No matter what we eat, how much we exercise, how resilient our genes are, how skinny or young or wise we are – none of it will matter unless we’re breathing correctly. That’s what these researchers discovered. The missing pillar in health is breath. It all starts here.
James Nestor
Nothing is more fundamental to our health than breathing. As the cliché goes, you can go for weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without breathing.
However, despite recognizing the importance of breathing, most of us think that breathing is the most straightforward thing ever. In our minds, it doesn’t matter how we take our c. 25,000 breaths a day. All that matters is that we take air in and we let it out.
So, why the heck should you read a long, technical article about breathing? Why not use this time for something else, like going on a rom-com marathon or running some errands?
Here’s Why You Should Study This Article
Every breath we take – and how we take it – have a major impact on our heart rate, anxiety levels, cardiovascular health, bone density, longevity and general well-being (crazy!).
It is not an exaggeration to say that the way we breathe affects almost every aspect of our lives.
This is not some “New Age” BS. Decades of scientific studies back this statement. Centuries of spiritual & cultural practices. Most importantly, as you will find out for yourself, this is also consistent with our own personal experiences.
If we still haven’t 100% sold you on the importance of this article (good to have a skeptical mind), make sure to check out this section. If you are sold, feel free to skip directly to the optimal breathing tips.
Breathing Optimally: New Science Of A Lost Art
James Nestor, author of the book Breath, uses the expression “New Science of a Lost Art”. This is a fantastic way to put it. Our ancestors knew how to breathe optimally. Yet Homo Sapiens lost this knowledge with time, with dire consequences (we explore some of the key reasons in this section, should this be of interest).
Fortunately, the emerging science is reminding us of this lost art and its importance.
As might be obvious at this stage, this article is a deep dive into the ancient art & modern science of breathing. In typical Sapiens Maximus fashion, we provide you with the tools you need to put your breathing back on track and supercharge your health & performance.
Buckle in – it’s gonna be one hell of a ride 🚀
Content Breakdown
Optimal Breathing: Does It REALLY Matter? How Important Could This Be?
Many people believe that the way you breathe is not important. This view is not only held by your average Joe & Jane. It’s also held by various medical professionals, researchers and scientists. Whether it’s through your nose or your mouth, whether it’s 20 breaths a minute or 10, it’s all the same. You just need to inhale and exhale – whatever that looks like.
Yet this view is inconsistent with compelling emerging science. It’s also at odds with our ancestors’ wisdom, as documented through various ancient texts (from Buddhism to Hinduism and beyond). Most importantly, this view is incompatible with our own personal experience. If you try the different breathing methods in this article, you will see for yourself the wildly different outcomes they lead to.
It doesn’t take days or weeks to see the difference. Only a few minutes.
So: the way you breathe DOES matter. A lot. To further emphasize, it is worth briefly examining the relationship between optimal breathing and a key longevity indicator.
A Surprising Longevity Factor
After reviewing two decades worth of data from 5,200 subjects, the Framingham Study researchers discovered something interesting. Contrary to popular belief, the most significant indicator of life span was not genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise. It was lung capacity.
Here’s the good news: lung capacity is not fixed. You can increase it with optimal breathing and adequate training. Arguably, the most stark illustration of this is free divers.
These people are able to plunge hundreds of meters below sea level on a single breath. In fact, it is not uncommon for them to hold their breaths for several minutes while they do so (as an FYI, although separate from the free divers’ discussion, the longest voluntary breath hold on record is 24 min 37.36 sec).
Hold your breath – how long can you last?
If you are a normal, untrained individual, it’ll be less than a minute …
Yet these free divers are not genetic aberrations. They are normal people who have trained themselves to have astonishing lung capacity. With proper breathing habits, you can do so too.
Beyond Lung Capacity
To push this even further, breathing optimally is about so much more than lung capacity. There are more ways to breathe than there are colours in the universe. Crucially, as previously pointed out, different ways of breathing affect our physiology differently. Some ways of breathing are good for us, while others are highly detrimental to our health. Some make us relaxed, while others are best used for an energy boost.
Homo Sapiens has leveraged these different methods of breathing, often combined with meditative techniques, to accomplish astonishing and at times unbelievable feats.
Wim Hof, the famous “Iceman”, claims a good number of these accomplishments. See below for some examples, which largely revolve around Hof’s ability to withstand the extreme cold.
Power of the Breath – Wim Hof (aka the Iceman)
(1) Hof set the world record for longest time in direct, full-body contact with ice, at 1 hour, 44 minutes. Hof did this under medical supervision, and his core body temperature didn’t even drop.
(2) Hof also has the record for the fastest half marathon run while barefoot on ice or snow at 2 hr 16 min 34 sec.
(3) Last but not least, Hof climbed to an altitude of 7,400 metres (24,300 ft) on Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts and shoes. Many people die each year attempting the climb, despite being heavily clothed and well equipped.
Yet The Ice Man is not an aberration. He is not a genetic freak.
(If you’re paying attention, you’re starting to notice a trend)
As Hof often says, you can do what he does through proper training. A key component of his astonishing feats is mastering the power of your breath.
