What happens to your body when you do the Wim Hof Method breathing exercises? Let’s take a look at normal breathing first.

Normal breathing and how it works

If you hold your breath, you might feel like you need to breathe again after about 30 seconds or so. This isn’t because you’re out of oxygen, but because the level of carbon dioxide in your blood gets too high. This makes you uncomfortable, and your diaphragm (a muscle below your lungs) may start twitching to make you breathe.

An explanation from nhlbi.nih.gov about what happens when you breathe:

When you breathe in, you take in oxygen from the air. This oxygen goes through tiny air sacs in your lungs called alveoli and into small blood vessels nearby, where red blood cells pick it up. They use a protein called hemoglobin to do this. At the same time, carbon dioxide, a waste gas produced by your body’s cells, moves from the blood vessels back into the alveoli to be breathed out.

The blood, now full of oxygen, travels to the left side of your heart through special veins in your lungs. Your heart then pumps this oxygen-rich blood to the rest of your body, delivering oxygen to your cells. Your cells need this oxygen to create energy for your body to function. As they do this, they produce carbon dioxide as a waste product. This carbon dioxide needs to be removed from your body, so it moves from your cells back into your blood.

The carbon dioxide travels back to your heart through your bloodstream, entering the right side of your heart. From there, it’s pumped to your lungs through the pulmonary artery. In the lungs, the carbon dioxide moves from the blood vessels into the alveoli, where it’s exchanged for incoming oxygen. Finally, you breathe out the carbon dioxide from your lungs.

Source nhlbi.nih.gov

The composition of air breathing in and out

Inhaled air consists of:

• nitrogen – 78%
• oxygen-21%
• other gases – 1%
• carbon dioxide – 0.04%.

Exhaled air contains:

• nitrogen – 78%
• oxygen – 17%
• other gases – 1%.
  
• carbon dioxide – 4%

Source arily.org

Phase 1: Breathing Deeply and Quickly

In this phase, the goal is to lower the level of carbon dioxide in your body while staying relaxed. To do this, you take very deep breaths, breathe out as relaxed as possible, and breathe a bit faster than usual. This doesn’t actually increase oxygen levels in your blood because they’re already pretty high. Instead, it helps your body relax.

You might feel tingling or light-headedness, which happens because of the low carbon dioxide levels in your blood. Some people might also get muscle cramps because oxygen sticks too strongly to their blood cells.

The deep diaphragmatic breathing (“breathing that starts from the stomach”) stimulates the vagus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. This reduces the body’s fight-or-flight response and causes it to relax. This causes some of the benefits and also helps with the retention in the next phase.

Phase 2: Holding Your Breath

Now, you hold your breath after breathing deeply. This lowers the oxygen level in your blood for a short time. This might sound strange, but it’s actually good for your body. It triggers some positive changes, like releasing adrenaline and making adjustments to help you cope with low oxygen levels.

The purpose of this phase is to decrease the blood O2 level from ~100% to a safe but unnaturally low level for a short period of time. The body responds to this short stress in a variety of very positive ways (a valid example of hormesis) – that form the majority of the health benefits of this exercise.

Remember that in general you can hold your breath until your blood CO2 levels rise above a certain threshold? After reducing the CO2 levels in Phase #1, we can hold our breath much longer until the CO2 eventually rises that high – this can be 3-4 minutes for some people.

However your body is using up O2 throughout the retention, so after about 1 minute your blood O2 is lower than it can normally get. When the O2 level drops far enough, it triggers the body into doing a couple of cool things:

• After (very approximately) 90 seconds, a significant amount of adrenaline (epinephrine) is produced.
• The hypoxia-inducible factor 1a gene is expressed, to help the body make adjustments to better thrive in a low-O2 environment.

Phase 3: Recovery Breath

After holding your breath, you take a deep breath again and hold it briefly. This helps reset your body’s oxygen levels. Your body uses oxygen more efficiently now, which is good for you.

Benefits of the Breathing Technique:

The Wim Hof Method doesn’t magically control your immune system with your thoughts, but it does have several effects on your body that are hard to achieve otherwise.

1. It reduces stress during and after the exercise.
2. It increases heart-rate variability.
3. It produces more red blood cells, giving you more energy.
4. Athletes benefit from it for endurance sports.
5. It helps you adjust to high altitudes.
6. It may help with cell repair and anti-aging.
7. It boosts adrenaline, which can help your immune system and reduce inflammation.

How to Hold Your Breath Longer:

If you want to improve your breath-holding time, try these tips:

1. Relax your body before starting.
2. Get physically and mentally comfortable.
3. Breathe more deeply and efficiently.
4. Experiment with the pace of your breathing.
5. Practice regularly to get better at it.