is packing really that harmful?

[motek777]

"Your lungs are very delicate and are easily damaged. The most significant aspect of your lungs is that you have no nerves in the lung tissue. This means that when you are damage your lungs, there is no signal from the lungs to the brain to let you know. Hence, the behavior that caused the damage is repeated over and over. One such damaging behavior is taking too much air into the lungs. If the lungs are expanded fully, and then you expand your chest a little further, drawing in additional air, lung tissue is torn but you feel nothing due to the lack of nerves in the lungs! Over a period of time, this behavior leads to scarring of the lungs and reduced efficiency of the lungs. Therefore, do not fill your lungs more than 90% of their capacity, unless you are working with a qualified pranayama teacher."
/yogateacher.com/

not more then 90 %??? what about 100 % + packing?

 

[naiad]

I asked about packing on [ame=http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?t=59016]this[/ame] thread, and nobody seemed to have any personal experience of injury from packing. Maybe someone with extensive experience of heavy packing will be able to answer this one...

Lucia

 

[Alun]

"Therefore, do not fill your lungs more than 90% of their capacity, unless you are working with a qualified pranayama teacher."

that's the funniest one i've heard in a while! rofl

 

[Alun]

more seriously though, with regard to packing, my advice would be to pack with caution and certainly not push it because people have been known to hurt themselves in the past. it may be better to "play it safe" by not packing at all. i don't know if there's any reseach out there about the effects of packing.

 

[motek777]

T. Sietas told me couple of months ago that he packs 60-70 times(!) before a long static. that is amazing. its hard to believe that extreme packing like that has no negative long term effects.

 

[immerlustig]

hi

quote: "...unless you are working with a qualified pranayama teacher."

another way of selling stuff i believe.

a few times i had a chat with yoga teachers about that. i didn't get any meaningful explanation, though.

roland

 

[Fondueset]

You get alot of this 'working with an experienced yoga teacher'. For the most part 'yoga teachers' are at best qualified as physical therapists. Very few have much expertise in Pranayama. I didn't teach Yoga for a long, long time - because in my youthful nievete I thought Yoga was a spiritual practice and, unless one had realized it's purpose, there was no possibility to have the proper context for teaching. Of course, now, with many years of practice behind me I recognize that I was right.

As for expertise in Yoga in relation to freediving - while I do now know some yogis who meet my criteria for being qualified and, in one case, has a specialty in pranayama - there is only one that I know of who has expertise in freediving and he posts here.

Freediving is an extremely demanding and specialized activity - I certainly wouldn't rely on the expertise of anyone who hasn't made it a concentrated area of study - regardless of whatever else they may be good at.

 

[naiad]

I can understand that packing has to be used with care, and maybe we don't know the full effects of heavy packing, but surely it must be safe to fill your lungs to 100% by taking a deep breath without packing. If this could really cause cumulative tearing of lung tissue, most freedivers would be in serious trouble. I haven't heard of any evidence for this.

Lucia

 

[Alun]

naiad -you're exactly right

i have no doubt that the claim has no scientific basis whatsoever and that it was simply "made up" by a yoga master. i'm sure that in many cases students of yoga masters are essentially conditioned to accept their claims/teachings without question.

the real question is why some yoga masters make these kinds of wild claims. such claims can clearly have a subtle yet powerful psychological effect on students in that they can instill a certain level of anxiety and tend to make them more dependent on the master...

yoga masters are in positions of authority and power. they are human like the rest of us and so i don't doubt that some of them enjoy those privileges for the wrong reasons.

having said that i do believe that yoga and such things are generally very positive and healthy activities but i also believe that there are negative undertones at some levels...

it would be interesting to know if any form of research has been done into this.