IGX

I've done this before and recently got back into it again. Huberman has talked about it as a way of increasing one's response to stress. It's also a meditation. I followed along with the video for a week and don't need it now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0pGZLx ... KitaroWaga


I also started taking cold showers that Wim Hoff recommends although not when I'm feeling too stressed, starting to get sick, or am sick. It's also a meditation. I used to do 5 minutes but didn't get my head wet. I do now which increases the difficulty. I'm up to about 40 seconds. Huberman said 11 minutes a week total spread over 4 sessions is good enough for the research showing benefit.

I’ve gotten into the breathing stuff, and have to say I really like it. Did a 1 hour session a few weeks ago, and it was powerful mojo.

Google on “holotropic breathwork”.

Nafod
I don't agree with the basic premise of holotropic breathwork that the most important issue will emerge from the patient's experience.
https://www.verywellmind.com/holotropic ... rk-4175431. This is from the link.
"The underlying tenet of holotropic breathwork is that each person has an inner radar that can determine the most important experience at a given moment, but we cannot be aware of this experience until it happens"

What does it mean 'the most important experience?" How is that to be determined? The therapist might say whatever is experienced is the most important at the time. People are often very good at repressing emotions. The person guiding the session can direct the client in a way as to bring up 'trauma' from the past where none existed.

I read a critique of Groff who was born in the Czech republic not long ago. He made a lot of claims about birth trauma and near death experiences.
There's a section in the following wikipedia entry. It sounded like nonsense to me. I've done what was called rebirthing by Leonard Orr in the 1970s. He claimed no one would die who did his work and it would dissolve the birth trauma. It did neither. Orr is dead.
https://piotrrajski.blogspot.com/2019/0 ... ortal.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof. The following is from the link
Grof has been criticized by the skeptic group Český klub skeptiků Sisyfos in the Czech Republic for furthering what they view as nonscientific psychology too far outside the bounds of the materialistic philosophical underpinnings of modern science. He is the only person to have been awarded the anti-prize Erratic Boulder Award twice in that country

I studied transpersonal psychology from the Colorado Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, a special psychology grad school in Colorado in 1983-84 and received an MA. The school changed its name to Boulder College and no longer exists. Unfortunately, there are a lot of therapies that can be helpful which also can be quite dangerous. I would be very careful with overdoing Wim Hoff breathing. Especially if you do it in extremely cold water in which people have died.

I'm not saying that breath work can not be helpful. It can but it can also injure people. Nafod you did a one hour session. I believe it was powerful. I would caution against doing it an hour every day. You didn't say whether or not you had a therapist or were on your own. When I did Leonard Orr's rebirthing with one of his trained therapists it was also powerful but ultimately not at all helpful. I have a lot of deep issues related to early childhood trauma that I have spent an enormous amount of time over decades trying to resolve. I have improved considerably but the current circumstances are making it worse again.

a marriage of 37 years that feels like it's over with but it's a bad time to end it (there's no civil divorce in Israel for Jews - only one according to Jewish law presided over by the official rabbinate - a group of bureaucrats that I despise for a lot of reasons I won't enumerate)
neither my wife nor I wish to remarry so why pursue a divorce that could cost me up to 25,000 dollars according to a family law attorney plus I have to be in israel to get a divorce according to the rabbinate. I know a woman who got one while being in California years ago. The law was changed to suit the rabbinate, which is funded by the taxpayers of this country, most of whom are not religious.

I have a host of other issues I won't enumerate. I almost got killed in a terror attack a few weeks ago on a main street of a Tel Aviv suburb where I was walking. the terror attack took place a few blocks from me and I knew something would go wrong but continued to do some errands anyhow.

2 mentally ill adult children who I doubt I'll see again. I believe that Israel has lost its deterrence and a terrible missile war with Hezbollah will begin before long and make the Gaza war look like a picnic. I stopped reading the news because I found it too disturbing and stressful. I don't belong in Israel anymore. I'm an American citizen but think the USA will have civil war. You may disagree. In any case I need to get out of here. I will try to go next week. I have had a virus for 4 months. I wrote about having to go before a police investigation yesterday in another post yesterday. It was extremely stressful. It was dismissed and a complete waste of time.

I like Kitaro Waga's guided coherence breath work that I have been using a lot these days. I'm not doing the Wim Hoff method too often. It's not helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHEEC_gOpxw&t=1s


Nafod
I would ask what your goal(s) you have in doing breathwork. Is it a powerful experience or is it something that could help underlying emotional issues? Those are two different goals and might need to be addressed separately with breathwork as part of a therapeutic process. Good luck

Thanks for the response, Lenny!

I haven’t done the holotropic breathwork myself. I did the one hour session by myself, once. In general, I like the 15 - 30 minute sessions. Been using the “Breath with Sandy” ones, he seems to be a laidback dude with a good heart. Samples lots of other’s techniques,

[youtube] https://www.youtube.com/@BreatheWithSandy [/youtube]

No deep goals, really. I just find them great entries into meditation. They clear my mind and allow me to just observe. I’ll do them lying in bed, or at my office with my door closed, or one of the better ones was sitting on a rock back in the woods.

That's what I used dzogchen for. I had a lot of powerful realizations as a byproduct and stopped for a while to let my psychology catch up.