Breath: Some Preliminary GSR Results & General Case for ANS Balance
SOFCast weekly newsletter 31 July 2022, "to make benefit those whom work and not read"
Welcome,
Throughout the last month, I've been experimenting with GSR and HRV sensor units, measuring myself during the day and after breathing and meditative work.
As many of you know, I'm convinced of the non-religious secular veracity of such practices, which can be inferred readily from hard data. Hard data removes a potentially unpleasant dogmatic tinge that some who could benefit from training may find disagreeable.
I'm reminded of the excellent science fiction book by Richard K Morgan, Altered Carbon, a book that was somewhat desecrated by netfliggs - in which "eastern techniques" were a core part of the training of Envoy Corps. I see this work increasingly as something like that. If that frame suits you.
I unapologetically see this kind of work as essentially amoral. Although - with a less agitated nervous system, you may find unintended shifts in your outlook. You may find you're less of a prick, although that part has not worked for me so far.
And it goes without saying, bio-metric feedback for a practitioner like myself, Zen in my case, is nevertheless invaluable. It is also nothing new and can be done relatively cheaply and quickly. There is no reason we should waste our time with things of little practical use to our practice.
A few weeks ago, and unfortunately post-release of my short ebook on Hara, I came across a little out-of-print gem called Zen and the Mind by author Tomio Hirai. This book presented a ground-breaking analysis of Zen from a scientific perspective:
"In meditation, as time passes and the breathing rate decelerates, abdominal breathing comes to predominate over thoracic breathing. Although investigations performed on twelve priests showed that not all of them reached a low level of four or five breaths per minute and that the more experienced the priest, the slower his breathing rate, all of the men tested breathed much slower during meditation than before it."
In many ways, this represents the crux of what I believe is most important. The message is often obfuscated. The exoticism in the presentation of some breathing probably complicates things for the average western blockhead. Variation in emphasis, such as holding the breath in, hyperventilation, showing your ass all balls to the sun or whatever else, also has this effect. However hilarious it is.
Is this necessary?
As it sells more books and gumroad courses, exoticism is presented to you as the thing to be doing. Yet the essence of effective, practical breath work has been scientifically shown to be relatively straightforward. Balance of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) doesn’t require work with your sunbrahs esoteric semen.
That is to say, most of the time, moving away from Sympathetic OR parasympathetic dominance. We want to aim for balance. Since it is a system designed for balance, give and take, and there is no hard line as such between Sympathetic and Parasympathetic ”systems”.
Hence my use of the word dominance because we compulsively take our culturally enforced either-or positions with matters like this. But its never that simple, more just a convenient model.
Thus, sympathetic evil, parasympathetic good and vice versa depending how the individual in question wishes to justify their behaviour.
In fact, and as I tried to make clear in my book, there are all sorts of psycho-physiological crossovers, rendering it almost impossible to draw any firm line in the sand. The diaphragm, for example, shares nerve endings and connection with all systems and acts as an intermediary between both the on switch and the off switch so to speak - as kind of connection points.
And as I tried to explain in my book, these points offer us ways to regulate balance since we have conscious and unconscious control over it.
With all my years of practice in meditation and Reichian bodywork - which emphasises segments of "armour" broken up into the face, throat, hands, pelvis and feet (areas used very generally for my purposes) it always remained mysterious to me the fundamental interrelationships of the mechanisms of action that made the system work. Why is "breaking up" these segments considered significant?
Sure, I had some ideas about neuroplasticity, "tension", or whatever else, but the complete picture always eluded me.
It suddenly hit me while I was researching my Hara ebook. These are areas rich in nerve endings, and muscular motor-units for all ANS systems. Acting as kind of crossover points, offering the possibility of conscious dual control.
This was very clearly intuitively glimpsed by the ancients and made as a foundational in systems like yoga with the chakras (which Reich ended up appropriating). That chakras or areas of dual control offered the best points of conscious access to the regulation of the ANS. Or better yet, as one of my recent teachers termed while I was working with him, these points act as a "bridge" to enable us to immediately exercise control over the ANS balance.
If worked over time, as with a system like Reichian therapy, manipulating bridges offers a chance of complete re-wiring and control over how our bodies are regulated and act in space.