Power of the Breath – Beyond the Iceman
History is filled with people who achieved extraordinary things by tapping into the power of their breaths. For example, you’d hear stories about monks being able to mysteriously dry wet sheets wrapped around their naked bodies. Mind you, the monks did this exclusively with their body heat during frigid Himalayan weather …
Yet this is no longer stuff of legends. A Harvard scientist established these monks’ ability to raise their core body temperature back in the 1980s (see the published experiment here), using only breathing and meditation. A more recent study from 2013 came to the same conclusion, having worked closely with expert buddhist monks.
For a more detailed discussion on the relationship between breathing and body heat generation, feel free to skip to this section.
Power of Breathing Optimally – Nuts but Scientifically Substantiated
If you’re thinking that this stuff is nuts, you’re not alone. Yet these accomplishments are well documented, and the scientific literature on the art of breathing optimally is rapidly expanding.
Each section below contains extensive scientific references, so make sure to check these out whenever you’re in doubt. Scientific literature aside, (sensibly) experiment with these breathing techniques for yourself & test their validity firsthand.
Although this stuff seems difficult to believe, the crazy(ier) thing is: none of it is novel or groundbreaking. There’s nothing revolutionary here that didn’t previously exist, and that our ancestors didn’t practice.
The ancients have known the power of the breath for thousands of years. It’s just that their wisdom got lost in a society where Homo Sapiens is a mere shadow of who he could be. It’s the Sapiens Maximus mission to rectify this tragedy.
Optimal Breathing: Perspective From The Ancients
Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 BCE focused entirely on breathing.
Hindus have devised highly elaborate breathing practices, including through Yoga, thousands of years ago. You know the “Pranayama” practices your local Yoga teacher casually refers to while sipping her Rainbow Sorbet Frappuccino? Well, they’re astoundingly ancient & incredibly powerful.
Similarly, Buddhists leveraged the power of the breath not only for health and longevity, but to also achieve higher planes of consciousness & deeper meditative experiences.
These cultures did not take breathing for granted. For them, breathing was not an unconscious act that had minimal impact on our lives, beyond strictly keeping us alive. Breathing was a powerful tool that permeated every facet of their lives.
So, you get it. You’ve heard enough. Yet if breathing is so important, how come we got so bad at it? If this is a question you’re interested in, read the next section. If you want to dive straight into the breathing techniques, feel free to do so.
Dysevolution: How Our Breathing Took A Wrong Turn
Fundamentally, the problem is that Homo Sapiens is maladapted to modern life.
In this context, Daniel Liberman, a Harvard evolutionary psychologist, introduced the concept of “dysevolution“. This is not yet formally defined in the dictionary, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s added in the near future.
Simply put, dysevolution is the process by which a species changes its environment to become less suited to its own survival. In other words, it’s when our innovations screw us over (e.g. think of that little gadget you carry around, which although allows you to read this article, also makes you waste a gigantic amount of time).
In many ways, we are too smart for our own good. Through our huge brains and immense technological advancements, we have made our lives too comfortable and indulgent. Even the poorest in today’s society have a level of access that our ancestors could have only dreamt of.
If you pay attention, you can see the effect of our self-inflicted dysevolution everywhere. It’s not just that we lost the ability to breathe properly. We also lost the ability to eat properly, exercise and get adequate sleep (among other things). Allow us to take a quick detour to illustrate, before we bring this back to our modern maladaptive breathing habits.
Homo Sapiens is meant to eat whole, nutrient dense, minimally processed foods.
Yet nearly 57.9% of all calories in the US come from ultra processed foods. In the UK, it’s 56% of daily calories. These studies are somewhat out-dated, and things have only gotten worse since.
Big Food, obviously prioritizing your health over its profits (right …), loads these ultra processed foods with cheap sugars, hydrogenated oils and more chemicals than you can count. These are everywhere: in the cereals you buy for your kids, sausages and hot dogs you indulge in, and every single ready cooked meal you get from the supermarket.
The modern foods we consume are slowly killing us. If you think this is an exaggeration, make sure to check out our ultimate guide on ultra processed foods for a scientifically substantiated, in-depth analysis.
Homo Sapiens is meant to be physically active.
Yet most of us live sedentary lives. In stark contrast to our “hunter gatherer” ancestors, we don’t need to either hunt or gather. In fact, we hardly need to move from our couch. We press a couple of buttons and a hyper palatable, ultra processed meal is delivered straight to our doorstep. Perfect to consume with some mind-numbing, bullshit TV show.
Here’s some statistics for you. Sedentary jobs have increased by 83% since 1950. A sedentary lifestyle increases death rate by 71%. It also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 147%. As if this wasn’t bad enough, sedentary behavior increases the risk of some types of cancer by up to 66%. Additionally, studies link sitting for long periods of time to a 112% increase in the risk of diabetes. The list is endless; but you get the idea.
It’s not just that being physically active helps us combat a wide range of diseases. It’s also that physical activity provides tremendous benefits, from cognitive performance to psychology. Make sure to check out our ultimate guide on the importance of physical exercise for an in-depth analysis of exercise’s effect on our mind and body.
Homo Sapiens is meant to get adequate sleep.
Yet the vast majority of us, particularly in the Western world, are severely sleep deprived. Almost half of all Americans say they feel sleepy during the day. Up to 70 million adults in the US have a sleep disorder. In fact, sleep deprivation is so widespread, and its cost (from a health / economic standpoint) so significant, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared it a ‘public health problem’. At Sapiens Maximus, we think that a more apt characterization is “epidemic”.
