“Breathe deeply, until sweet air extinguishes the burn of fear in your lungs and every breath is a beautiful refusal to become anything less than infinite.” – D. Antoinette Foy
I’d like you do something. Please take a breath. As you breathe in, I’d like you to consider that the air now passing down your throat into your lungs and bloodstream contains more molecules of air than all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches. We each inhale and exhale some thirty pounds of these molecules every day—far more than we eat or drink. And the ways in which we take in that air and exhale it is as important as what we eat, how much we exercise, or whatever genes we’ve inherited.
If you’re someone who hasn’t really given much thought to the ins and outs of breathing, that last statement from James Nestor’s bestselling book Breath might seem a little overblown. And if you had asked me five years ago, before I’d experienced first hand the profound transformative power of consciously directing this mindless human function, I might have also dismissed it as “I such. Must we really overthink what is, by design, an automated biological process, like digesting food or squealing profusely at a puppy? I might have said. How many flamboyant ways can a person absorb and expel oxygen before it all just feels a little extravagant? Given that ‘taking a few deep breaths’ had personally done very little to remedy anxiety, stress or existential threat (real or imagined); I figured as long as I didn’t stop breathing I was giving respiration the appropriate amount of attention. That is until 2018, a weird year for me to be honest, when I discovered that in fact when it comes to the way we oxygenate, a little extravagance goes a long way.
I was 18 months into motherhood, clawing my way back into work, society, a sense of self, financial stress bearing down and a marriage on tender-hooks, when my health began to suffer. Fatigue, anxiety, allergies appearing out of nowhere, and a strange persistent humming sensation in my left ear that near drove me mad, all progressively worsened as the months droned on – culminating in an excruciating, lengthy sinus infection and an engulfing sense of doom. My body, I later learned, had locked into a state of high stress, commonly known as fight-or-flight, since the birth of my child and hadn’t been given a chance to process the experience and properly decompress. It was late one evening in the early new year, filled with the kind of angry determination that derives from being utterly fed up, that I declared, resolutely and somewhat melodramatically, “I am done! I shall hack this shit or die trying!”
I’d heard of Wim Hof – aka ‘the iceman’ – and his eponymous method some years before but thought of him only as that mad Dutch guy who climbed Mt Everest in a pair of shorts and subjects his students to lengthy ice baths for some unknown sadistic reason. I’d never paid much attention to, what I now understand to be, the most crucial component of his method: the breathwork. After reading some pretty grandiose testimonials – “it literally saved my life” – in the absence of a good reason why not, I decided to give it a try. Fourty deep inhales, followed by a slow extended exhale, followed by a breath hold lasting as long as you can stand – rinse and repeat. Seemed straightforward enough, so off I went.
Well, admittedly I haven’t imbibed many mind-altering substances (unless you count that hectic mescal with the worm in it, which you really should) but this is what I’d imagine a small hit of DMT might be like. Lightly fizzing electrical currents under the surface of your skin, plumes of iridescent colour erupting behind your eyes, energy intensifying in your cranium – waking up neurons, banging on the door of dormant grey matter – a heightened sense of awareness, aliveness, like the first time you try coffee and discover it’s the answer to all your problems. I got up after that first session – ears ringing like I’d just walked out of a Slayer reunion concert – feeling stunned, disorientated, and dangerously invincible. What had just happened? Why did I feel like I’d had a hit of something highly illicit? What was this sorcery? I needed answers, and so began my deep dive into the art and science of respiratory theatrics.
"What had just happened? Why did I feel like I’d had a hit of something highly illicit? What was this sorcery? I needed answers, and so began my deep dive into the art and science of respiratory theatrics."
Breathwork, which categorises a multitude of methods, is certainly nothing new. Used in ancient yogic traditions to induce altered mental and physiological states, breathwork or ‘Pranayama’ – ‘prana’ meaning ‘vital life force’ and ‘yama’ meaning ‘to gain control’ – was considered an essential practice in achieving spiritual enlightenment. ‘Tummo’, also known as ‘inner fire’, is the Tibetan practice on which Hof’s method is loosely based and is said to be so effective in controlling body temperature that experienced monks have been known to dry wet sheets wrapped around their naked body in freezing temperatures with nothing more than self-generated heat. Many of these ancient techniques are still widely practiced today and are anecdotally reported to produce a variety of benefits from stress reduction to enhanced cognitive and immune function. In more recent history, interest in the mechanisms behind breathing grew amongst researchers and practitioners, and unique styles of breathwork were developed as healing modalities for specific ailments.
