kewms said:
60 beats per minute is actually a pretty slow heart rate, on the order of a very fit person's resting heart rate. It seems to me more likely to be typical of sleep than of focused concentration. 60 beats per minute is also a very slow musical tempo, much slower than most of the Baroque music in my collection.
While rhythmic breathing is common in many meditation practices, four second breaths strike me as more likely to induce oxygen deprivation than learning. Try it and see how long you can keep it up. And I'll bet doing it takes your heart rate significantly above 60 beats per minute, too.
So yeah, I'm a bit skeptical.
Katherine
Katherine, I should clarify on info from my previous post. The four second Superlearning technique is not four second breaths, rather 3 consecutive four second breathing actions(so really, 4x3=12 second breaths):
1. Inhale for four seconds
2.Hold breath for four seconds and while doing so listen to your taped voice of information you are trying to learn
3.Exhale for four seconds
Repeat above for an individual learning session of approx. 20 minutes. Collect Nobel Prize.
Hope that clarifies.
You need to make a tape using the second hand of your watch or listening to the clicks of a music metronome set at 60 bpm to create the 4 blank seconds of tape, followed by 4 seconds of your voice recorded info(info like key points from a text you're studying for ex.), followed by 4 blank seconds and so on.
I bet making the tape is 80% of the learning experience.
This stuff comes out of the Superlearning Book (one author, Sheila Ostrander)
Probably easy to find in a library.
Also, to clarify on 60 bpm Baroque music - should have emphasized the slower "largo" sections of Baroque pieces are what the fuss is about in this, not the piece in it's entirety.
Again with disclaimer that there is probably a lot more on this stuff than the above. Agreed on skepticism. For me, it's just intellectual curiousity. Already I'm over my head.
