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Perfectionism and going too hard tend to travel together, and between them they produce most of the injuries and most of the quitting. If you are teaching, say this at the start, because people will not assume they are allowed to approximate. If you are practising, the useful question is whether you could do this again tomorrow, not whether it looked right today.
and ease my task for me (Quran 20:26). Asking for a thing to be made manageable sits inside the prayer rather than outside it.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A four week programme of slow, gentle diaphragmatic breathing with heart rate feedback was judged workable and acceptable by people living with long COVID, with early hints of improvement. There was no control group, so the improvement itself is uncertain. What it does illustrate is the point being made here: a version people can tolerate is a version they keep doing, and nothing works that you have already given up.
Corrado J, Iftekhar N, Halpin S, Li M, Tarrant R, Grimaldi J, Simms A, O'Connor RJ, Casson A, Sivan M. (2024). HEART Rate Variability Biofeedback for LOng COVID Dysautonomia (HEARTLOC): Results of a Feasibility Study.. Advances in rehabilitation science and practice doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A version you can repeat without hurting yourself is worth far more than a correct one you manage once.
To find the soft ocean sounding breath, breathe out through your mouth as if fogging up a mirror. Then keep that same slight narrowing at the throat with your mouth closed, and let the sound get quieter and quieter.
Holding your breath for a moment makes the next one deeper, which sounds backwards until you know why. The urge to breathe is driven by carbon dioxide, not by a shortage of air.
Go slowly enough to learn something about yourself, rather than only a technique. What is worth keeping is knowing which breath does what in your body.