In 1957, a Ukrainian doctor by the name of Konstantin Buteyko noticed that his unhealthy patients were largely mouth breathers at rest; essentially gulping in hefty volumes of air into the shallow cavity of their chest as opposed to deep into the lower abdomen. His healthier patients on the other hand breathed quietly and effortlessly through their nose while sleeping, taking in less air and breathing deeper into the diaphragm. After further inquiry into his initial observations, he concluded that the way a person breathes, and the volume of oxygen they take in, greatly impacts their overall health. Buteyko spent over four decades developing methods of modulating an individual’s breathing pattern with the overall objective being to take less air into the lungs, not more. It may sound counterintuitive, but Buteyko found that it was in fact a carbon dioxide deficiency in the lungs caused by habitual hyperventilation that lead to the development of disease. Proponents of Buteyko’s method claim improvement or full recovery from some of the most pervasive chronic illnesses of the modern age like anxiety, panic disorders, asthma, allergies, rhinitis and insomnia among others. In Nestor’s book he gives a lot of credence to the importance of diaphragmatic nasal breathing to avoid upsetting the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood; citing evidence that our increasing propensity to mouth-breathe has lead to all sorts of maladaptive issues in modern humans, from endemic sleep apnea to a deterioration in facial structure.
Psychiatrist and researcher, Stanislav Grof, one of the principle pioneers of transpersonal psychology, developed the holotropic breathwork technique in the 1960s as a way of accessing unconscious aspects of the human psyche. The method involves continuous rapid breathing combined with repetitive music, usually in a group setting, with the ultimate goal being deep psychological healing through the release of trauma and achieving an expanded state of awareness. From all accounts, holotropic breathwork is a powerful method and doesn’t come without risks. As well as positive transformative experiences, some participants have reported a significant amount of distress, panic, seizures, and even temporary psychosis. I haven’t yet been game enough to try it, but a friend of mine who partook in a few sessions likened it to taking a substantial dose of LSD.
Despite its ancient origins and centuries of anecdotal evidence of its meaningful effects, breathwork had never really captured the attention of the broader scientific community enough to produce significant concrete data – until Wim Hof. Maybe it was his larger than life personality or the way he persistently and publicly defied the established laws of human biology, but after many years of being regarded as nothing more than a “circus act” scientists began to take notice. In 2011, a team of research scientists at Radbound University in the Netherlands conducted the first study on Hof and the immune modulating effects of his method. In a highly controlled environment, Hof was injected with an extremely reactive endotoxin, which under normal circumstances would make an individual violently ill for an extended period of time. Throughout the experiment, Hof continued his breathing pattern while the researchers measured his brain activity, body temperature, and a range of blood levels. The results were astonishing. Not only did Hof experience none of the typical symptoms of the endotoxin, his inflammatory markers which would normally exponentially increase in response to the pathogen, didn’t. They were half that of an average test subject. What this indicated is now rewriting scientific textbooks. Hof was voluntarily influencing his autonomic nervous system, which was previously thought to be impossible.
“By understanding how the breath affects the nervous system, physiology and psychology, you have the ability to increase energy and alertness, reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus, sleep, and even athletic performance.”
While the results of the study were obviously compelling, a single study on one freaky guy with seemingly superhuman powers doesn’t exactly constitute concrete science. So, the researchers at Radbound decided to repeat the study with a larger group of people upon Hof’s insistence that anyone could achieve what he so effortlessly had. The 18 test subjects were divided into two groups: one had been recently trained in Hof’s method (just ordinary folks – no seasoned yogis or magicians) and the other had not. Again, the results astonished the researches. All of the subjects trained in Hof’s breathing technique registered a comparable response to the master himself – none became ill with the pathogen while every member of the control group suffered through fevers, vomiting, chills and muscle aches, similar to a really bad shortlived flu. More significantly, their bloodwork also mirrored Hof’s: greatly reduced inflammatory markers without – and this is key – suppressing the immune system itself which remained in full swing, able to fend off the pathogen without producing symptoms.
