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How well do you think you breathe?

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Everyone today is too carried away with useless mobile phones, sex, clothes, cars, money, Real State, etc. instead of stopping for a second and asking to themselves:



IS ALL THIS STUFF REALLY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN MY LIFE?

Actually, I learned long ago that true happiness comes from within. But like all the most important things I've learned in life, I learned it on my own, through my own experience, not from a book or religious zealot.

If you buy a phone, car, etc expecting eternal happiness, you will be let down. But these things do make a difference in my "life" - my time on this earth. My phone, clothes, car, sex life, and home all serve me distinct purposes, but I'm not complete because of one or any of them, nor do I depend on them. You're overlooking the fact that it's possible to use technology (and the other "comforts" of our society) without falling prey to the negative consequences that I will even agree beset many people today.

What comes after this life, I'm not sure, but I do know that my time is limited and I'm going to enjoy this life while I can.

If you still think that all this stuff is bull I urge you to start meditating seriously, not just once a week.

I don't think it is bull, but I have no reason to believe it either. Urging me to dedicate a great deal of my time (my greatest resource in this short existence) to something I'm doubtful about is illogical. If I want to follow a doctrine that promises me rewards in an afterlife (or whatever pet name the doctrine has for it) in exchange for a great deal of my time here on earth (the only time I'm guaranteed, however much it may be), I have more than enough to choose from. If the only way to discover the truth of these various doctrines is by dedicating massive amounts of each time to each one - well, then I'm just using up the time on this earth that I could be using for other things - freediving for example.

I'm not against the idea of meditation, but if I do that, it will be for the immediate benefits I expect to reap in this short life - not for a promise of immortality (something which would appeal to the ego, by the way).
 
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For you Christians, I must recall here that the old Bible before it was altered in the ninth century
__________


Where did you get this idea Gerard?

This is not a word of man and nobody can stop this


The Bible--God's Word
Wholly Inspired and Infallible

"The words of Yahweh are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" --Psalms 12:6.


"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" --Isaiah 55:11.

It was the same God word who change my life Gerard who change my family life for good- this something that I will keep for the rest of my life unitl the day I see my God-

friend do not look for other God than the God os Israel our God- there is not other-
 
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I understand that logic is lost on the indoctrinated, but I'd still like to point out the fallacy in using the Bible to verify the infallibility of the Bible. Please think about it for a second. That's the equivalent of saying "You can trust me because I say you can".
 
"I understand that logic is lost on the indoctrinated, but I'd still like to point out the fallacy in using the Bible to verify the infallibility of the Bible. Please think about it for a second. That's the equivalent of saying "You can trust me because I say you can"."


Couldn't agree more. At school, philosophy class, we studied a
group of philosophers (don't remember their names... old school days :) ) that said that because in the idea of God there was also an idea about his/her/whatever existence... he/her/whatever actually existed!! I didn't understood how the hell they got respect saying this *plain* non-sense. Didn't understood also why our teacher didn't blow in big laughs. How will all people look at me if I write a book like the bible (suposing bible didn't existed yet) and was claming it's God's words???? Probably they would laugh at me!!
 
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Hi, hopefully this thread doesn't degenerate into a religious armageddon. First of all, I am not religious, I like to explore, experiment, feel myself connected to earth and Heaven (expressed as the Cosmic force that unites everything/Tao). I want to open the doors of perception, to see what's on the other side so I can merge my spirit into it. I don't profess anything in particular but I like to learn from different sources, namely Shamanism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, because I think they can be helpful in my venture.

Second I also believe in my own experience, and third my own experience is telling me that living in an increasingly technological society his hindering my progress to develop my spiritual needs. This kind of society is anti-chi (energy) and anti-shen (spirit) due to the increased production of positive ions and subsequent reduction of their negative counterparts amongst other reasons.

On the other hand, I believe of what I preach because I am experiencing the same stuff slowly (and I don't take drugs either because the same effect can be achieved with Chi Gung, Yoga, meditation, etc.) as depicted by Castaneda in his
Teachings of Don Juan series.


Let me say repeat again something very important here:

What makes my personal experience and life goals different than yours is this


Again, sorry if I sound harsh and if I've offended anyone.

Regards.
 
