Relearning How To Breathe And Increasing CO2

[tara]

IMO, it's not useful enough information. High O2 can be achieved by many different means, most of which are harmful.

Just go hyperventilate for a little bit and your O2 will go up. Doesn't mean you can use the O2, and O2 without hemoglobin is toxic as hell.

Hi m_arch,
Your friend's explanation makes sense to me, but I don't think it's addressing the case people here are using the oximeter for. I think it's saying high O2 saturation does not demonstrate high CO2 or high metabolism. I think we are all seeing it that way in this thread.

But the question is, for someone who easily or habitually reaches high O2 (eg 99%), does lowered O2 saturation (eg 95%) reliably indicate increased CO2 and/or increased metabolism? Ie, is there a fairly consistent inverse relationship between O2 and CO2 levels in this context and range? (I imagine someone who has trouble getting oxygen into the blood in the first place would have to be considered differently.)

 

[Sheila]

G'day Auntyflo
I wondered where you'd gone, troppo it would seem.
Have found that for some, the type of air-conditioner used really matters, out with the humidity spewers down South and in with the frigid!

For some years, the Institutes for Achievement of Human Potential http://www.iahp.org/ have used 'masking' a form of re-breathing with brain injured children.
Unfortunately their website does not discuss this technique.
We have recently re-instated its use on a young man with a brain injury and he finds it easier to think as a result and is clearly less agitated in his movements.
In inspiring me to pay more attention pre-/during and post- breathing perhaps that will answer questions better than a device?
Dr Peat has also kindly given some suggestions on brain injury and it will be added to the RP email thread shortly.
Best regards
Sheila

 

[tara]

We have recently re-instated its use on a young man with a brain injury and he finds it easier to think as a result and is clearly less agitated in his movements.

Hi Sheila,
Do you want to describe how this 'masking' is implemented?

 

[Heidi]

Thanks Sheila for refreshing my memory on Glenn Doman and The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. I'd forgotten that they called the bag breathing 'masking'.

Tara:
They use a plastic mask that is designed to deliver oxygen to people. In general they leave the mask on for 30 seconds after deep breathing starts, so approximately 1 minute. But it varies for each individual child and where they are at. They also do the masking frequently, as much as every 5 to 10 minutes, perhaps 25-40 times a day. If you google masking and Doman or IAHP, there are a lot of youtube videos demonstrating the technique.

This article mentions a child being masked for 75 seconds 25 times a day.
Patterns of Hope : A Controversial Therapy for Brain-Damaged Children
This family is working towards 30 seconds 40 times a day.
IAHP Oxygen Enrichment Program (Masking) - Chiara's Journey

I found this interview online. I quoted the part of the interview which describes how Glenn Doman got started with the masking. Janet is Glenn's daughter and is the current director of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential
http://www.icak.com/images/stories/attachments/Caso_Doman-Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.doc

Could you review just a little bit of the history regarding the use of oxygen and then eventually oxygen and carbon dioxide in the treatment of brain injury at The Institutes?

Janet: This really does start with Dr. Fay. And again, looking back on Dr. Fay and Daddy, I think they really were a wonderful combination. Temple Fay had terrific ideas and theories of what could work and what should work but he was not a pragmatist. He was not a man to know how to put that into action Monday morning.

My father is, of course, a very creative person and an idea man, too, but he also asked, “What are we doing Monday morning? We have to make this usable Monday morning.” Fay was very interested in seizures, and he used to go into what were called seizure wards in hospitals (like a leper colony) and he realized that seizures were related to oxygen delivery. So he said, “OK I’m going to go in with my oxygen, and I’m going to give them more oxygen.”

He did that, and as he puts it in his paper, “I then produced bigger, better, seizures.” So he went back to the drawing boards, and he said to himself, “Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course I produced bigger, better seizures. Oxygen is a vasoconstrictor. I have to give them carbon dioxide.” He marched back into the same wards with his carbon dioxide and, of course, he watched seizures drop dramatically.

From that, the first oxygen enrichment program was invented. We now have a short name for it, which is masking, where we have the patient re-breathe his own carbon dioxide. This has a powerful effect on delivering more oxygen to the brain. Daddy, I don’t know if you’ll agree or disagree with me, but I think the single most powerful thing we do to fix the brain, is masking. If we could only do one thing with a severely, severely brain-injured child, only one thing, I think I would say mask him every five minutes. I think you’d get the biggest results from that if you could only do one thing.

