Carl-Richard

I don't remember having had straight out painful lungs after stopping but I definitely thought that something must have been up with my lungs considering the absolutely infernal fire breathing inhaling-and-holding I had been doing. But I think I largely healed that from being just 20 years old at that time.

Shitting.

If your meditation technique involves for example focusing on a sensation (e.g. the breath), then you should do that during the meditation. Then during the day you should use your mind as it is required. If it happens to be silent, then let it be silent. If it happens to be creative and thinking thoughts, let it do that. I did the mistake back in the day of trying to remain without thoughts 24/7 every waking moment. It made me into a dissociated, dissociable rock-like person. There may be times where it can be useful to bring your practice of thoughtlessness into various daily activities, for example doing active mindfulness practice (e.g. really immersing yourself in the sensations while for example cooking or working out or just lifting objects). But I would then be wary of giving yourself at least some breaks, if not most of the time. Don't make the mistake of turning yourself into a rock and chopping off every train of thought as it occurs as some form of compulsion. Let your mind grow like a tree most of the day. It's more beautiful and natural that way. When identification lessens as your practice deepens, you won't necessarily think less thoughts, but less negative, spiraling, counterproductive thoughts. Your thoughts will become more meaningful, and more subtle, and more bullet-like in their speed and precision, almost to where you don't even register them as thoughts anymore, but your mind is still producing immense intelligence and beauty. That is what enlightenment is about; not amputating your faculties but letting them spring into full fruition. And in-between those moments of beauty, deep silence may arise. So I suggest keep on meditating, keep on inquiring into thoughtlessness, but give yourself space to just be, without compulsion, without needing things to be one way or another.

Coach Greg is unironically based, echoing many of my points above:

Maybe adding to that: science as purely inductive would be an outdated 20th century logical positivist conception of science called "verificationism". It says hypotheses are verified by confirming evidence. However, Karl Popper came along and said that no hypothesis is actually ever verified, and rather you can only provide "corroborating evidence" for it (supporting evidence that strengthens or weakens the hypothesis), which would be more abductive. Rather hypotheses should be aimed to be falsified (which is actually deductive). But even falsification could be subject to change, for example in a change of paradigm, which Thomas Kuhn proposed. So any formal method can be superceded by a meta-formal change. And that's largely where breatharianism is a bit stuck, because even if we found possible methodologies for testing it (like the esophagal sensor), the current paradigms in science are not conducive to even considering it as a possibility, so it won't even be considered worthy of investigation.

I just see it as coming from a strategic standpoint of "you look frail and old -> negatively impact project", and when you first are on that train, why not do it well? I haven't made much out of that, but maybe my gaydar is off again. I think "Don't Die" is a wack ass name for a philosophy that is essentially ancient eudaimonia dressed in transhumanist Ray Kurzweilism. My "like" for Bryan is mostly me arguing back against people's kneejerk reaction to spending more-than-usual time on your health and why it's not as irrationally obsessive as they portray it to be.

I mean obviously, he doesn't get the android meme for no reason. But my gaydar didn't go off. Maybe I need a different one.

Ok 😆

It's exactly when your mind takes a break from the usual slop of self-absorbed worries and cultural indoctrination that creative thoughts have the space to arise. So no, on the contrary. Of course during the meditation you might shift your focus away from creative thoughts that may arise, but in the moments after the meditation and just in general, your creativity will be elevated. Generally switching your activities up, especially just taking a break and for example going for a walk and letting your mind wander in between work, brings creativity. Your frames are broken and your mind is opened to a new set of possibilities. When you're doing a task and focusing on something, you construct a limited a number of frames that you find relevant to work with, but they're limited. When you switch focus, you break frame, and new perspectives, new thoughts may arise.

I'm not a "nay-sayer", nor am I a person that is "not interested". I did not say breatharianism is impossible (in fact, I think it very well might be possible; see my earlier comments). I'm saying it is not a harmless practice that should be taken lightly. You should be honest about what it is you're practicing, and saying you "don't care" and claiming that people who disagree with one aspect of what you're saying are "not interested" or "nay-sayers" gives a picture of a starry-eyed fanaticism that frankly is not welcome on this forum. I have meditated for more than 1000 hours. I don't think meditation is harmless. I think it can cause a lot of harm if you're not careful and you're not in the right situation and you lack the right prerequisite knowledge. Ideally, meditation should be taught by a teacher who is fully aware of the potential harms of meditation and knows how to mitigate them and will withdraw the teachings if they don't seem suitable for the person. Similarly (and prefacing this as "in theory" and not a recommendation), if somebody wants to learn about breatharianism, I think they should go to somebody who knows about the potential harms of breatharianism and will withdraw the teachings if they seem unsuitable for the person (and in actuality, I would be seriously cautious about even that considering the apparent level of delusional thinking that exists in that domain). Take a look at the guidelines: https://www.actualized.org/forum/guidelines/ If you can't admit that the practice of ceasing the consumption of food and water deserves at least a similar level of precaution, I think that's delusional.