Sorry but the second link isn't working. So I give another two:

http://www.american-buddha.com/carlos.toc.htm

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5656/Carlos.htm


BTW, and referring to Kars post. Kars, there is an interesting topic in the link you just gave us, which is sun gathering exercises (taught by Don Juan to Carlos in the books "Teachings of Don Juan"). These exercises are excellent and should be done for life as they prolongue health and they also stimulate the pineal gland which is directly reponsible of activating the 'third eye', therefore you'll be able to access higher levels of consciousness during meditation.

"Heliotherapy" is called. A good exercise would be the following:

Comfortably sit down on a chair and face the sun (not directly) and look 10 degrees above, below, left and right and for 5-10 seconds, and rapidly blink your eyes. Do three rounds for each of those positions.

Another method (more advanced and which requires a bit of practice with the first) would be rotating your eyes while facing the sun but not looking directly at it. Rotate them clockwise and anti-clockwise for about 5 seconds.

Caution!: It's very important that you must not look directly at the sun or you can develop http://www.stlukeseye.com/Conditions/Floaters.asp
floaters and other eye conditions.

Also you must practice when the sun is still soft: best in the morning when 'Yang' is rising (before 9 a.m.) For you who live in the southern hemisphere it would be around 7 a.m. Late in the afternoon is another option, right before sunset.


Good luck.
 
faith the facts

"I understand that logic is lost on the indoctrinated, but I'd still like to point out the fallacy in using the Bible to verify the infallibility of the Bible. Please think about it for a second. That's the equivalent of saying "You can trust me because I say you can"."
____________

Supose your are at a bus stop and somebody say to you that the bus is going to past at certain time?-- would you believe that person??

maybe you believe in a sign there that says - that the bus if going to comes at certain time?

but you still do not see anything!

what make you you to stay there waiting for the bus?

"this is something you have to accept by "Faith." You have believed what you have heard
_____________

What make us to believed tomorrow you are going to be alive to work or do this or do everything you have in mind ??

How do you know we going to live tomorrow?

why if it doesn't happen?

"This is something you have to accept by Faith."
______________


FAITH THE FACTS

Charles Darwin said:" I was young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries , suggestion, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the idesa took life wildfire. People made a regligion out of them! They use words like " Believe, assume, surmise , suspect, specultate,perhaps , problably, possibly....."Evolution can only be accepted on blind faith .. because it cannot be proven.


On the other hand, you can prove God's existence, A building is proof that there was builder. A painting is absolute proff that there was a painter. You don't need to see him to believe he exist. His painting is all the evidence you need. It wouldn't be there if he didn't exist.

Creation proves absolutely that there is a Creator

You can also prove that the Bible is God's supernatural revelation to man. All you have to do is study the irrefutable evidence of Bible prophecy ( see Matthew 24,luke21-2
timothy 3, Ezekiel 38-40 Joel 2 ect

Go to http://www.lost-ark.com to see the incredible scientific and medical fact in the Bible, proving that it is supernatural in origin " But ..... you say," What about all the mistakes in the Bible?

there aren't any. It's all God- inspired.


WHO THEN MADE GOD?
God( like space) has neither beginning nor end . He created time and subjected man to it and because we are subject to time, logic dewmands that everything must have a beginning and an end . However, God dwells outside os time , in eternity" Again , you can prove this by sutying Bible prophecy, and seeing how God knows the beginning of time from the end
 
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What always puzzled me about this Bible and God thing is: why does 'He' get referred to as 'He'? If he has no beginning and no end, and is obviously not human, how can you label such an omnipotent 'It' with a normal and mortal thing such as a gender?!? (although it makes it more appealing to the masses, as well as the patriarchel societies that are prevelant today).

Plus, the idea that if a painting exists, so does the painter, is a little flakey - the painter may have existed at some point, but could well be dead and 'gone' by now. Perhaps 'God' suffered the same fate.

Not only that, but something that has been created hasn't necessarily been created by a living or sentient being - take a cloud, for example.

And as for how man himself can understand how God might work, outside the normal restrictions of our own universe, a thing in itself that we cannot begin to properly or fully understand - well, that also makes no sense, much less the idea that some entertaining book (and much of the bible is at least that) necessarily proves anything.

Personally, I always liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy throw on the whole subject - an opinion and comment which is really not intended to offend, but reflects my sense of humour and outlook on life.

But all the stuff on meditation is also very interesting - I did have one occasion when I was young, and was practising meditiation regularly, where I really TOTALLY emptied my mind. That was a weird sensation. At some point I suddenly realised I was REALLY actually thinking about NOTHING ... but then, of course, it was already gone ... :( ... of course, no idea how long it lasted, either.

