I believe you are describing paraesthesiae from hyperventilation-induced respiratory alkalosis—ie you’re breathing in too much oxygen too quickly and breathing out too much CO2 too quickly, it’s turning your blood alkaline, and that’s screwing with your nervous system.
This is part of the reason I always use focusing on (and minimization of) breathing as part of my meditation. It perhaps distracts a little from some aspects of the meditation but the adaptations sure come in handy when conserving energy while distance running. Cheaper than using expensive equipment to provide a low oxygen environment for training or sleeping.
It also enhances the one element of meditation that I have a particular interest in. Training the stress response. Breathing somewhat slower than feels natural prompts a mild panic response. I keep the standard letting go of active thoughts, being aware of them but not following them running along in the background. Multitasking isn’t exactly in the spirit of meditation but the process is integrated and complimentary enough that it works for me.
The process of letting that go over and over again and maintaining calm focus and balance despite the temptation to succumb to distress is exactly the mental technique I am trying to train myself in. Outside of meditation I do similar training with ice baths and painfully hot but not quite damaging showers. Applying ‘extinction’ to the flight or flight response in cases where stress response does more harm that good.
Neither my personal meditation variant nor the hot and cold stress response play is certainly not something I am recommending (at least without ironing out the details and collecting and confirming the credibility of some research). It’s just my idea of fun.
This is part of the reason I always use focusing on (and minimization of) breathing as part of my meditation. It perhaps distracts a little from some aspects of the meditation but the adaptations sure come in handy when conserving energy while distance running. Cheaper than using expensive equipment to provide a low oxygen environment for training or sleeping.
It also enhances the one element of meditation that I have a particular interest in. Training the stress response. Breathing somewhat slower than feels natural prompts a mild panic response. I keep the standard letting go of active thoughts, being aware of them but not following them running along in the background. Multitasking isn’t exactly in the spirit of meditation but the process is integrated and complimentary enough that it works for me.
The process of letting that go over and over again and maintaining calm focus and balance despite the temptation to succumb to distress is exactly the mental technique I am trying to train myself in. Outside of meditation I do similar training with ice baths and painfully hot but not quite damaging showers. Applying ‘extinction’ to the flight or flight response in cases where stress response does more harm that good.
Neither my personal meditation variant nor the hot and cold stress response play is certainly not something I am recommending (at least without ironing out the details and collecting and confirming the credibility of some research). It’s just my idea of fun.