Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by westurner 1017 days ago
4-7-8 breathing has origins in Pranayama FWIU?

"Effects of sleep deprivation and 4-7-8 breathing control on heart rate variability, blood pressure, blood glucose, and endothelial function in healthy young adults" (2022) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9277512/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=Eff...

Pranayama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

1 comments

Yeah it's somewhat of a more broad term though? Like, the freakiest pranayama gets is rechaka pranayama, where you breathe out the air from your lungs and try to hold it out, depleting your blood-oxygen levels (hypoxia mimesis). Has also been practiced in qigong[1], thankfully you can't actually induce self-unconsciousness this way (at least not without, say, breathing into a bag[2]). But all to say that my understanding is that pranayama is just kind of yoga slang for "breathwork", there's not just one kind of it as far as I know?

1. https://www.pacificcollege.edu/news/blog/2020/03/26/the-link... 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17324641/