2 interesting novels around the subject of things like Eric was talking about, by the way, are:

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull : http://www.42.dropbear.id.au/jls.html

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

both by Richard Bach. Well worth a read, and pretty short too.
 
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ahh... metaphor and religion....

....two great tastes that taste great together...


Originally posted by neshamah
Supose your are at a bus stop and somebody say to you that the bus is going to past at certain time?-- would you believe that person??

What make you you to stay there waiting for the bus?

How long would you wait? A lifetime? If the bus didn't show up within a reasonable time, I would "call a taxi".


Originally posted by neshamah
Charles Darwin said:" I was young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries , suggestion, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the idesa took life wildfire. People made a regligion out of them! They use words like " Believe, assume, surmise , suspect, specultate,perhaps , problably, possibly....."Evolution can only be accepted on blind faith .. because it cannot be proven.

You really need to make up your mind on Mr. Charles Darwin. Is he credible or not? Or, maybe, only when he serves your purpose. You can't say the man is full of crap one minute and quote him the next. Furthermore, it isn't very responsible to quote someone using a bunch of "....." in between words. For that matter, I have a quote from the Pope. "There....is....no....God". You probably don't realize that the true context of the quote was considerably different (and historically questionable), because you did not take the time do your research. Stop pointing to websites and plagiarizing. If your going to stand on the soapbox, make sure you are on your own two feet (how's that for a metaphor ;)).


Originally posted by neshamah
On the other hand, you can prove God's existence, A building is proof that there was builder. A painting is absolute proff that there was a painter. You don't need to see him to believe he exist. His painting is all the evidence you need. It wouldn't be there if he didn't exist.

More dead-end logic. Have you ever seen a beach? All the sand? All the same-sized, same-color sand? All the rock in the world and the beach gets covered with all the same sized tiny stones. How does the sorting, this order, happen? A beach maker? Or is it order, created by a natrual process - ultimately powered by our sun? Let's not start with the "monkey at the typewriter" or the "747 in the junkyard" bit, ok? All this has been debunked years ago.

All this metaphor.....soooo lazy. Might as well turn the whole argument into a country song, set your brain on auto-pilot, and be done with it.


......Now bring on the Neg Karma rofl.
 
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Re: ahh... metaphor and religion....

Originally posted by unirdna
Might as well turn the whole argument into a country song

Do it! :D
 
You know, something I didn't notice before ... old "Nesh's" 'picture' is the 'good old' american flag ... forgive me for being REALLY, MEGA staid, but ESPECIALLY in such a forum, ANYONE who uses such an 'icon' has to be 'Bush-burnt', right ... ?

And if that is so, then who knows? Maybe turning the whole argument into a country song REALLY would be a good idea - I mean, it would guarantee support from such corners, regardless of the lyrics, right?!?

(so give me negative karma if you don't agree! :) )
 
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Originally posted by efattah
This is quite interesting.

My view is opposite from most people.

For example, some people are convinced that everyone is dishonest. Those people think that everyone is lying until they are proven to be telling the truth. They also think that everything is impossible until proven to be possible.

In my view, I believe everything someone says, until they are proven to be a liar.

Likewise, I believe that everything is possible, until proven to be impossible. It is extremely difficult to prove that something is impossible. That is why any claim which says that 'such-and-such is impossible' is an extraordinary claim, because it is almost impossible to prove that something is impossible.


Eric,

If tomorrow you receive a call from a person you don't know(propably not a liar according to your theory), who will offer to double your money in two days (it's possible), but only if you send him all of your life's savings; Will you send him the money ? :D
 
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I'm on neither side of the fence.

I don't automatically believe or disbelieve it the absence of proof. I'll simply admit that I don't know, and make a decision that works best for me. If someone offered to double my life savings, in that case I'd choose not to go for it, even though it is possible and I couldn't disprove it. In other cases, I believe that things that can't be proven may be possible. But I won't devote 30 years of my life to trying to master something that I have no reason to believe is possible.
 