As Reich would say, we change the character structure slowly over time. By subtly affecting the muscular motor units in these areas with oxygenation and new patterns of movement, we are, in essence, changing how the nervous system reacts to and perhaps interprets reality itself. Our subjective experience of what happens is then more in line with our inborn primordial biological objectives.
Objectives that have often been subverted and confused by a sick and decadent civilisation.
This is not religious per se - indeed, this work can lead to transcendent experiences or “fireworks” - but these are non-verbal and non-dogmatic experiences. They are wellings-up of experience, originating from the foundational base of reality itself, as we become untied like a shoelace stuck in knots, we act as a vibrant conduit for nature herself.
This is why I've always had a problem with only books and only reading. If it's not instructional, it's basically worthless gobbledygook. Something to impress our friends with. A new vocabulary. Something to make us feel comfortable about ourselves and what we apparently think. Some guys go to the gym a lot and pin gear - most don’t even do that - but this is something entirely different. Often compulsive gym work can simply be the outcome of some hidden behavioural pattern, and can itself end up self-defeating and self-destructive. And not destructive in a truly interesting way.
ALL THE THINGS WE DESIRE, what we truly are, is hidden beneath a Gordian knot of confused thinking, emotional pain, and self-justification.
NO SET OF WORDS can change your physiology - unless these words drive you away from words and to vibrant practice.
End of story.
Be lazy, or do the work.
All else is the inane babbling of naggers with no drive and no real power over themselves or the world.
If enlightenment is anything, it is probably best described as perfect relaxation."
- Mark Stavish
Mark said this in a conversation I had with him. It seems an oversimplification at first, at least when compared to the fantastical promises of medieval religion, but I increasingly believe it is very close to the…mark.
I think it would not be controversial to assert that for many practising Buddhists (not just the wordcel and theorycel variety, but you know, those that actually practice as the Buddha instructed) that once you become proficient at mindfulness, actually, there's no real reason that it needs to be done as only formal sitting on a cushion.
Mindfulness is not bound to material conditions; you do it anywhere, at any time and under any circumstance. This is hard for many to accept because, ironically, they're spiritual materialists despite their proclivity to compulsively quote rules, regulations and theories from books.
Needless to say, part of the difficulty in maintaining mindfulness, I now believe stems primarily from breath style and ANS balance. We tend to leave our mindfulness on the cushion, and whilst we may retain some semblance of good mindfulness for a little while after, as soon as our prick of a boss busts our balls, we're at the mercy of the world again.
Our unconscious patterns of body and breath act as they always did, rendering any authentic, mindful practice difficult or impossible. This is perhaps why many people see any degree of attainment in unobtainable magical terms - like “you must live 6 gorillian lifetimes as a latrine boy in Calcutta before you even have a chance to practice”. While the practice is straightforward - it's not easy. It's not easy because the most essential foundations of right mindfulness are often skirted over, or not elaborated in easy to understand terms.
What if I told you there is a way that you can promote perfect Autonomic Balance all of the time?
This can even be easily implemented by your average cock sucker on the street, also to great benefit. Or even the statue-head warrior right. If they could only get offline and out of their heads for a few moments.
By the way; word on the street is one of these aesthetics accounts self-doxxed, revealing himself to be a swarthy gremlin living in a totally different reality to that which was presented. There’s nothing wrong with this, but one wonders, if he had spent his time becoming working and living up to his ideals, instead of just trying to prove to others an abstract image by writing about it and posting on social media - what could of been?
Before I present the results, here are some quick bullet points to consider. I want to cut off the global flood of tears that ensues whenever I make claims about how we're mostly wasting our time, and most of what we rail against is fake and entirely a construct in our demented brains:
These measurements were taken only on myself and one other.
High sympathetic excitation rates are represented on GSR sensors with up to 85% accuracy over a certain period.
As measured by GSR sensors, Sympathetic excitation is strongly associated in many good studies with cortisol release. This is one of my main assertions and fights against the destructiveness of what many in our community consider essential or proper. One of my main justifications for Hara breathing and meditative practice is the regulation of sympathetic dominance and associated hormonal cascade impacts and chronic health and life outcomes.