There are like a million reasons and rationalizations why a person would continue despite losing weight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

... Try to guess yourself. Why do you think some people die from trying it?

Yes. You gain the most training effect from the first few sets. The more volume you add, the more your intensity drops and you see diminishing returns. Your muscles take time to recover, especially your upper body (your legs recover faster, because that's what we're evolutionarily adapted for; running). So when you train the same muscle group every day, especially if you focus all your energy on just a few muscle groups and one movement (pullups), you will be perpetually sore (unless you don't actually push yourself, which is unlikely when you only do 3 sets and you do pullups which is an intense exercise. And you're 18, so pushing yourself is basically easier than not). When I was 16 or so, I got rhabdomyolysis from working out 7 days a week, but that was around 15-18 sets per workout (but not for the same muscle group or the same movement of course).

I cba. @TruthFreedom Only your logical mind can conclude something exists and something doesn't exist. So you're already using your logical mind, so yes, why not give that other idea credence? I think you would find it's more logical, or rather more reasonable (given various reasonable epistemic assumptions; empirical adequacy, explanatory power, logical consistency, coherence, conceptual parsimony).

Add at least two-three rest days. Your body does not recover in a day.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dangerous+definition Doing an activity where people routinely die attempting it is dangerous. Climbing Mount Everest is dangerous, jumping from an airplane is dangerous, driving a car is dangerous. I also mentioned spiritual practices in general: meditation (it can trigger psychotic breaks), psychedelics (psychotic breaks, hurting yourself in a delirious state, severe life changes).

Damn it 😢 What kinda vibe is that?

What is your exercise regimen?

It's dangerous in about the same way wingsuit gliding is dangerous. If your equipment holds, your skills are on point and the weather is in your favor, you can do it and survive. But don't act like it's not dangerous. Like honestly, is this hard to understand? Buddy, people have literally died attempting it. You have to distinguish between dangerous and necessarily harmful. Doing a dangerous activity doesn't mean you will necessarily end up being harmed.

Her body mass was probably also around half of yours?

Life is more strange than the very limited scope of current materialistic scientific discoveries, with all their cultural, institutional, economic and methodological constraints, being the end-all be-all of reality.

Are you overtraining? What's your exercise regimen? I noticed I had to cut back on some training last year because the volume and intensity was simply too much combined with all the other work I was doing (I noticed it by not waking up rested).

"Basic biology" is based on current scientific evidence. Scientific evidence might change in the future. And that's again a problem breatharianism has, because gathering (rigorous) scientific evidence is quite difficult. Tracking a person for multiple years, in a way that completely rules out any doubt about interfering factors, is really only something you could maybe figure out in theory, but doing it in practice is essentially economically, practically and even ethically insoluable, certainly by any mainstream scientific standards. Or actually, if you could surgically insert a monitor that can detect when exogenous water or food passes the esophagus, that could maybe work. But that would also require of course substantial funding for technological development and validation trials, granted you even get it past an ethics commitee based on the existing lack of convincing evidence from non-invasive studies (which brings you back to the original problem again).

There are no "scientific laws", but fasting/breatharianism is a dangerous activity, like spiritual practices are generally. Everything you said confirmed my points. The study you referenced also seems to have the very methodological issues I pointed out [AI-link].

And this is partly why I think integrating science or theory is often not antithetical but in fact complementary to what would be the spiritual project (be it teaching or seeking), because you're already using your theoretical mind for those pursuits. "Energy" is a concept, it has certain connotations. Philosophical and scientific theories just extend such concepts into a more grand picture of connections and conceptual detail, which sometimes can get top-heavy and cause overgeneralization and inaccuracies, but it's also powerful. And the alternative is of course using low detail concepts and tenuous connections that are inaccurate in their own way. At the end of the day, you have to distinguish between the relative and the Absolute, so the choice is really between a conceptually rich and logically rigorous relative or a conceptually poor and logically tenuous one. Also, with the more purely experientially informed and accidentally assembled and idiosyncratic conceptual frameworks is the tendency for bias. Seeking out a vast range of frameworks, and deep frameworks that have long tradition assembled collaboratively with many people, challenges such bias. And when there is convergence between different frameworks, that gives additional veracity. I could definitely speak from "feeling" as you do in for example the veganism/fruitarianism thread(s) and talk about how I often felt more light and energized after some vegetarian meals back when I experimented with them and that people like Sadhguru gave me conceptual frameworks that agreed with them (sattvic, pranic foods, digestive times, length of the digestive tract, karmic load, etc.), but then there are of course other perspectives out there (and conflicting experiences, like when I felt very low energy at the gym after eating chickpeas instead of chicken). And like with Sadhguru and some of my experiences, the relationship is two-way; it's not necessarily only the experience that makes you convinced, it's the experience + the concepts, and sometimes it's not easy to know which carries the most load or which "came first". You've maybe not incidentally read a lot about fruitarianism (etc.), done a lot of research, sought out sources of convergence. So the "experiential" label might only go so far.