Breath Holding

17-12-23 00 / episode: 335

I practised breath holding for a while and I found some personal benefits from it.

The science indicates that there might be some small benefits for breath holding but not really big ones.

on the other hand if you're not holding your breath for extreme amounts of time it doesn't hurt.

first of all it can affect your feelings,

Second, it can affect your immune system.

Third, it can help you with stress.

Fourth, some athletes use it to increase performance and

Fifth, you can use it for mental discipline.

Welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode 335. Today’s topic is breathholding.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, and I'm not a professional scientist. I did a small amount of research on this topic

So anything I say that is interesting is an indicator that you should do more research. holding your breath to extreme levels is dangerous.

If you want to practise holding your breath, anything under 5 minutes seems to be safe by most professionals, but you should talk with your doctor if you are worried.

above all if you do any breath holding make sure you do it in a safe environment preferably sitting down and maybe even lying down.

don't do it around water or any fire or electrical appliances that could get hot.

Feelings

Holding your breath can affect your feelings.

When you start to hold your breath your body starts to release hormones.

The hormones that scientists found are affected by breath holding are adrenaline and serotonin.

Both of these chemicals can affect your feelings and cause you to feel good.

bear in mind that you're not going to feel good until after you're done holding your breath.

Immune system

There were some studies that seem to indicate a mild positive correlation with your immune system when you do breath holding.

this is not conclusive but it's encouraging.

Considering the fact that holding your breath is free and you can do it by yourself, it seems like a nice easy way to enhance your immune system.

Stress

There were also some studies that seem to indicate a mild relationship between breath holding practice and reduced stress so again here you get a freebie.

by doing Simple free breath holding exercises you can beneficially affect your stress levels if you feel you want to.

Athletic performance

breath holding can also improve your endurance and it can improve the amount of oxygen that you use so it can help with athletic performance.

Mental discipline

The big one for me here is mental discipline. When you start feeling that panicky feeling and you want to breathe in, your abdominal muscles start twitching to make you breathe.

That's when you can really start to get mental discipline by focusing on calming down. It's kind of like forcing yourself to meditate.

You have to concentrate to become calm and quiet inside.

One of the cool things I find about this kind of breath holding is, even if you go unconscious your body will automatically start breathing later

so you're pretty safe as long as you're not in a bathtub around water or fire.

make sure you're always in a nice safe environment.

If this podcast feels like a good fit for your English listening practice then by all means

subscribe to it so you can hear more episodes like this.

Make a comment below and I’ll do my best to respond to you.

Thanks for listening.