Our ‘hustle culture’ has marginalised sleep. The BS, macho narrative our society has been feeding us for years brainwashed us into thinking that sleep is an indulgence for the weak, unambitious or lazy. Our ever increasing: (1) connectivity to screens; and (2) exposure to artificial lights further exacerbates the problem.
The bottom line? Our chronic sleep deprivation is making us shadows of our Sapiens Maximus selves. Sicker, more anxious, more depressed, immuno-compromised, and overall less able to optimally live our lives. Again, if this sounds like hyperbole to you, make sure to check out our ultimate guide on sleep for a scientifically substantiated, in-depth analysis.
Dysevolution & Sleep
Just like we are failing at our diets, training, and sleep, we are also failing at breathing optimally. The exact reasons for this are subject to conjecture, and are not conclusively established. However, below are some of the key likely causes.
Anxiety & Poor Breathing
Homo Sapiens is more anxious than ever. This has a whole host of associated problems, which you can check out in our in-depth analysis on anxiety. For the purposes of this article, the key point is this: the ever-worsening anxiety epidemic is, in turn, contributing to the epidemic of poor breathing.
Notice this for yourself. When you’re anxious, you hyperventilate. That is, you breathe rapidly and intensely, usually using your upper chest rather than belly. To make things worse, you probably do this through your mouth rather than nose. For reasons you will learn in this article, this is probably the worst way you can breathe.
Instead of alleviating your anxiety, hyperventilating makes it worse. In turn, your worsening anxiety further exacerbates your hyperventilation – thus creating a vicious cycle.
UPF & Poor Breathing
Another reason we are breathing so poorly relates to the BS ultra processed foods Big Food got us hooked on. In Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic, two Stanford heavyweights explain how our jaws are getting smaller and our teeth crooked and crowded. This creates not only aesthetic challenges, but also difficulties with breathing.
One primary reason for this is that the rise of UPFs reduces the amount of chewing. Adults and children alike are no longer consuming the relatively tough foods our ancestors ate. Instead, they switched to fast food diets that tend to be soft and liquid-like.
In contrast to chewing hard on minimally processed, sometimes raw foods, Homo Sapiens is feasting on hamburgers and candies that melt in the mouth. Not to mention the insane consumption of sugary soft drinks, and the like.
All of this is contributing to smaller jaws and, more importantly, smaller airways that make breathing optimally (including through the nose) much more difficult.
For a detailed, scientifically thorough discussion of this epidemic, we strongly recommend that you check out the book. You should particularly do that if you or someone you care about need orthodontics. Couple of hundred years ago, orthodontists would have been mostly out of a job. Our ancestors, as illustrated by archeological skulls maintained today, had perfect teeth. Oh how far Homo Sapiens has fallen …
So, breathing properly is important and most of us are failing at it. The key question becomes: how the heck should we be breathing? We’ve got you covered. We will start with the basics and then build up to more advanced (functional) strategies.
Nose vs Mouth Breathing: Which One Is Better?
Answer: breathing through your nose is, without a doubt, the better option. The scientific literature on this is clear. To push this further, you should be breathing through your mouth as often as you eat through your nose – that is to say, (almost) never. Ideally, you should be breathing both in and out through your nose.
Of course, in some instances, breathing through your nose is quite literally impossible. For example, this could be the case if you have a bad deviated septum. In such instances, it might be best if you try to unblock your nose, even if it means seeking medical assistance.
If you have a badly congested nose, check out our section below on how to decongest it. This works like magic – it even blows ENT doctors away by its effectiveness (the fact that many ENT doctors don’t even know about this is simultaneously tragic and terrifying).
So, why is breathing through your nose so much better than breathing through your mouth?
Key Benefits of Nasal Breathing
It’s because your nose is a highly elaborate organ that is evolutionarily designed to help you breathe safely and efficiently. It’s not an ancillary, second class organ. In particular, the nose:
(1) Filters the air you breath. The hairs in your nose are the barrier between your lungs and air toxins. Nasal hair gets rid of any air pollution, dust and allergens. This ensures that you are serving up better quality (highly purified) air to your body. This is particularly important in environments with high levels of air toxins such as major cities. From this standpoint, you could think of your nose as the guardian of your body.
(2) Warms & humidifies air. Your noise moisturizes the air you breathe in. Importantly, it conditions it and brings it to body temperature. This in turn helps your lungs use the air much more efficiently. Keeping in mind how often we need to breathe (pretty much all the time?), small efficiencies go a long way.
(3) Increases production of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. This is just a fancy word which means that nitric oxide helps widen your blood vessels. This in turn helps with better oxygen circulation and uptake throughout the body. Nitric oxide also helps fight viruses and bacteria.
(4) Nose breathing adds approximately 50% more resistance to the air stream when compared to mouth breathing. For reasons you will see later in the article, this results in 10 – 20% more oxygen uptake by your cells. This is not merely yet another benefit. It’s a game changer – from enhanced athletic performance to better cognitive function.
