupid human tricks anywhere you find humans.

[aaisola]

Yes and by no means am I stating that we take all traditions or techniques for granted; otherwise we'd still be sticking leeches on people. The point is that in n=1 studies (ie. self experimentation) one can learn a lot more and a lot faster than by waiting for a double-blind study to be conducted on the subject matter.

The same is true in strength training, where coaches like Charles Poliquin used techniques that weren't "scientifically validated" till decades later.

Meditation and mindfulness has pre-dated Calm, Headspace and the SV bubble by a couple of millennia so it's important to have an open mind to practices that don't yet have papers in PubMed. Just because a doctor can't prescribe it to you doesn't make it bogus.

[ethanbond]

Well, you can certainly “learn” things faster (with scare quotes). The fundamental insight of science is precisely that the method of learning that you describe is actually extremely unreliable.

Agreed that there’s a lot of time that has been lost on these really important topics. I’d readily concede that a lot of that time has been lost because of frankly racist perspectives on other cultures. Just like meditation is not - or ought not be - exclusively an eastern innovation, science is not - and ought not be - exclusively a western innovation. Let’s take findings like this as an absolutely critical merging of thought and not a subversion or subjugation of thought.

[aaisola]

Agree completely. The method I describe is not prescriptive for a general population. However, it can be taken as a case study and an opportunity for experimentation.

It is also refreshing to see that modern science is now starting to investigate these various practices so as to determine the mechanism and physiological impact behind them. The fact that psilocybin and ayahuasca are now being researched for their medicinal properties under lab settings is refreshing. 

However, going back to breath work it would be nice if these publications gave credit to the original practitioners instead of framing the research as novel and revolutionary.

[zabil]

> It's ironic that how until something is promulgated by or studied by a western university it is discredited.

I don't think it was discredited. It's just making the case stronger using science. I believe this will keep happening and that's good!

[mpweiher]

"The act of controlling one’s breath for the purpose of restoring or enhancing one’s health has been practiced for thousands of years amongst Eastern cultures.

For example, yogic breathing (pranayama) is a well-known ancient practice of controlled breathing, ..."

[ImprobableTruth]

>This is something that yogis have been saying for 1000s of years, using breathing techniques like 'pranayam'.

Well, sure, and they've also been saying for 1000s of years that if you just meditate hard enough you'll get supernatural abilities.

If you mix religion and actual knowledge, I think you should expect to generally be dismissed until there's some more evidence.