
The yogic claim of voluntary control over the heart beat (1973) - agarttha
http://www.sol.com.au/kor/10_02.htm
======
sandworm101
This was 40+ years ago. If such things were actually possible, with the
advance of information technology we should see more, not less, of these
accomplishments recorded. We should see cellphone footage from every angle of
yogis who can fly. We should have ground-penetrating radar and webcam thermal
imaging of those burying themselves.

There is a line in the movie Close Encounters about how car accidents are real
but had never been filmed (the point being that a lack of footage does not
mean UFOs are not real). That was 1977. We now have millions more cameras and
plenty of recorded car accidents because car accidents are in fact real.
Conversely, bigfoot and UFO footage has all but disappeared with the increased
numbers of cameras. Bigfoot is not real. Neither are these superhuman yogis.
No doubt they can survive longer in harsh environments than the average
person, but they cannot violate the laws of physics. If they could, we would
rewrite those laws and hand them noble prizes for their work.

~~~
chm
We can push this further and expect your "reality test" to become practically
useless some time in the next 50 years. That is, when no matter how well you
analyze a video/picture, you can not tell if it is CG or not.

What happens when, in the next 150 years say, one cannot identify with
appreciable probability [1] whether someone is human or not?

[1]: À la Turing test, but with a humanoid robot.

~~~
sandworm101
Something standing in front of me that cannot be scientifically proven not to
be human, would be a human. A robot that accurate down to the microscopic may
be a synthetically-grown human but nevertheless still a human being.

CGI will always be behind the curve. Science requires repeatability by
independent researchers. A CGI hoax cannot survive independent footage of the
event. So CGI cannot survive scientific scrutiny. It can certainly survive
fake scrutiny (see viral vids) but not real investigation by people looking
for the hoax.

~~~
chm
Consider this scenario:

You're walking down the street and a small woman walks past you and stumbles.
You help her up and she says thanks, then gets back on her way. How can you
"scientifically" prove whether she was a human or not?

Of course you could put her on an operating table and cut her open... but she
moves and breathes and feels everything as a human. How could you force that
treatment upon her?

And then you'd have to do it for everybody else. How do you know the surgeon
isn't a humanoid robot?

How do you know you're not a robot yourself?

------
djtriptych
I'm a practicing yogi and surprised myself recently in the hospital (I ate
some bad food on a trip to South America). I was in a hospital bed attached to
a heart rate monitor for a few hours, and I could, while conscious,
consistently bring my heart rate under 50 bpm (which would set off an alarm at
the nurse station). I believe I got down to 46. The alarm was appropriate, as
this resting heart rate likely gets me to the high reaches of the 99th
percentile [1].

I could do this by practicing a fairly technical breathing technique -
basically opening up the channels of breath by joining inhalation and
exhalation. Still, I was able to convince myself that by practicing a very
specific relaxation technique, I could lower my heart rate enough to scare
nurses. I'm standing while typing this and my thumb-to-wrist test has me right
around normal (72bpm).

So, from my perspective, parts of this seem reasonable. I think a true master
(I've only been doing this a few years) may well be able to continuously
regulate his heart to quite low levels. I've often mused that yoga is a hack
of some of your body's autonomic processes. A flatline seems unrealistic even
to me, but I'm sure curious about what benefits there might be in this
technique.

[1]:
[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr041.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr041.pdf)

~~~
cjensen
"Resting State" is a description of a normal, non-active person who is awake.
The resting mind is still pretty active. Calming yourself down further is
entirely possible, so it is not particularly noteworthy that you achieved 99%
percentile.

~~~
djtriptych
I think I'm suggesting that the ability to "calm oneself down further" varies
tremendously between individuals.

------
cjensen
Per Occam's Razor, the Yogi disconnected his EKG, got hypothermia, and lied
when he claimed he didn't drink water.

Is there a culture that doesn't fall for mystical cons?

~~~
khed
I disagree. I am a physician training to be an electrophysiologist
(cardiologist that sub-specializes in the electrical conducting system of the
heart). Without significant equipment it would be impossible to disconnect the
leads of an EKG without causing enormous irregularities in the read out. Even
small movements, like subtly shifting the body, causes blatantly obvious noise
in the EKG baseline. If these baseline changes weren't present, as the authors
state, then it is unreasonable to assume the yogi removed the leads.

~~~
cjensen
It's well-understood that if your heart stops for a few minutes, your brain
dies. Since his brain didn't die, we can conclude that his heart never
stopped.

A human cannot live without water for the length of time claimed. Therefore we
can conclude that the yogi is a liar.

The letter prints out some of the EKGs, but declines to show the moment when
the flatline occurs, and the moment when the heart is again detected.[1]

You now have four facts: (1) the yogi's heart did not stop, (2) the EKG lead
showed no activity, (3) the yogi is a habitual deceiver and (4) the most
important data is intentionally hidden from the reader

Do you still feel confident that the yogi did not disconnect the leads?

[1] An alternative explanation would be that this 1973-era EKG machine did not
make continuous recordings, in which case it defies reason to claim that it
was watched carefully enough to rule out irregularities during the transition
to/from flatline.

~~~
khed
You are make a fallacious argument. Your first point is just taking your
conclusion for granted.

Your third point is just assumed, not proven.

People have survived at least 40 minutes with circulatory arrest.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm)

EKG machines have been capable of continuous read outs since before this
research was published.

It is entirely reasonable to be mildly skeptical of research. But with a clear
grounding for your bayesian priors, extreme skepticism becomes inimical to the
search for truth.

That said, I would like to see the EKG during the "transition" periods.

~~~
cjensen
Yes, being nearly frozen is an exception to the rule, but since there was no
mention of a glacier or extensive snow in the report, I thought it reasonable
to ignore that possibility.

------
angst_ridden
I'd like to see the same experiment performed, but audited by Penn & Teller
and/or Derren Brown.

~~~
oberstein
Don't forget James Randi.

~~~
imglorp
Randi doesn't really expose frauds in a dramatic way. He infers how such
tricks could be done, sets up an experiment that will prevent such tricks, and
then lets the frauds fall on their own sword.

They'll either "have a bad day" or decline. To date, no one has claimed the
foundation's million dollar prize.

------
hyperion2010
I have a cousin who nearly died from a bleeding ulcer. He likes to tell the
story of how he would mess with the nurses on call by ramping his heart rate
when they left the room to make the alarms go off and then ramping it back
down when they all came running. Could be a big fish story, but to tell you
the truth until someone does good science on this the jury is out.

------
chromaton
My wife suggested another explanation for this: his heart rate sped up so much
that it overwhelmed the ECG sensors. This is consistent with the later
diagnosis of hypothermia. (See
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15617296](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15617296)).

~~~
jtriangle
That's a good theory. Wife her again.

so, he sped his heart up somehow to the point where he could disconnect the
leads without any disruption?

Also, how would someone go about faking tachycardia?

------
ilitirit
Reminds me of the story of Prahlad Jani.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani)

------
maxxxxx
Here is another one from Swami Rama: [http://www.swamij.com/pdf/swami-rama-
beyond-biofeedback.pdf](http://www.swamij.com/pdf/swami-rama-beyond-
biofeedback.pdf)

------
e40
I'm unfamiliar with some of the terms in the short article. Can someone do a
ELI5 for this? What did he do to his heart beat?

~~~
userbinator
He appeared to have stopped his heart for close to 8 days when buried in an
underground pit.