Key Drawbacks Of Mouth Breathing
It’s not just that nasal breathing is actively beneficial for you. It’s also that mouth breathing is actively bad for your health. An obvious starting point is to flip the nasal breathing benefits on their head. That is, breathing through the mouth leads to:
(1) Intake of air that is unfiltered. You no longer have a gatekeeper. The toxins and air pollutants go straight into your airways without any barriers.
(2) Intake of un-humidified air. Your body needs to work extra hard to make sure that the air you inhale is in a condition that is usable by your lungs. This leads to inefficient breathing, which is sub-optimal particularly in light of ongoing breathing volume & frequency.
(3) Over-breathing. This has a hole host of issues, which we will discuss throughout the rest of the article. A key problem associated with over-breathing is a lower uptake of O2 (sounds paradoxical, but feel free to jump to this section for an explanation).
(Even More) Drawbacks of Mouth Breathing
In addition to the above, mouth breathing is also associated with a range of problems.
These include:
(1) Poor facial development (particularly for young mouth-breathers). If you have young kids, this is a point you should pay extra attention to. Robust scientific studies (see this one and this one for example) have shown that mouth-breathing for kids is associated with the development of facial structures that are long and narrow. Such facial structures are also characterized by crooked teeth, sunken cheekbones, less prominent jaws and a retracted chin. Importantly, they also have smaller nasal cavities. This not only creates unattractive facial features (which can cause issues in and of themselves). It also makes breathing optimally through the nose more difficult.
(2) General dehydration. We all know that water is critical for our health and optimal functioning. It is key for having adequate energy, particularly during exercise. Yet studies have shown that net water loss increased by a whopping 42% (🤯) when test subjects switched from nose to mouth breathing. This led to, inter alia, a dry mouth and the loss of essential bodily fluids.
Mouth breathing is also associated with poor mouth hygiene, more cavities, bad breath, snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. We are merely touching the surface, but you get the idea.
Let’s look at an interesting experiment to illustrate some of these points.
The Stanford Experiment
In Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor devised a 20 days experiment with Dr. Nayak of Stanford to compare nasal to mouth breathing. For the first 10 days, Dr. Nayak plugged Nestor’s nose with silicone. This meant that Nestor had to exclusively breathe through his mouth (for our genius readers who didn’t see that coming). For the following 10 days, Nayak unplugged Nestor’s nose so that Nestor could breathe freely through it.
Chronic, exclusive mouth breathing led to instant apnea and snoring throughout much of the night. In addition, while mouth breathing, Nestor’s blood pressure spiked by an average of 13 points from where it was before the test. This put him in hypertension territory. Mouth breathing also caused measures of his heart rate variability to plummet, suggesting that his body was in a state of stress. All in all, Nestor just felt AWFUL while mouth breathing and his ailments were endless.
On the other hand, nasal breathing resolved all of these issues. Once Dr Nayak unplugged Nestor’s nose for the second half of the experiment, blood pressure dropped. Heart rate variability increased. Life normalised. While this is an anecdotal experiment, it is consistent with 50+ years of research.
In a nutshell? Shut your mouth – it’s one of the best things you could do for your health.
Breathing: Optimal Frequency / Quantity
It’s obvious that most people today are over-eaters. The obesity statistics are crystal-clear. What is less obvious however is that a majority of people are also over-breathers.
Is that a thing? Yes, it very much is.
People suffering from chronic stress, anxiety and hypertension (among other diseases) tend to breathe too much. While one might argue that over-breathing is the consequence of these health issues, we at Sapiens Maximus think that the relationship goes both ways.
It’s not just that stress, anxiety and other diseases exacerbate over-breathing. Over-breathing also makes these medical conditions so much worse. It’s a two way street where each part of the equation influences the other.
As will become abundantly clear to you throughout this article, over-breathing has a number of highly detrimental consequences to our heath.
Here’s the solution: you need to breathe as closely as possible to your metabolic needs. This means, as a default, deliberately and consciously slowing down your breathing throughout the day.
On average, people take 12–20 breaths per minute. What you should aim for instead is a c. 6 seconds inhale and a c. 6 seconds exhale, for a total of c. 5 breaths per minute.
Importantly, these long deep breaths should be through the belly, not the upper chest (i.e. diaphragmatic breathing).
There are a number of reasons why this is important. This article covers one in detail: balancing our levels of O2 and CO2 for optimal oxygen uptake. This in turn has a wide ranging impact on our cardiovascular health, athletic performance and longevity (among others).
Feel free to skip the next couple of paragraphs if you are not interested in the underlying science. However, if you are remotely interested, we recommend that you read on as this knowledge would serve you for life.
CO2: Much More Than A Waste Product
Carbon dioxide (or CO2) is widely perceived as a metabolic waste product. The average person associates breathing with: (1) getting rid of the “bad” CO2 that our system produces; and (2) getting more of the “good” O2 that our body needs. While this view has some truth to it, it fails to consider the complex relationship between O2 and CO2.
The Bohr effect is key to understanding this relationship. First described in 1904 by the Danish physiologist Christian Bohr, the Bohr effect states that a hemoglobin’s oxygen binding affinity is inversely related both to blood acidity and to the concentration of CO2. What the heck does this even mean?
