A Short Note on Persistent Practices

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
- Yogi Berra

Yoga works. Meditation works. Conscious breathing works. By “works” I mean that these practices have positive effects for people who observe them. They can help build and retain strength and flexibility of both body and mind. The fact that they work shouldn’t be entirely surprising, given that these practices have been developed over thousands of years through trial and error by millions of people. The persistence of these practices by itself provides devidence of their effectiveness.

But does that mean the theories frequently cited to explain these practices are also valid? Do chakras and energy flows exist? I don’t want to rule this out – there have been various attempts to map chakras to the nervous and endocrine systems – but I think it is much more likely that these are pre-scientific explanations not unlike the phlogiston theory of combustion. I will refer to these as “internal theories,” meaning the theories that are generally associated with the practices historically.

Interestingly, we are now developing scientific theories that explain why these practices work. I will call these “external theories” as they are often developed outside the mainstream community of practitioners. For example, there is a great recent study that looks at changes in the brain from intense meditation.

Religions are another example of a practice that has a positive impact for many people in terms of giving them meaning and purpose in their lives. The internal theory of religions tends to be that they represent a higher truth told by prophets and/or the result of direct appearances of gods on earth. The external theory is that people have a psychological need for meaning and purpose and religion is one way to meet that need.

Do all persistent practices work? I guess it depends on what one means by “work.” Consider astrology. It is easily dismissed as completely useless, but then what explains its persistence? Well a psychological explanation might be that people like to have rationales as to why they are a certain way or why certain things are happening to them. These rationales – even if they have no scientific basis – might reduce stress for people (not dissimilar from religion). Beyond that it is of course possible that there is some yet undiscovered mechanism by which the planets and stars influence people’s characters and fates (the internal theory). I consider this quite unlikely, but not impossible.

Another interesting example of persistent practices are expressions in languages. Consider “I have a gut feeling” or “I have butterflies in my stomach” (which exist in both German and English) that relate one’s mental state to one’s digestive system. Unlike practices, these expressions tend to come without a theory altogether. They are simply part of the language we use. And yet, as science has progressed we have discovered the vagus nerve, as well as the fact that there are neurons throughout the gastrointestinal tract.

So what should we take away from this? 

There are two failure modes here. The first is to simply accept the internal theory of a practice unquestioned. The older the practice the more like that theory is hokum and subscribing to it risks the danger of being trapped in a pre-scientific view.

Conversely it is a bad idea to simply dismiss the power of a practice or the information content of language on the basis that its internal theory is bunk or non-existent. Instead, for everything that is a persistent practice or a common language feature, we should expect that there is some external scientific theory that explains why and how this practice works or why this language feature arose. To the extent that we don’t understand that yet, these are all interesting potential research projects.