It’s a creditable treatment. It’s a piece of genius. If they gave away awards for treatments, I think this one should get the Nobel Prize every year for the next 100 years. Can you imagine anything more powerful, anything done more safely, and anything done more cheaply? Anybody can do it. It’s good for an eight-year-old, and it’s good for a three-year-old. It’s a one size fits all program, and boy is it powerful.

And by the way, we’re still learning about it. We’re still learning today of ways of using it differently, and getting an even better result. When we began masking in the 1950s we were very conservative with it. We were, of course, very careful, as we’ve always been. Today, fifty years later, we use it very aggressively, but it’s still the safest technique, providing our full protocol is employed. That was the beginning of oxygen enrichment. It was so clear that brain-injured kids can’t breathe well, so we began to examine this area.

Back in the 1970s we looked at the inhalation phase of breathing and we did negative respiratory breathing using the standard respiratory machine made by Emerson. We definitely got results, particularly with the most brain-injured kids, the kids who really were at risk. They improved, and we saved lives with it. But as we analyzed the way our kids breathed, we found that the majority of our kids had more trouble with the exhalation phase rather than the inhalation phase. We tend to look at it the other way around, but if you don’t exhale completely, there’s no need to inhale fully. We wanted to put more emphasis on that phase of breathing, and we started to do this manually, literally with Daddy doing artificial respiration.

This goes back to one of Daddy’s earliest patients he treated back in the early 1940s. He treated a patient who was the vice president of a candy company in Philadelphia. He was sent out as a young physical therapist to treat this guy that nobody else wanted as a patient. He was in the later stages of emphysema so he was bed ridden and couldn’t work anymore, and Daddy didn’t have a ghost of an idea what to do with him.

This man said that his chief complaint was that he couldn’t breathe, and my father, who had been a lifeguard, said, “Well, I can’t fix your problem, but maybe I can bring you some relief. I’m going to give you artificial respiration.” So Daddy got up on his chest and gave him artificial respiration, and in the midst of doing this, Daddy got called back to the University of Pennsylvania, and they said you’ve got to come back right now.

He had taken public transport to get there, and he said to the old gentleman I have to leave now, and the old gentleman said, “This is the best I’ve felt in a year – don’t leave.” My father said that he had to leave, and the man said, “Well, I want you to come right back.” Daddy said, “It’s going to take me forty minutes to get back there,” so the man said, “Here are the keys to my car. Take my car.” So my father took his car, went back, handled it, came back, did some more artificial respiration, and when he was all done doing it, my father said, “Oh, I forgot, here are the keys to your car.” The old gentleman said, “Keep my car, it’s yours, because I feel like I could get up out of this bed now,” which he did.

Glenn: That was one of the great temptations in my life.

Janet: Yes, he didn’t keep the car, but he wanted to. The man was well enough with the artificial respiration to be able to get up and go back to work. At that point Daddy realized that this was something important that would really help emphysema patients. So he made an appointment with an engineer to make a device, and the day he had the appointment with the engineer, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so it didn’t happen.

That was December 7, 1941, and it wasn’t really until 1974 that Daddy found himself back up on the chest of a brain-injured child, giving him artificial respiration, saying, “I did this before, it worked before, and it’s going to work again.”

From there we made a little vest so that Mom and Dad could do respiratory patterning very evenly, and very consistently. That worked terrifically well, and from that it was a simple step, although it took us years to do it, to make a device that would do the same thing so that we could actually do this with our kids around the clock. In any event, that was the beginning of positive respiratory patterning. It has helped us to fix kids we would not have fixed. We could not do what we do without it. It’s one of the main stays of what we do.

Jerold: From the conversations I’ve had with my colleagues, it was a blessing having you at that luncheon meeting in 1991. You inspired us to change our thought processes, which affected the way we treated our patients, and the sessions we taught to other physicians. This will only continue to grow, expanding the vision of increased human potential. So, meeting you became the beginning of the rest of my life, and it will surely be the beginning for not only other physicians, but everyone else, as the snowball keeps rolling. It may be cliché, but it is true, that the world is better because of you.

I’ve kept you longer than I expected, but it would be hard for me to let you leave without at least asking, what truly is your vision and what are your wishes for the future of the treatment of brain injury?