No need to be overly technical. Fundamentally, the point is simple: the body’s ability to use its oxygen is directly related to the body’s concentrations of CO2. If you have high levels of CO2, your body is able to use its O2 efficiently. If you have low levels of CO2, your cells would be unable to tap into the O2 you have no matter how much O2 is circulating in your blood.
To put it in yet another way, you need CO2 to be able to use O2.
Over-Breathing = Oxygen Deficiency
This is why over breathing is bad for you. When you over breathe, you expel too much CO2. When you expel too much CO2, as already pointed out, it doesn’t matter that you have high concentrations of O2 in your blood. Your hemoglobins will not be able to offload that O2, and you will become oxygen deficient as a result.
Therefore, paradoxically, over-breathing leads to oxygen deficiency in your cells.
This is why, for example, practitioners of the Wim Hof method (and other heavy breathing techniques) get tingling sensations and experience light-headedness. Contrary to popular belief, this is not caused by too much oxygen but TOO LITTLE oxygen being delivered to your cells. This also explains the “out of body” experiences some of them have, as they temporarily deprive their brains of oxygen.
Having said that, heavy breathing techniques have their own benefits, but only when practiced occasionally (see for example our section on immunity). Ultimately, they are a form of stressor that leads to adaptation (just like a workout, where you’d want to train but you wouldn’t want to overtrain as this would have counter-productive effects).
Bottom line for this section?
As a default, it is key for you to breathe slowly and less, so that you ensure there is sufficient CO2 in your system at all times. This in turn will maximize your body’s utilization of oxygen, particularly as you focus on belly (deep) rather than upper chest (shallow) breathing. This is what balancing our O2 an CO2 levels is about. In addition, as a reminder, you should ensure that you are generally breathing through your nose.
Breathing For Functionality
Doing the above will already put you in the category of an “elite breather”, so to speak.
Apply nose, slow and light breathing for few weeks and notice the benefits for yourself.
Yet in the following sections, we push things further.
As already discussed, different ways of breathing lead to different outcomes. This is why we dedicate the rest of the article to breathing for functionality.
If you have a specific goal in mind (relaxation, immunity boost etc.), feel free to skip to the relevant section directly.
Breathing For Relaxation
The relationship between breathing and the relaxation response is, arguably, the most well-known. This is partially attributable to the widespread practice of yoga and various meditative techniques.
To cut to the chase, there are two key ways you could breathe to trigger the relaxation response (Breathing For Relaxation #1 and Breathing For Relaxation #2). Each approach works on a different timescale, so you can use a combination of both depending on your needs.
Before we dive into these two methods, we first need to explain the underlying science. In particular, let’s explore the distinction between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and how they interact with our breathing.
Our Breathing, The Sympathetic + Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Your sympathetic nervous system (which, btw, has NOTHING to do with sympathy) is a network of nerves that helps your body activate its “fight-or-flight” response. It kicks in to assist you with stressful and challenging situations. For our ancestors, this might have been surviving a tiger. For us, it could be acing a job interview or avoiding embarrassment while giving a wedding speech. A key characteristic of sympathetic activation is a faster heart rate, as this ensures that enough blood is pumped to the relevant organs (e.g. legs) for a fight or flight response. It’s also associated with faster, heavier breathing.
The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand is the network of nerves that helps your body activate its “rest and digest” / relaxation response. It’s the system that helps run life-sustaining processes, like digestion, during times when you feel safe and relaxed. In contrast to the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic response is characterized by a slower heart rate. You’re not going to get any genius points for guessing this, but it’s also associated with slower, lighter breathing.
We know how each state affects our breathing. However, the key question is, how does our breathing affect each state?
In a nutshell, we just need to reverse the dynamic:
(1) Faster (inhale emphasized – i.e. with inhales longer than exhales), heavier breathing activates the sympathetic nervous system; whereas
(2) Slower (exhale emphasized – i.e. with exhales longer than inhales), lighter breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
The underlying science is extensive and complex. One key reason however is discussed in this short Andrew Huberman video, which we would recommend. Just try the different approaches for few minutes and see for yourself.
Breathing For Relaxation #1: Slow, Exhale Emphasized Breathing
Following from the above, the key to relaxing is to breathe slowly, while ensuring that the exhales (+ the time you are holding your breath, if applicable) are longer than the inhales. As long as your breathing method of choice satisfies these conditions, it will make you progressively relaxed no matter what it looks like (so don’t get lost in the details). There are countless breathing variations that tick these boxes, including ones from Pranayama yoga & meditation.
Popular relaxation breathing methods include: (1) 4-7-8 breathing (where you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold the breath for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds); and (2) box breathing (where you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds and hold for 4 seconds, before repeating).
At its simplest, you could breathe in for 3-4 seconds, and exhale for twice the duration of your inhale.
Try it out now if you’re feeling stressed by all the info we’re throwing at you.
Breathing For Relaxation #2: The Aftermath of Fast, Inhale Emphasized Breathing
Arguably, the most famous breathing method in this category is Wim Hof’s. For a guided session, we recommend that you check out Wim’s superb video here. Make sure to refer to the health disclaimer in the video (essentially, DO NOT practice this method anywhere near water, while operating heavy machinery or in any set of circumstances where it would be unsafe to pass out for few seconds).
As previously discussed, fast, inhale emphasized breathing serves as a stressor. It stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and prepares you to tackle challenges. You might be wondering, why are we discussing this in the context of relaxation?
