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And one more on this theme, When the Body Says No, by Gabor Maté.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/450534.When_the_Body_Say...

The author suggests (amongst other things) that anger suppression can lead to cancer cells not being dealt with by the body as they would normally otherwise be. The evidence is anecdotal, but then it perhaps quite unlikely that we will see clinical studies along these lines any time soon unfortunately.


I'm just finishing Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and I have enjoyed it immensely.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath

I have previously taken courses in the Wim Hof Method and marvelled at the dramatic increase in energy that it gave me, not to mention an increased ability to be warm when I want to be and to tolerate the cold, something which being a relatively stationary software developer has negatively affected over the years.

This book touches on Wim Hof but covers the approaches and results of many other practitioners as well as traditional methods, blending together science writing and reporting of results with engaging storytelling, making it a fun, light and quick read.

As someone who likes to experiment with this kind of thing I went ahead and tried things like lightly taping my mouth shut while sleeping and was amazed to feel the difference when I didn't do it. Meanwhile I've experimented with only breathing through my nose when exercising (including exhaling) and have observed that my heart rate has stayed lower and my thinking clearer when under pressure in a jiu-jitsu class.

In the same week that I started reading the book I had a grading, and the instructors repeated again and again the reminder to breathe in through the nose, advice echoed in the book. To them it is common sense that if you start panting (breathing hard in and out using your mouth) that you won't be able to perform well in that kind of high-pressure scenario.

If you are looking for a light read over the holidays and are interested in health/wellness then I can thoroughly recommend this book.


Maybe i need to give it another go but I couldn't finish this book; found it tiresome due to all the "personal anecdotes/narratives" forming the backdrop for the book. It could also be that i am somewhat well-read on this subject due to my interest in traditional Yoga/Pranayama/Martial Arts and hence felt underwhelmed. What i had hoped to find in the book was a catalog of techniques (based on tradition or modern) from "Western Scientific Research" showing actual measurable results in terms of Human physiological parameters. But whatever was mentioned was never clearly explained with actionable steps. However the webpage for the book's bibliography is a treasure trove of pointers to papers and reading for further research.

Since you are also interested in the same subjects as me, do you have any other specific suggestions for what i am looking for?


Ah, I can completely see why you would find it frustrating—I enjoyed the anecdotes and it made for very light holiday reading, but then it was indeed light on detail.

If you go to the end of the book, just before the Notes section there is a short chapter which lays out the basics of most of the breathing techniques. I've found that to be enough to experiment a little and while brief it's enough as a starting point.

Sadly I don't have any recommendations for breathing techniques outside of those espoused by Wim Hof, which are based in part on Tummo.

Given that this book (Breath) has been published and the recent increase in popularity the topic is seeing I am hopeful that we will see some follow-on works (if they don't exist already) that will break these techniques down in more detail. As it stands it feels necessary to piece together elements from different books to get a more complete picture regarding how these techniques work and what is possible. I would certainly be interested to see a collation of results seen in athletes.


The Varnish error is almost identical to that of the Guardian (newspaper) website in the UK—wondering if they're both using CloudFlare and that it's CloudFlare that is having the issue?

Edit: Perhaps related to this ongoing Fastly outage (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432408), https://fastly.com returns the same kind of Varnish error and Github currently has no assets being served in their web UI.


DHH certainly doesn't putter (by the common definition), but as someone who has followed his output here and there over the course of ~15 years I disagree that he is burnt out or that he is out to impress.

Over the years his approach has in my opinion been an example of how to be practical, think for yourself, be productive and not burn out. His form of puttering looks to be blocking out time to program in Ruby and extracting patterns from Basecamp (and now Hey) to release as open source. This looks like a form of cultivation/gardening to me.

I think most people, myself included, would burn out if they attempted to emulate him—he has clearly found a way to remain balanced, in his own way.

For the rest of us I think Bear Blog is a good example to follow if you can make a living doing so. If you want to see the parallels between this and Basecamp then you would need to wind the clock way back to the early days of that product/company. That said, winding the clock forward on Bear Blog will likely not get you something that looks like Basecamp today.


There can be wisdom in old wive’s tales or otherwise home remedies. As someone who knows very little about such things in relation to helping with breathing I would also be interested to hear what worked anecdotally for you.

Glad to hear that your Mother-in-law managed to get off the ventilator despite the odds.


Coincidentally as I was reading this comment thread you came to mind—your approach is clearly working!


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