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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

There’s a similar yoga technique called 4-7-8 breathing. Breath in for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8

Scalene triangle breathing?

4-7-8 is better than 4-4-4-4 to help fall in sleep to my experience.

I really like this technique. Sometimes it gives me a pleasant head rush which instantly relaxes my entire body. It helps me to fall asleep or to relax in every day life.

There's a nice dynamic with this technique where you end up using more of the oxygen in your breath, since you inhale for less time (4 seconds) than you hold & exhale (7+8 seconds).

With box breathing, on the other hand, I find it really unpleasant to hold the empty lung position, and also four seconds feels like it's really not enough to use my full breath.

The "standard" count in Classical Pranayama is usually 1:4:2 i.e. breathe in for x secs, hold for 4x secs and exhale for 2x secs.

In my training it was usually the exhale that was lengthened. Though my training was more physical yoga focused (Asana) so perhaps classical / more advanced / different purpose pranayama is different. Usually it was 1:1:2 inhale, hold, exhale.

One of the things which bothers me is that, with the explosion of interest in all aspects of Yoga, there has been a concomitant dilution/muddying of its original teachings by Self-styled, New-Age, Half-baked gurus and plain old Charlatans. They simply lack the knowledge, which is unforgivable when you realize that the original sources are just a "google search" away.

For people interested in the Original sources, i highly recommend starting with; Roots of Yoga by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton to know the primary sources and then actually reading them.

There's a video about it by a doctor (who is into these kinds of things, apart from his regular work) somewhere on YouTube. Saw it some time ago.

Edit: found it:

Watch "How To Perform the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise | Andrew Weil, M.D." on YouTube

https://youtu.be/YRPh_GaiL8s

If that helped him solve Fermat's last conjecture, it can probably help me relax

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