Glenn: Well, I hope we will get better, and better, and better. And I hope the methods of dealing with babies in utero get better and better and better, so that we can reduce vastly brain injury and increase vastly our results.

Janet: Daddy is right. I think a lot of what we see is, in all likelihood, preventable. There’s always going to be the kid that falls down the steps, and there’s always going to be the kid who is hit by the car. In our experience, dealing with traumatic injury, whether it’s a six-year-old or a twenty-year-old or an eighty-year-old, is a cake walk compared to dealing with a kid who never had the abilities in the first place, as long as you deal quickly with the traumatically injured person. We should do all we can to prevent brain injury.

Rigidity is probably the number-one battle front with our hurt kids right now. I think that Daddy and all the members of our physical staff have done incredibly brilliant jobs at creating the ultimate user-friendly environment for a paralyzed child. We know how to create the perfect environment to use whatever mobility the child has, but the challenge for us now is rigidity. When we are able to reduce rigidity by developing the central nervous system, we know what environment to provide for the child. Those are the kids with whom we win big.

When we don’t successfully reduce rigidity, the whole structure of the child can start to warp, and then we’re in big trouble. All the great environments in the world are not going to save us if we don’t reduce rigidity.

I do not want to die before that is fixed; because if we fix this, then our midbrain-injured children are just going to shoot up The Institutes Developmental Profile because we know how to fix them. That’s why hyperbaric oxygen may be very important. We don’t know. We want to make sure that nutritionally and biochemically we’re doing everything right, because I think that in terms of breathing, we’ve covered the ground. We’re doing everything we can do in terms of carbon dioxide, and in the mechanics of breathing in and breathing out. I think Daddy’s done his job a thousand times over, and the physiology staff and the physical staff now have to do their homework to say, “What’s the final step to reduce rigidity?”

 

[Sheila]

Oh Heidi, you gem, I was hopeful I could refresh my memory too, as I have seen this technique in process, not done it myself. The paper bag is my friend, but if this works better, once fully understood, then onwards and upwards.
I want to understand it better to reduce the potential for hyperventilation post masking, as that would seem to be contra to what is trying to be achieved. Thank you again for your post.
Sheila

 

[Heidi]

Sheila, I learned about Glenn Doman and patterning more than 25 years ago. There wasn't an internet back then, so this was the first time that I looked him and the institute up online. So the whole time that I'm posting, I'm thinking about this woman that I know, who did the patterning with very good success back then. And then right after I posted, I go out on errands and run into her! It was extremely synchronistic. But she was involved in some kind of interview, so I wasn't able to ask her about the masking.

I hope that the masking continues to help the young man.

Thank YOU for your post. Last night I had very great success with the breathslim. I was very relaxed while doing it and the oximeter numbers showed a corresponding dip. Afterwards I felt great. A very deep physical relaxation. I went to bed and then woke during the night. I was aware that my breathing was better than it had ever been while sleeping. There was a corresponding shift in consciousness and deep feeling of stillness. It felt so good that I couldn't sleep, and I even had a bit of fear with it. So I get up and check this thread and you had posted again. The last time that I was awake and unable to sleep because I was overstimulated by the breathing, was when you wrote your first post to me. It's nice that you show up each time that I'm up in the night and overwhelmed in a good way.

mirc12354, thanks again for your advice to focus first with the breathslim.
And ecstatichamster thanks for your recommendation to get the breathslim in the first place.

 

[tara]

They use a plastic mask that is designed to deliver oxygen to people. In general they leave the mask on for 30 seconds after deep breathing starts, so approximately 1 minute. But it varies for each individual child and where they are at. They also do the masking frequently, as much as every 5 to 10 minutes, perhaps 25-40 times a day. If you google masking and Doman or IAHP, there are a lot of youtube videos demonstrating the technique.

Thanks Heidi

 

[Heidi]

I currently have a very deep appreciation for the Frolove or Breathslim device. I'm hesitant to rave too much as I'm still so new and inexperienced with all this, but at this point it seems like a really brilliant invention. It gives one a good dose of CO2 while simultaneously strengthening one's respiratory system. Others here have said that it is superior to bag breathing and so far I completely agree. With the frolove/breathslim device one can control the intensity by very slightly changing the amount of water, as well as controlling the length of one's inhale and exhale. So one can very gently increase CO2 and stay very relaxed while doing so. Bag breathing seems very crude and difficult to control in comparison. I recommend that anyone doing regular bag breathing give this device a try instead.

