But a box is a cube. Since there are four steps, shouldn’t it be called square breathing?
<input type="checkbox">only for some definitions of box
Edit: Learned it here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508038
If Tim says X works, how many Silicon Valley types suddenly start doing it?
In fact, given that former Navy SEAL Jocko Wilnick is all the rage in the business world and Tim Ferriss is also followed by the same crowd, the crossover between those two groups is probably larger than you think.
And cronopios is right:
Me either, its like two annoying memes are trying to breed a memeplex together.
It does seem to help to hum (for some) or at least purse your lips (for me) to drag out the exhalation step without having to inhale right away. I would certainly like to be better at this though, those packs don't last that long.
Broadly speaking, mindfulness-type meditation can make you aware of thoughts or emotions that you weren't previously aware of that could be affecting you. Has something ever bothered you, and you didn't realise how much until later on when you got irrationally annoyed at something else and thought "wait a minute, this shouldn't bother me this much"? Mindfulness practices can make you more aware of that emotion sooner so you're not carrying it with you all day. There's nothing inherently odd about it.
There are also other forms of meditation that are intended to increase your sense of love and gratitude (metta), to come to grips with your own mortality (maranassati), and surely other psychological exercises I'm not aware of.
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.
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.
Edit: found it:
Watch "How To Perform the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise | Andrew Weil, M.D." on YouTube
I have a very low breath-rate and find box breathing far too quick, and even 4-7-8 often feels fast.
We're building a sleep headband and one component is monitoring your breath-rate and learning what your breath-rate is as you fall asleep. Once we know what your optimal breath-rate for sleep is, we can then play sounds which you consciously follow with your breath, and this will guide you to sleep. It's almost like a personalized breath timing exercise.
Breath is only one of the ways we are working to improve sleep. If this is interesting to you, find out more at https://soundmind.co and sign-up for the waitlist.
And I use it all the time for falling asleep. Works amazing!
Regular deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing is what they recommend.
There are two ways to hold your breath. The first, and what most people will do, is to seal off their airway at the back of the throat. If you ascend and your airway is closed at the throat, lung expansion injury is a definite danger.
But you can also hold your breath with your airway open and only seal at the mouth. This requires more diaphragm control because you're using that muscle to hold open your lungs. It's like the isometric version of breathing. If you ascend while holding your breath with your airway open, air will just be pushed out of your lungs and through the lips, since that seal isn't nearly as strong. This is why SCUBA divers are taught not to hold their breaths and to blow small bubbles when their respirators come out because both practices ensures an open airway. But those aren't the only ways to keep the airway open.
For SEALs, I would imagine it's important to learn to safely hold one's breath underwater. Exhaling bubbles make you visible to both other divers and those at the surface and there are times that a SEAL team would need stealth underwater. Some minimal risk of lung expansion is acceptable when trying to avoid getting killed in some other way. I had a diving instructor who had originally been trained by the Jordanian military's SEAL equivalent who would breathe roughly once per minute. He said it was second nature based on his training but that we should learn to breathe the way PADI recommends since no one would be shooting at us.
You cannot conceal bubbles while on SCUBA.
Never hold your breate while ascending =/= Never hold your breathe underwater.
And, said in a less snarky way: I can see why a diving instructor would say "don't hold your breath" when you're under water. Navy SEALs likely dive a lot, but they also do training and actions above the water. And they likely spend a lot of time in stressful situations (certainly more than me). I can imagine they might box breath _on land_ to help manage the stress.
I have 5 classroom sessions of about an hour each and two pool sessions and 4 open water dives to take you knowing nothing to keeping you from killing yourself.
When I first got certified as a diver, I would suck down a tank in 15 minutes. By the time I became an instructor, my longest dive on a single tank was close to 1.5 hours and I had plenty of air left.
It would be pointless for me to try and teach breathing control techniques I was using by the time I became an instructor to an Open Water Diver student who will be lucky enough to remove and replace his regulator to pass the course.
We teach not holding your breath because most inexperienced divers will default to panicked fight or flight the second anything goes wrong.
Believe me, I’ve had to physically restrain students underwater when the reg fell out of their mouth and it took them more than 2 seconds to find it. They immediately want to shoot to the surface and 100% they’ll be holding their breath (another aspect of panic) if I don’t hold them down, put the reg back in their mouth, and calm them down.
Breath in, you begin to ascend. Breath out, you will sink.
Your goal is to find a breathing pattern that allows you to stay neutrally buoyant so you’re not fighting the rise and fall by swimming against it.
Part of the instructor exam, at least when I took it, was a pool session where they tested your ability to achieve and maintain neutral buoyancy.
You would sit cross legged holding your fins for balance like a meditator half way between the bottom and the surface and you could not rise or fall more than a foot.
It’s something a lot of divers also practice when doing safety stops. Even if there’s an ascent line, many will simply stop at 15 feet, and watch their dive computer trying to maintain exactly at 15 feet using only their breathing.
The reason for that is often there will be no ascent line or you may have to do decompression stops in open water with no physical point of reference.
In the emergency ascending you are suppose to constantly exhale all the way to the surface. otherwise your lungs might tear.
When doing next dive take a balloon with you and fill it with your air at the depth. Then go up.
Otherwise when at same depth you don't have to worry too much about it.
Disclaimer i am not an actual certified diving instructor.
Just a simple breathe in, hold, exhale, hold. Taking 4 slow seconds for each step.
I was very, very skeptic of breathing techniques and meditation. However after learning this technique things kind of 'clicked' and meditation started to make sense, and see why it's thrown around so much.