Launch HN: Chorus Meditation (YC W21) – Meditation for Non-Meditators
You folks seem upbeat and sincere, so it pains me to tell you this, but
having looked into your site I believe you&#x27;re being irresponsible (that&#x27;s
the nicest way I can say it.)<p>Yours is not the first crew to do this.  It&#x27;s got a bit of a long history
here in the SF Bay Area, going back at least to Leonard Orr in the
1970&#x27;s, who believed he was on the trail of <i>physical immortality</i>.[1]<p>I was looking up Grof&#x27;s &quot;Holotropic&quot; breathing, but WP now just redirects
to &quot;Breathwork&quot; which actually lists the big names, including W. Reich
and Orr: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Breathwork" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Breathwork</a><p>(It&#x27;s written by skeptics with the usual obvious BS: E.g.<p>&gt; Derived from various spiritual and pre-scientific traditions from around
the world, it was pioneered in the West by Wilhelm Reich.<p>Reich didn&#x27;t derive anything from any &quot;spiritual and pre-scientific
traditions&quot;.  He was a scientific genius, one of Freud&#x27;s contemporaries
before he was driven out of Vienna for saying folks would be less uptight
if they had healthier sex lives.  His discoveries around what he called
&quot;Character Armor&quot; have yet to be appreciated in mainstream psychology.
He is one of the few Western researchers to independently discover &quot;Chi&quot;
energy.  He did some amazing research and then went insane, died in
prison, and had his papers burned by the FDA.  True story.)<p>Anyway, y&#x27;all are just &quot;selling air&quot;: teaching folks to hyperventilate,
to pop music, in their own homes, where they are on their own if any
adverse effect occur, and then you use that as a convincer to get people
to give you $40&#x2F;mo.<p>I have to side with the skeptics here: you don&#x27;t know what you&#x27;re doing,
the breathing techniques you appear to be teaching <i>can</i> have adverse
side effects, you&#x27;re misrepresenting it as some sort of intro meditation
for beginners (the very people who need MORE individual time and
attention from their Guru) which it is not, and you are putting
yourselves in the position of Guru without taking on the responsibility
or having the qualifications (by your own admission.)<p>This is all bad, and you should probably stop.<p>[1] He used to say, &quot;Physical immortality: the only cause you can&#x27;t die for!&quot;
and &quot;I made my first million dollars selling air.&quot;
For more about Orr and his &quot;Rebirthing&quot; breathwork see:
=&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibfbreathwork.org&#x2F;7715&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibfbreathwork.org&#x2F;7715&#x2F;</a> &quot;Tribute to Leonard Orr&quot;