When I first got the breathslim, it was a bit disappointing that these flimsy pieces of plastic cost so much. Also, initially I didn't understand or feel the benefit of what it was doing, so it was a chore to sit there and use it. But now I look forward to using it. I also feel really good and have a deeper relaxation in my body after I use it. My biggest challenge is in holding back and not using it too much, as I want to make changes gradually and give my body time to adapt.

Overall, I feel like I'm living in a different body. My breathing is completely different and my body stays so much more relaxed. I keep marveling at how different it feels inside my body. I also feel like my mind or consciousness is much quieter than it use to be. There is still the usual amount of surface chatter, but I'm aware of a deep or expanded stillness underneath. Ironically this shift brings up a bit of anxiety. I didn't realize that I was afraid of my consciousness shifting in a good way. I'm also having a harder time getting enough sleep due to this shift in consciousness. So I'm feeling more stressed and work has been hard because I'm tired from not sleeping enough.

 

[m_arch]

Hi m_arch,
Your friend's explanation makes sense to me, but I don't think it's addressing the case people here are using the oximeter for. I think it's saying high O2 saturation does not demonstrate high CO2 or high metabolism. I think we are all seeing it that way in this thread.

But the question is, for someone who easily or habitually reaches high O2 (eg 99%), does lowered O2 saturation (eg 95%) reliably indicate increased CO2 and/or increased metabolism? Ie, is there a fairly consistent inverse relationship between O2 and CO2 levels in this context and range? (I imagine someone who has trouble getting oxygen into the blood in the first place would have to be considered differently.)

Hi Tara,

I was thinking this personally. I also thought about maybe saving up and buying an oximeter and capnometer together to see their relationship, using the capnometer to test the accuracy

 

[tara]

I was thinking this personally. I also thought about maybe saving up and buying an oximeter and capnometer together to see their relationship, using the capnometer to test the accuracy

Why not use the control pause? Seems like less time, expense and fuss than a capnometer?

 

[Sheila]

Good morning Heidi
I find the psychological effects of breathing changes most interesting. I can see the link with anxiety, it was Marianne Williamson who said "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure....." and when we are perhaps testing the boundaries of who we are via changes in biochemistry, fear of change might present itself. This wonderfully simplistic equation
glucose + O2 + T3 = ATP + CO2 + H2O suggests that as we get CO2 right and thereby enhanced utilisation of O2, perhaps fuel levels and T3 may need to be optimised next. Always chasing the weakest link?
So, maybe some extra fuel at night might help with your sleep. just a thought.
This Thread has taught me so much, thank you all.
Sheila

 

[Heidi]

I was thinking this personally. I also thought about maybe saving up and buying an oximeter and capnometer together to see their relationship, using the capnometer to test the accuracy

Why not use the control pause? Seems like less time, expense and fuss than a capnometer?

I would be very interested in seeing the relationship of the oximeter and capnometer and also how the capnometer relates to the control pause. It seems to me like the control pause is measuring respiratory fitness, not CO2 directly. I would like to understand this more. There are people who have unhealthy high levels of CO2. Is their control pause high but not necessarily indicating good health? Or is their control pause low and not indicating anything about their CO2 levels?

I think that exercise can compensate a lot for a breathing pattern of chronic hyperventilation. I've felt a lot better during times where I've exercised a lot and had very good aerobic fitness. Perhaps my CP was better during those time periods. But I was also doing Transformational Breathwork and most likely hyperventilating as my normal breathing pattern. Similarly, I have a friend who has lifelong bad asthma. He exercises a lot, which I think compensates for his underlying daily breathing issues. His CP and readings with the oximeter are better than mine.