Originally posted by efattah
However, Laminar and I have been working on this problem (yogi breath-holds) for over a year, and we think we MAY have found the secret. However, you have to 'walk the walk, before you can talk the talk,' so don't take any of this at face value until we can actually demonstrate it! If our discovery works out, we'll try to do a 12-minute static at the 2004 worlds here in Vancouver. Unless we were actually successful, we would not claim to have found any secrets.... The technique we are working on requires concentration beyond what I had ever imagined. The problem with the technique is that you simply cannot concentrate at that level for the whole 12 minutes (or 20 minutes, or whatever). The best I did so far was a 5 minute breath-hold where according to the oximeter I was on pace for 9'30 - 10'00, but as always, I simply lost my concentration (and aborted @ 5'00 with hemoglobin saturation of 93%). So, we have shifted our focus to learning concentration exercises. It seems that you don't need high hemoglobin, good fitness, or anything like that, all you need is to be able to have one-pointed concentration for the duration of the breath-hold. So far the longest one-pointed concentration I have managed is 77 seconds. So I'm light years away. I would comment that when you perform this technique, you don't get contractions and your heart rate drops to 17-25bpm, hence the low O2 consumption.

Wait for the 2004 worlds and see what happens! August 11, 2004 is the static competition. Ironically I did my CW record on August 11, 2001 -- maybe it's a sign!!
Any updates on this interesting topic? :)
 
You experience what you believe.
If you don't believe that, ^
Then you won't.
So it's true?
 
LiquidRush sounds like an Avatar grad and comes from my favorite country! As for how this threads been running, I heartily agree with Eric and Gerard. For another view of this, the movie "What the bleep do we know!" will definitely give you a change in perspective. In the movie, a lot of quantum physicists and other phd's describe the nature of reality and that the basic building blocks of what we percieve as matter, such as protons, electrons, photons, muons etc. only exist as waves of probaility and only appear solid if there is an observer(you or I!) So basically, reallity does not exist if you are not here/there to observe it! We create the matter around us due to the attention we place on the waves of probability (God?) around us. The world IS a reflection of attention waves (thoughts,beliefs,fears, etc.) We are the creators of our own world. Anything is possible! So work on creating the best possible world for you. That means improve yourself to create a better world! Believe in yourself and 12 min statics are certainly creatable!
Breathe Deep! love, andy
 
What an intriguing thread.

Breathholding, impossible feats, yogis, sceptics, believers, scientists...

I wonder what Tom Sietas does? (He has done 9.24).
I actually shared lodging with him during a competition and I watch him closely since I was determined to catch him eating some forbidden pills or something. I see no other explanation.
But I never saw him doing any wierd stuff apart from not warming up and then holding his breath for ever. How do you do it Tom?

Stig Severinsen has registered a world record attempt in CNF. Right now he is in Rickijkesh India exploring "kria" yoga stuff. 5 week before his attempt.

I see a problem with all this you are talking about.
My best statics are in a state where I am not thinking. I am gone. Sometimes gone without noticing LMC coming. But sometimes I come up and finish clean but I still have to do a transition back into the world above the surface.
There has been much talk about mental control in a competition situation - but when doing a PB you might have to loose that mental control. I see a contradiction.

Just a few notes on the subject...

Sebastian
 
Originally posted by cebaztian
My best statics are in a state where I am not thinking. I am gone....
....sometimes I come up and finish clean but I still have to do a transition back into the world above the surface....

There has been much talk about mental control in a competition situation - but when doing a PB you might have to loose that mental control. I see a contradiction.

Sebastian

For me the best control is no control.

If by not having any mental distractions, one means not having any object of perception (thoughts-images, etc.) in one’s awareness, then you are experiencing unbounded awareness or consciousness because your perception is not hung up on any point or distraction at all – you experience yourself as “pure consciousness” having transcended all mental activity or "control" while remaining completely conscious or aware in deep silence.

Because the mind is in it’s most silent or settled state then, the body really lowers it’s metabolic activity to a state of rest that is much deeper than during deep sleep, causing a great reduction in the use of O2 with consequent benefits for statics.

This is just one of the reasons yoga or meditation goes so well together with freediving. For me it's a happy marriage! :cool:

You speak of a transition phase after coming out of statics. Perhaps you have a natural tendency to transcend easily to those quieter levels of awareness and what you experience, apart from the normal recovery from hypoxia in the static is a transition from a deeper level of consciousness to the normal waking state of awareness which implies “revving up” to normal metabolic rates. Whenever I make this transition, i.e., coming out of a deep meditation I need to take at least a couple of minutes lying there with the eyes closed and not doing anything to give the body a smooth return to activity. Otherwise I can feel a little rough sometimes as this transition can happen too quickly.

Stig in Rishikesh? Cool! :) I hope he comes back with a lot of knowledge.

Adrian
 
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