Answer: it’s because of a beautiful paradox. The more acute the stressor we subject ourselves to, the more intense the relaxation response that follows. This for example explains the relaxed bliss you feel after three rounds of Wim Hof (or any other cyclical hyperventilation method you practice). It’s also what explains the relaxation response you feel after an intense workout. Most relevantly, it’s at the heart of the Progressive Muscle Relaxation for Stress and Insomnia technique (you can check out a good WebMD summary here). Fundamentally, it’s a balance. Relaxation follows acute stress. Pain follows pleasure, and pleasure follows pain.
It’s our system’s deeply programmed wiring to ensure homeostasis / equilibrium.
For more on the underlying science, including on homeostasis, make sure to check out our ultimate guide to dopamine here (although it’s a separate kind of discussion, key common themes such as homeostasis feature heavily).
A Short Note On Acute Vs Chronic Stress
Just to be clear: acute, short lived stress is good for us. That’s the Wim Hof method, a workout, or fasting (you can check our ultimate guide on fasting here), among other things. They lead to beneficial adaptations whereby our system gets stronger. We subject ourselves to acute stress, then we spend the rest of our time (which is substantially longer) in a relaxed state.
The problem is not stress, which is evolutionarily advantageous. The (catastrophic) problem in today’s world is chronic stress where Homo Sapiens never switches off. We are never fully alert, but we’re also never fully relaxed. We are Zombie-like, shadow versions of our Sapiens Maximus selves.
For more on the anxiety epidemic & how you can better manage stress in your own life, make sure to check out our article here. For now, let’s discuss breathing in a context that would interest most of our readers: athletic performance.
Breathing For Enhanced Athletic Performance
We already know that breathing is foundational to absolutely everything we do. This is arguably most obvious during physical exercise.
Notice your breathing – what happens when you are engaging in moderate to intense physical activity? Chances are, you’re going to feel “out of breath”. As if your respiratory system is trying, and failing, to meet the demands of your tissues and muscles.
In our minds, feeling out of breath = being deprived of oxygen.
Our response? We open our mouth and start huffing and puffing. We hyperventilate, trying to satisfy our nagging “need for air”.
Yet the more and heavier we breathe, the more breathless we become.
Here is a crazy fact for you: even during intense physical exercise, EVEN WHEN YOU’RE FEELING BREATHLESS, your blood oxygen saturation levels remain at 95% – 99% with minimal breathing.
You’re finding this hard to believe? Get an oximeter (there are a lot of cheap & effective options online) and hook it to your finger. You will find that your oxygen levels remain relatively stable throughout physical exercise.
So, what the heck is happening? If it’s not a shortage of O2, then what is causing our breathlessness? Answer: Your CO2 levels are increasing ⬆️. When our CO2 levels increase, our blood PH drops. Our breathlessness is our system’s indication that we need to get rid of our excess CO2 to re-establish homeostasis (i.e. balance) and ensure normal blood PH.
The Perfect Balance Of O2 and CO2 During Exercise
The key to better athletic performance is to NOT hyperventilate, despite the tremendous urge to do so. Over-breathing would expel too much CO2. As already discussed, per the Bohr effect, expelling too much CO2 would prevent your body from using O2 effectively. This is why for example a lot of athletes who hyperventilate get light-headed, nauseous and experience tingling sensations. This is a screaming indication that your body is starved of O2, because a lot of the O2 you are breathing in is going straight back out.
As a reminder, low CO2 in the blood = low O2 uptake (no matter how much O2 you have in circulation).
Here’s the recommendation: for optimal athletic performance, you should force yourself to breathe softer, slower and through the nose. This is going to feel suffocating and claustrophobic, as if you are depriving your cells from much needed fuel. However, by controlling your breath, you ensure that your body has enough CO2 in circulation. This in turn means that your cells will get the O2 they are desperately in need of, instead of you exhaling most of the O2 back out without being able to use it.
Your athletic performance might suffer at first, since your body needs to get used to breathing less. However, within few weeks, you should experience a material improvement in performance. This is particularly as your body becomes better suited at tolerating higher levels of CO2. Importantly, you will be able to achieve more in your workouts with less exertion.
Breathing For Heat Generation
Do you want to be able to warm your body without access to any external heat source? If so, this section is for you. While it is not entirely clear how or why these methods work, we know that they do. If in doubt, experiment with them and see for yourself.
The Wim Hof Way To Get Warm
We already mentioned Hof’s astonishing achievements. For example, in February 2018, Hof participated in a study at Wayne State university alongside 73 other subjects. Under medical supervision, each of the 74 test subjects were continuously exposed to cold water.
Unsurprisingly, the skin temperature of 73 / 74 participants dropped. Yet Hof managed to maintain his body temperature, unaffected. According to Hof, this is also the method he used to stay submerged in ice for 1 hour and 52 minutes without developing hypothermia.
(1) Inhale slowly and deeply five or six times. Make sure your inhales are longer than your exhales, so that you are breathing in more than you are breathing out (NB: for those of you who have been closely following this article, you know that this activates your sympathetic nervous system).
(2) At the end of the five / six breaths, inhale fully.
(3) Hold your breath for no more than 5 – 10 seconds.
