DaveFoster
Member
Lowering inflammation does the trick. It's really all maintaining a high rate of energy production, so some combination of aspirin, light, pregnenolone, progesterone, and B-vitamins (particularly niacinamide) can lower the stress hormones, whereas thyroid or caffeine can further promote sugar oxidation. If you're trying to just raise your CP, then progesterone and niacinamide with sugar should be effective, along with recycling the same air through a bag or other device.Yes absolutely. Straining too hard for improvement during each session or across sessions can be counterproductive. Due the release of stress hormones and the need for physiological adaptations to occur slowly over time. In this light it also seems to take a similar time to add X% to CP. That is to say 10 to 15 might take a similar time as from 40 to 60, because by then a large number of issues holding back optimum respiration are resolved, so it's easier to progress with breathing exercises and supportive factors e.g. increased cardio.
And yes it reflects the essence of yoga - to still/suspend the breath and therefore still the mind. Buteyko is a yogic practise, especially at higher levels. Pranayama essentially works if it can reduce breathing volume via training co2 tolerance + relaxation. Buteyko just came up with a very specific criteria of respiratory minute volume and CP to reflect that. Likwise, if a certain yoga does not fit buteykos criteria, it won't produce health improvements in the individual, so you have a way of judging efficacy. It's very common for certain yoga classes to teach increased/overbreathing which can be both unsafe and ineffective at low CP, and possibly only useful in very specific situations (let's say something like holotropic breath work for the purpose of therapy) or when in very good health.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about very high CP I spoke to, is that they often had spontaneous new insights into reality and the self. Or, spiritual "awakenings", without making it sound too cheesy. That is to say, developed equanimity through breathing retraining allowed them to naturally disembed and enter a witnessing state, to objectify and stay equanimous to thoughts and sensations as and when they arise, and therefore experientially understand their nature. And likewise, to use this same clarity to investigate the apparent subject "I" who appears to knows these thoughts or sensations, and previously appeared to be fused to them.
You could say, reduced breathing is like sharpening a knife that allows you to cut through reality. Like slicing a melon and seeing exactly what's inside. As opposed to simply squashing the melon with a very blunt knife.
I also think it has something to with the physiological reversal of the fight or flight mechanism. At lower CPs, the organism feels under threat, stress hormones are high. A strong, painful sense of self is tied to a sense of environment danger and an incentive to survive. Then, at higher CPs, the organism is relaxed, it's safe, and with less sense of danger the boundaries between the apparent separate self and separate world can become more diffuse and even dissolve completely.
That's extremely impressive. Can you talk a bit more about what the key factors for improvement were for you? And what the optimum hormonal state for a super high CP seems to be ?
Johnson
Raising your CO2 production also allows you to retain it in your tissues, which "cements" a higher energy state.