 

[Heidi]

Good morning Heidi
I find the psychological effects of breathing changes most interesting. I can see the link with anxiety, it was Marianne Williamson who said "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure....." and when we are perhaps testing the boundaries of who we are via changes in biochemistry, fear of change might present itself. This wonderfully simplistic equation
glucose + O2 + T3 = ATP + CO2 + H2O suggests that as we get CO2 right and thereby enhanced utilisation of O2, perhaps fuel levels and T3 may need to be optimised next. Always chasing the weakest link?
So, maybe some extra fuel at night might help with your sleep. just a thought.
This Thread has taught me so much, thank you all.
Sheila

Thanks Sheila. I, too find the psychological (and spiritual) effects of breathing most interesting, which is why I've been sharing them even though it might make me seem a bit whacked. There have been a lot of unusual or surprising juxtapositions. The anxiety from the changes has subsided for now, but I'm still having trouble sleeping. I'm more aware all through the night. I miss the totally unconscious, dead to the world, deep kind of sleep.

In general I've been eating more. Like you mentioned, I'd already been aware that I maybe needed more fuel at night.

So far the biggest and best change for me has been the deep levels of physical relaxation. I would think that that would help my sleep, but it's not. Relaxation is very important to me in terms of health and well being. It feels like it's an important element that isn't measured by the oximeter or CP.

My pattern with the oximeter has become very predictable to me. But every once in awhile there are these unexpected surprises. For example, the other day I tested my SpO2 levels immediately after being sexual. I assumed that my levels would be high because there's so much deep breathing and hyperventilation during passionate sex. But my levels were much lower and more fluid than usual. Was it from the orgasm? The relaxation? The well being? There have been some other times where I felt exceptional well being in a spiritual kind of way, and my SpO2 levels were surprisingly better than usual at those times as well.

 

[Ahanu]

But my levels were much lower and more fluid than usual. Was it from the orgasm? The relaxation? The well being? There have been some other times where I felt exceptional well being in a spiritual kind of way, and my SpO2 levels were surprisingly better than usual at those times as well.

I read a book about cardiac coherence and how emotions can have a much bigger impact than nutrition . the heart produces hormones, so it says, and emotions play a critical role in it. Also the HRV and other cardiac signs are in some connection. So my guess, in respect to my own experiences, is that it were the emotions you had at that times that brought the good results.

 

[Heidi]

I read a book about cardiac coherence and how emotions can have a much bigger impact than nutrition . the heart produces hormones, so it says, and emotions play a critical role in it. Also the HRV and other cardiac signs are in some connection. So my guess, in respect to my own experiences, is that it were the emotions you had at that times that brought the good results.

Ahanu that is so interesting and coincidental. A friend just lent me an emWave2. This is according to the emWave2 website: "The emWave2 is an advanced heart rate monitor, able to measure subtle changes in your heart rhythms. This type of measurement is known as heart rate variability analysis or HRV. The analysis of HRV is a noninvasive measurement that reflects heart-brain interaction and autonomic nervous system dynamics, which are particularly sensitive to changes in your emotional state."

I just tried it for the first time today while a passenger in a car. I didn't have access to a computer and had no idea of what I was doing or what the device was actually measuring. It seemed somewhat random to me, and I couldn't fully click into whatever it was that it was testing. But then on a whim I thought that I would use the emWave2 while I was simultaneously using the breathslim. I then reached a high level of coherence and sustained it practically the entire time that I was using the breathslim. What a great validation of the benefit of the breathslim breathing device!

I don't know much about HRV but now I am now very curious to learn more. What was the book that you read?

 

[Ahanu]

I then reached a high level of coherence and sustained it practically the entire time that I was using the breathslim

Thats because the breathslim forces you to breath in a very regular pattern and the heart pattern will follow and become also very regular which is called coherent. You can also use a metronome and breath in a regular pattern to get that experience. I experimented in the last weeks a lot with an app that displays the heart pattern and coherence and it is so interesting how thoughts and emotions will change the heart pattern and not just the heart rate. I think that could be explain why for some people nothing works and for some everything ;-) if u know what i mean.

the book is called "coherence" from Alan D. Watkins,M.D. There is a Ted-talk where he talks about this:


he was also part of study's like the following one about cortisol and DHEA levels( though not a strong but promising one)

The impact of a new emotional self-management program on stress, emotions, heart rate variability, DHEA and cortisol. - PubMed - NCBI

There was a mean 23 percent reduction in cortisol and a 100 percent increase in DHEA/DHEAS in the experimental group. DHEA was significantly and positively related to the affective state Warmheartedness, whereas cortisol was significantly and positively related to Stress Effects. Increased coherence in heart rate variability patterns was measured in 80 percent of the experimental group during the use of the techniques. The results suggest that techniques designed to eliminate negative thought loops can have important positive effects on stress, emotions and key physiological systems