(4) Tense your muscles, particularly your upper-back and chest muscles while holding your breath. Make sure however that you don’t tense the head / keep the jaw relaxed.
(5) Let go.
(6) Repeat steps (1) – (5) as many cycles as needed for internal heat generation.
Few cycles in, you should feel the heat flowing down from your neck and emanating from your body. Really????
Yep. It sounds nuts, but give it a try and see for yourself.
Tummo Breathing: An Ancient Practice
In some ways, Hof’s method is similar to the ancient practice of Tummo.
Both methods involve inhale emphasized breathing (thus activating the sympathetic nervous system). Both methods also involve muscle contractions to help with heat generation.
However, a key difference is that Tummo has a more pronounced meditative, almost spiritual component. This is hardly a surprise in light of Tummo’s origins.
For those of you who are not aware, Tummo is a Buddhist Tibetan meditation technique. Some of the earliest references to Tummo can be found in sacred Buddhist texts dating back to the 8th century.
While Tibetan monks used Tummo to generate heat during freezing cold temperatures, Tummo is fundamentally meant to be a powerful form of meditation, helping its practitioners reach higher planes of consciousness.
Monks practicing Tummo have historically withheld it from the public as they consider it to be a sacred practice. This in turn means that it is difficult to categorically determine what the practice exactly entails.
However, the below steps are widely regarded as being a legitimate variation of Tummo. They are by no means simple to implement, and require practice (unlike Hof’s method which is more straightforward to master).
However, once you have tried this breathing method a few times, you should be able to (almost unbelievably) generate significant body heat. In addition, you are also likely to benefit from a deeper sense of calm and more energy.
How To Practice Tummo Breathing
(1) Sit comfortably with good posture and close your eyes. Good posture is needed since you will need to contract your muscles in a rhythmic manner. It would therefore be difficult to practice Tummo effectively with bad posture or while lying down.
(2) Rest your hands on top of each other over your belly button. Your hands should remain in this position for the entirety of the practice. Note however that once you have sufficiently mastered your Tummo technique, you’ll be able to perform the steps while walking.
(3) Bring your mind to the present moment. Try to calm it down, while focusing on your breath. Notice your thoughts, and let them go instead of fixating on them.
(Here’s where it starts getting weird)
(4) Visualize a fire in your stomach, starting from your naval. Take a couple of minutes to make this as vivid as possible. Imagine the fire spreading through every part of your body, all the way up to your head (per the below instructions).
(5) Inhale deeply through your nose, arching your back slightly, expanding your torso and chest. Imagine the air as fuel to the fire within you. With every inhale, the fire is rapidly spreading and becoming hotter & hotter. It’s progressively reaching all the way up to the crown of your head.
(6) Exhale strongly through your mouth with rounded lips, as if you were blowing a candle. Ideally, you should make sure that the exhale is shorter than the inhale. One good way to exhale forcefully is by making the sound “Huh!”. As you exhale, curl forward, rounding the spine, still holding your hands to your stomach. Continue imagining the flame and its heat spreading all throughout your body.
(7) Continue this breath pattern for five breaths and notice how your internal body heat starts ramping up. After the fifth inhale, swallow gently and try to hold the inhale below the diaphragm. Contract your pelvic floor muscles (as if you are tying not to poop / pee yourself), so you’re simultaneously pushing the breath down with the diaphragm and up with the pelvic floor. This should feel like you’re flexing your torso really hard.
(8) Exhale forcefully (can be a “Huh!” sound) after holding the breath for as long as you can.
(9) Repeat the sequence however many times needed to start feeling the heat + mental clarity.
Tummo Breathing – Medical Scrutiny
As already pointed out, a Harvard scientist established these monks’ ability to raise their core body temperature using Tummo back in the 1980s (see the published experiment here). Per the above, the monks used a combination of breathing and meditation.
A more recent study from 2013 came to the same conclusion, having worked closely with expert Tummo buddhist monks. It introduced a level of nuance, including a distinction between two different kinds of Tummo breathing (one that actively increases body heat, and another that merely maintains it). We recommend that you read the study in full if you are interested in exploring this further.
Bottom line from our perspective? It works, as corroborated by science.
We just need to learn how to master it (which is by no means easy, as monks spend years practicing it).
Lastly, let’s wrap up with a key discussion of breathing & immunity. We’re sure our readers would appreciate this, especially in the post-Covid era where everyone seems a bit more health conscious.
Breathing For Supercharged Immunity
As already explained: (1) slow, exhale emphasized breathing activates the parasympathetic (“rest & digest”) nervous system, whereas (2) fast, inhale emphasized breathing activates the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous system.
While you would want to be in a relaxed, parasympathetic state as a default, being in a sympathetic state on occasions has its advantages. In particular, activating your sympathetic, flight or fight system supercharges your immunity. This is for example why practitioners of the Wim Hof Method (and other cyclical hyperventilation techniques) rarely if ever get sick.
So, How Does This Actually Work?
At the simplest level, activating your sympathetic system using breathing (which would entail hyperventilation + ideally, breath holds – per Hof’s method) ramps up the production of epinephrine and adrenaline in the brain and body.
This in turn is associated with the levels of: (1) inflammatory cytokines going down; and (2) anti-inflammatory cytokines going up. Importantly, cyclic hyperventilation is also associated with increased levels of leukocytes (i.e. white blood cells that combat pathogens and infections).
