Loading practices
Loading practices
The fiddliness is not a flaw in the design. Keeping track of which nostril and which stage takes up just enough of your mind that there is little room left for whatever you were chewing over. Ten rounds is a fair try. If the hand work irritates you, that irritation is useful information about what suits you.
it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). A practice that takes your whole attention is easier to keep clean, and this names where that attention can be pointed.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
With 112 participants, slow paced breathing at six breaths a minute produced its effects whether or not a biofeedback display was added, which suggests the pace of the breath matters more than the apparatus around it. The same reading applies here. The claims about balancing the two sides of the brain are not what was tested. The slow ordered rhythm, and the attention it demands, are the parts with something behind them.
Laborde S, Allen MS, Borges U, Iskra M, Zammit N, You M, Hosang T, Mosley E, Dosseville F. (2022). Psychophysiological effects of slow-paced breathing at six cycles per minute with or without heart rate variability biofeedback.. Psychophysiology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A slow rhythm you have to keep track of settles the body and occupies the part of your mind that would otherwise be worrying.
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.
Fighting, running and freezing are the ones everybody can name. There is a fourth: going along with things, smoothing them over, making yourself easy to be around so that nothing bad happens.
Any breathing instruction that reaches you through a screen or a book comes from someone who cannot see you. Keep the final say over what your body does.