 

[Ahanu]

After experimenting with a pulseoximeter for a while i have found only one exercise that brought me to 89 %.
My standard reading is 96,
when i watch television it falls to 95.
light reduced breathing also 95. (so maybe i should just watch more tv)
bag-breathing also 95. (after the bag it went up to 98% for a short while, which had not happened with all the other exercises)
i also checked with the steps exercise and after 70 steps it still was not below 93 even though i felt a strong air hunger.

the exercise with the lowest %Spo2 so far is the following one:
10 seconds inhale-10 seconds breathhold-10 seconds exhale-10 seconds breathhold
so i am a little bit surprised why with this exercise, where the airhunger is not so strong, it is easier than with the steps exercise. Could be the regular cycle ..

 

[Heidi]

Thats because the breathslim forces you to breath in a very regular pattern and the heart pattern will follow and become also very regular which is called coherent. You can also use a metronome and breath in a regular pattern to get that experience. I experimented in the last weeks a lot with an app that displays the heart pattern and coherence and it is so interesting how thoughts and emotions will change the heart pattern and not just the heart rate. I think that could be explain why for some people nothing works and for some everything ;-) if u know what i mean.

Have you found that any regular breathing pattern leads to a coherent state? When I did the breathslim I didn't follow the emWave2 breathing rhythm because I wanted to do a longer exhale while using the breathslim.

I just read this article The Science of Coherent Breathing - Complete Document which focuses on rate and depth of breathing. I will reread it and try what the author says, but I'm not sure if it will be as helpful for me as increasing CO2. I'm wondering if the increased CO2 from doing the breathslim is increasing my coherency or if it's just related to the breathing rate. I will experiment more and report back.

Thanks Ahanu for posting more info on HRV and coherence. I watched the video, but so far his suggestions of rhythmic breathing, breathing smoothly, and breathing through the center of the chest haven't done much for me or helped me to sustain coherence via the emWave2.

 

[Heidi]

After experimenting with a pulseoximeter for a while i have found only one exercise that brought me to 89 %.
My standard reading is 96,
when i watch television it falls to 95.
light reduced breathing also 95. (so maybe i should just watch more tv)
bag-breathing also 95. (after the bag it went up to 98% for a short while, which had not happened with all the other exercises)
i also checked with the steps exercise and after 70 steps it still was not below 93 even though i felt a strong air hunger.

the exercise with the lowest %Spo2 so far is the following one:
10 seconds inhale-10 seconds breathhold-10 seconds exhale-10 seconds breathhold
so i am a little bit surprised why with this exercise, where the airhunger is not so strong, it is easier than with the steps exercise. Could be the regular cycle ..

Thanks for posting these details. I don't watch much TV, but will test my oxygen levels the next time that I do.

That's interesting that you get a short rebound effect with bag breathing. Bag breathing has a big rebound effect for me, which makes me feel like it's less effective as compared to other approaches.

I immediately tried the exercise that gave you good results (though I had to do the inhale, exhale, and breath holds for a count of 7 or 8). Breathing this way didn't lower my reading at all. I will try again at another time. (My SpO2 levels are at a high 99% and I haven't been feeling well.) It is fascinating that you had such great results with this breathing pattern and interesting that there's such individual variation on what works best. Did your numbers drop gradually while doing the exercise? For how long did the lower number sustain afterwards? Did you feel different in anyway?

 

[Ahanu]

Have you found that any regular breathing pattern leads to a coherent state? When I did the breathslim I didn't follow the emWave2 breathing rhythm because I wanted to do a longer exhale while using the breathslim.

yes regular works good for me 5 sec in 5 sec out while trying to take a minimum on air. then the breathing becomes realy smooth and almost by itself in that rythm. i dont use emwave so its hard to compare, of course. As i understand it, it doesnt matter if the outbreath is longer or even shorter as long as one stays at a certain pattern.

thank you for the article , i will read it.

I watched the video, but so far his suggestions of rhythmic breathing, breathing smoothly, and breathing through the center of the chest haven't done much for me or helped me to sustain coherence via the emWave2.

breathing to the center of the chest does nothing for me. they also say one can use emotion to support the coherence but i have not so much experimentet with it. i just see that it drops when awareness drops or some concrete thinking starts.

I will experiment more and report back.

thank you