20 years ago, all of this might have sounded like medical heresy. Any medical professional would have laughed you out of the room. Yet the emerging science demonstrating this is robust. See below for the discussion of a study published in the prestigious PNAS.
The Sympathetic Nervous System & Immunity – Medical Scrutiny
Scientists split test subjects into two groups:
(1) The control group, where subjects did not receive any special training; and
(2) The intervention group, where subjects received 10 days of training in cyclical hyperventilation.
Scientists injected both groups with an E-Coli endotoxin. Doing so is meant to flare up the immune system and lead to flu-like symptoms such as fever and headache. This is exactly what happened with the control group, who were struggling. Astonishingly, the trained subjects were able to suppress all of the symptoms. In other words, they were perfectly fine.
It’s not just that they were able to suppress their inflammatory response, which is not necessarily a great thing if it leaves your body exposed to toxins that it is unable to combat. Importantly, as previously pointed out, the trained subjects showed a 2-3 fold increase in white blood cells responsible for killing pathogens.
This study, as well as others similar to it (see for example this one, which predates it), are literally leading researchers to re-write medical textbooks.
What’s the key takeaway from this section for you?
You should use the default breathing recommended (through the nose, slow and light), occasionally combined with cyclical hyperventilation (for example, once or twice a day for 10-15 minutes each). In particular, if you are feeling a bit under the weather, cyclical hyperventilation such as the Wim Hof method gives you a valuable immune response boost. We’re linking again to Hof’s guided walkthrough video here. Always consult with your medical practitioner before practicing cyclical hyperventilation if you have any medical conditions or are pregnant. Also refer to Hof’s disclaimer in the video itself, as hyperventilation might cause you to momentarily pass out.
Bonus Tip: How To Decongest Your Nose
Follow these steps to decongest your nose within 3 – 5 minutes.
(1) Gently breathe in and out through your nose, despite the discomfort. No need to take more than one or two breaths at this stage.
(2) Pinch your nose with your fingers.
(3) Start swaying your head from side to side while holding your breath. Alternatively, start walking instead of swaying your head. For faster results, you can combine walking with swaying your head.
(4) Hold your breath until you experience a medium to strong urge to breathe.
(5) When you feel the air hunger, let go and SLOWLY breathe through your nose.
(6) Repeat steps (1) – (5) as many times as needed.
The above sounds strange, and we wouldn’t hold it against you if you’re sceptical.
However, the steps are guaranteed to work for 99% of people. Don’t take our word for it. Try if for yourself when you have a congested nose and let us know your results! Just make sure to consult with your doctor before practicing strong breath-holds if you are pregnant, hypertensive or have any other relevant medical conditions.
So, why does this work?
When you hold your breath, you increase concentrations of your CO2 and nitric oxide levels. The head swaying and/or walking at step (3) above, although strange, is designed to metabolically increase your CO2 levels.
If you have been following this article, you know that CO2 and nitric oxide are vasodilators. This means that when your CO2 and nitric oxide levels increase following the exercise described above, your nasal passages open up.
This is also why your nose feels MORE blocked after you blow it. When you succumb to the temptation of blowing your nose, you expel too much CO2 which leads to your nasal passages constricting.
Patrick McKeown’s guided video on how to decongest your nose
Patrick McKeown, founder and CEO of The Oxygen Advantage, is an excellent authority on all things breathing. For a guided video on how to decongest your nose, make sure to check out Patrick’s step by step guide here.
Bottom Line
In this article, you learnt that your default breathing should be: (1) through the nose; (2) slow; and (3) light. You also learnt why this ensures optimal health and longevity.
Importantly, you saw that there are quasi-infinite ways to breathe, each affecting our physiology differently. This is why we also covered breathing for functionality – whether that’s for relaxation, athletic performance, internal heat generation or supercharged immunity. We’re only touching the surface, as we could have also discussed optimal breathing for weight loss, enhanced cognitive performance and other topics. Maybe in an updated version, should there be a demand for it.
Most fundamentally, this article has shown that breathing is much more than an unconscious act. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal. Per the scientific studies we referenced, we are even able to influence our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems through particular patterns of breathing. This has long been considered impossible to do.
While our ancestors understood the importance of proper breathing and leveraged its immense powers, proper breathing has fallen by the wayside in today’s world. Homo Sapiens has lost the way.
We have become a generation of mouth breathers who hyperventilate as a default. The consequences are grave, and we’re scaringly not even aware of them. Maybe it’s because breathing is free. Big Pharma and others can’t make money out of it. If anything, they would lose money if the knowledge in this article becomes more widespread.
It’s a simple, logical equation: the healthier you are, the less money Big Parma makes.
Enough is enough. This all changes NOW.
As always, we wish you good luck on your journey towards strength in adversity, calm amidst the storms, relentless resilience & uncompromising health.
Your self-proclaimed family,
The Sapiens Maximus team
Sources & Further Readings
(1) Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art – James Nestor
(2) Oxygen Advantage – Patrick McKeown
(3) The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential – Wim Hof
(4) Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic – Sandra Kahn & Paul R. Ehrlich
(5) The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease – Daniel Liberman
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