These remarkable discoveries have led to a flurry of interest in Hof’s method, and breathwork in general, within the scientific community, particularly with regards to its impact on systemic inflammation, which is said to be the root cause of many chronic illnesses. What the ancient yogis have known for centuries is finally finding validation in 21st century medical journals. It’s important to note however, that while Hof’s breathing technique is enjoying some arguably deserved hype at the moment, trending in the wellness space and such, it’s in no way a panacea and may not always be the best approach for every individual in every situation. Intermittent hypoxia, which is essentially what’s happening during a session of Hof, is an incredibly intense practice and may not be appropriate during pregnancy, or for someone suffering from epilepsy or high blood pressure. One of the gentler styles of breathwork that activate the parasympathic nervous system – our bodies state of ‘rest and digest’ – like slow diaphramatic breathing or certain types of Pranayama might be better in these instances and have also been shown to produce positive outcomes.
Rory Warnock, a Sydney-based Performance and Wellness Coach who specialises in breathwork, has seen firsthand how breathing in a particular way can aid in achieving a very specific outcome. “When working with athletes, for example, I’ll help improve functional breathing patterns to optimise oxygen uptake, lung volume and diaphragm function. This will help them perform and recover more effectively,” he tells me. “With my clients in the corporate world, we’ll focus on breath awareness to become more self-aware, along with functional breathing, and I’ll usually include a deeper connective practice to help reduce stress, anxiety and feel more present.” Warnock claims that his own regular breathwork practice has helped him reduce anxiety and depression, and become a more efficient athlete. “I work with clients with severe mental illnesses who’ve had profound experiences after the sessions, from improving sleep to being able to feel their body for the first time in years. Some of the most incredible benefits come from the smallest of changes, for example, switching to nasal breathing from mouth breathing,” he says. “By understanding how the breath affects the nervous system, physiology and psychology, you have the ability to increase energy and alertness, reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus, sleep, and even athletic performance.”
Although I’ve never been hooked up to an EEG/EKG machine or had my blood levels measured in a lab during my daily breathwork session, I have personally found what Rory says to be true. Aside from meditation, I’ve not experienced a health intervention comparable to breathwork in terms of quantifiable and immediate impact (not to mention cost effectiveness – last time I checked, air is free). After just a couple of weeks of practicing Hof’s method daily (minus the ice baths – I’m sorry I just cannot), my ailing health began to turn around. I experienced an instant increase in energy, my allergies cleared up, my mood lightened, I was thinking more clearly and feeling less overwhelmed in my day-to-day life. I began to introduce other styles of breathwork into my routine like diaphragmatic and kundalini yogic breathing, all with noticeable benefits. And after reading Nestor’s book, I’ve even started wearing those profoundly unsexy nasal strips at night to ensure I’m breathing better while I sleep.
The air that I breathe and the way that I breathe has become as important in maintaining my mental and physical health as the quality of food I consume and the company I keep. Breathing may be, by design, an automated process but just like digestion or sleep, when lifestyle, genetic and environmental factors begin to mess with an intrinsic biological function it’s worth knowing that it’s within our power to consciously override a glitch in the system and reinstate equilibrium. Theatrics aside, all it really takes to achieve that is a modicum of awareness, a gentle refocusing of attention to the quality and nuance of our breath. Is it erratic and shallow or rhythmic and deep? Is it even sips through the nose or great gulps through the mouth? Or as the poet Mary Oliver would have you consider, “are you breathing just a little and calling it life?”
Like fish in water, it’s easy to take for granted that which surrounds us. It’s easy to forget that something we cannot see or touch – the O2 that saturates our environment – is the very thing that sustains all life and the instant it’s lost, so are we. “If we inhibit our breathing,” wrote Alexander Lowen, “we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist.” The changes I’ve experienced in my own life as a result of reconnecting with the medium in which I exist, and being mindful of how I interact with it, ensures that I’ll never take the air that I breathe for granted again. And unlike that worm-ridden mescal, I feel relatively ok with taking a chance on its mind-bending potential.
This piece was originally featured in RUSSH's #98 'Oasis' issue.