You cannot think yourself out of this. In fact, if you try, you're simply acting with that same paradigm that induces disordered thought and cognition, long-term health problems, cognitive decline, drug and alcohol abuse, and, as we will see over the coming weeks - extreme strains on the cardiovascular system.
One of my instructors has made the case that hypertension-type illnesses may not be related to the usual diagnostic criteria. They may be related almost entirely to shallow breathing. The changes in the tonus of the vascular system and the inability to properly push blood around the body are obviously required for thousands of tasks, including removing waste and energising cells. The prevalence of these illnesses may be entirely breathing-based. He presents good clinical data for this.
Over the coming weeks, I will present GSR sensor data and, more importantly, HRV data as proof of some new months of breathing. My HRV monitor was delayed, and I only received it this week, So I am busy re-taking readings with both sensors. These further readings will be released with information on HRV, the vascular system, and how breath type impacts it.
Finally, HRV is the BEST and only non-invasive way to show the functioning of the ANS. HRV states indicate balance and imbalance in the organism. GSR sensors indicate only sympathetic excitement states, not autonomic balance per se - although one can somewhat infer the general ANS condition, it is by no means sufficient to show the efficiency in which the blood is being pushed around the body, for example.
So more on this in the coming weeks, when I combine HRV results. HRV is a complex topic related to ANS balance, and I hope to delve into this intensely over the following few newsletters.
Because my breath is already well regulated after over a decade of work, I have had to revert back to bad habits for these the days I was taking measurements. There are obvious problems with this.
This was difficult. Thus, I am a poor test subject.
Shortly, I will be working with people in real life who have had no prior breathwork exposure, and I hope to present further data. I’m hoping to find some real fuck-ups that I can experiment on. If anyone’s in the area, please let me know.
Type 1 breathing is a new method I have been utilising for the 6 months or so. I have thoroughly integrated it into my everyday and nightly breathing patterns. It has been life-changing.
I will not reveal it yet, however, as I'm sick of cretins on twitter lifting my work for threads and leaving no reference or credit for my hard work.
Needless to say, it is the most effective means for consistent 24/7 balancing of the ANS - not just when you do it on a cushion or in the mornings.
And I love to rant - so i will have one final hurrah - I laugh heartily at those who are sceptical and think their pathetic and shabby logo-centrism can overcome what ails them. Thinking this addiction to chronic stress on Twitter and in life or wherever else is somehow virtuous is itself a function of sympathetic dominance the associated feedback loops. It’s the same as being fat.
Social media is fat acceptance for cortisol and dopamine addicts.
I want to show you that there is a different, genuinely primordial way of being that is not contingent on your theories about people or life. This is not merely saying primordial on the page; this is living it.
Please see some initial results as follows.
1.0 Morning, a wake state, morning meetings and e-mail checking
2.0 Midday, working calmer, with coffee consumption - bad breath habits, “normal breath habits”
3.0 Early afternoon, beach sun exposure, back in working, norm disordered breath, bad situation unfolding
4.0 Afternoon Reichian breath work - note the precipitous drop in excitation
5.0 Type 1 breathing - during same period as graph one - morning meetings etc
6.0 Midday period, maintaining Type-1 breathing patterns while working mindfully
7.0 High stress week situation with norm breath patterns - Meditation mindfulness and Hara breathing introduced immediately to attenuate.
We now all need to consider in terms of reducing sympathetic dominance, and it’s impacts on ANS balance:
Without conscious management, most people are existing in an agitated state almost all of the time
Type one breathing, when integrated, introduces the possibility of consistent, long term and management to manage all negative impacts associate with sympathetic excitation
Other types of breath management, including mindfulness and Hara, can rapidly reduce sympathetic dominance
If you’re in an agitated state most of the time, your consciousness is disordered, your hormones are chronically out of whack, your breathing is shallow, and as a result breath as a primary mover of blood throughout the body is malfunctioning. You become vulnerable to ageing, vascular health issues etc etc
Over time, this renders us as compulsive, unhappy, and addicted. Powerless. Being lived, and not living.
Look forward to presenting some combined HRV/GSR results, in even more scenarios and with more types of breath work next week. This will include a discussion on HRV.
Best,
-A