…at least if you believe Wikipedia.
Here’s the start of their entry on Breathwork:
“Breathwork is a New Age term for various breathing practices in which the conscious control of breathing is said to influence a person’s mental, emotional or physical state, with a claimed therapeutic effect. Breathwork has no proven positive health impact other than promoting relaxation and can cause distress.”
It’s a good thing we have these conflicted editors to save us from such fringe and pseudo-science!
I know, sarcasm sometimes doesn’t come through in the written word too well.
Nevermind all the contradictions in that paragraph alone. Ahhh…relaxation does influence a person’s mental, emotional and physical state.
Ahhh…it promotes relaxation but watchout! It can cause distress too.
Forget that Wim Hof has shown in himself and others that you can activate the innate immune system (what almighty science previously thought could not be consciously done) through breathwork.
Forget that all those ancient systems (Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, etc.) have been talking about the importance of breathing thousands of years, unlocking seemingly superhuman powers from doing so. They’re all pre-scientific quacks after all.
So then you get stuff like this…
The Wall Street Journal is covering it, so it must finally be true:
“We each inhale and exhale some 30 pounds of these molecules every day—far more than we eat or drink. The way that we take in that air and expel it is as important as what we eat, how much we exercise and the genes we’ve inherited.
“This idea may sound nuts, I realize. It certainly sounded that way to me when I first heard it several years ago while interviewing neurologists, rhinologists and pulmonologists at Stanford, Harvard and other institutions. What they’d found is that breathing habits were directly related to physical and mental health.
[How many times do you need to hear the skeptics acknowledge they were completely wrong about things before the whole Skeptic thing is looked at skeptically?]“Breathing properly can allow us to live longer and healthier lives. Breathing poorly, by contrast, can exacerbate and sometimes cause a laundry list of chronic diseases: asthma, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, hypertension and more. Poor breathing habits can even change the physical structure of our skeletons, depleting essential minerals and weakening our bones.”
Yes, how you breathe has been shown to change the very structure of your bones.
Not only can it change your mental, emotional and physical state…it can change your physical structure.
So would you care to join me in some pseudo-science? Check out my brand new program Outside the Box Breathing now.