Disappointed with my breathold

[FranP]

The advice to smile is actually very important. A snowboarding instructor I know has her student smile at the top of a particularly difficult new run, to great effect in getting the student out of their fear and just enjoy the run. Yes, your mind affects your body but it works the other way around too. Smile even if you don’t feel like it. Tension w

Hi, sorry to hear that you have difficulty holding your breath for longer than one minute. I have been breath-holding for about three months and find it slightly easier to do about thirty minutes to an hour after waking in the morning. On waking, I read for a while then practice breath holding. I practice six or seven days of the week. One or two days a week might not be enough to get the training effect necessary for improvement. Wishing you all the best, Bert.

I love this.

You require cardiovascular knowledge oxigenating your body the right way in the pool while doing your basic exercises for breathing! And having more suplements which will clean your bloodstream making you improve considerably on apnea techniques and holding your breath!
In the pool start small, grab yourself from the side and take 20 breath holds, going down underwater and let go with bubbles, come up and breath again! To 2 sets every time you begin any other exercise !
Grab 2 omega 3 pills of 500 mg three times a day so you clean your blood stream in all tour body from the fat inside your heart and veins, and take alkaline water with ph from 7-8 ! Your will improve substantially ! Have 60% of water in your body if you sent me your phone number I will send pictures and give you some other tips!
Aloha
Enrique

You're so helpful, please do!!!!

 

[FranP]

You could look at it the other way round? Instead of anxiety preventing your breath hold, learning to hold could become part of the solution to your anxiety?
I've been very anxious, from being a small child, and was depressed for many years. It really messes up my climbing. I get stressed and scared, stop breathing, hold on too tight, muscles fatigue and then I fall Or I push past the hard move and pull a big breath in and realise I was all tensed up, and not breathing! Training breathholding can be a great way of discovering the process of how stress responses can throw you off in life, in a safe environment.
For your breath hold, purely from an anxiety point of view, I'd say take all the pressure off. Don't even time it, and just focus on the sensations you have when holding; in your body, mind, emotionally. Most of all, smile!!! Smiling is the most powerful mental health medication in the world! Just let things happen, observe. And you'll learn the difference between an anxious response to not breathing and calmly going into it. Then as you become more aware of positive and negative responses, you can choose the positive ones. And then it gets easier. You can use that in general life as well as breath training.
I've found that anxiety pulls me up into the conscious layers of my mind, worrying. (Where panic about not breathing ends a breath hold early.) And this is where all the counselling and therapy stuff works too, challenging negative thoughts etc. But after many years of therapy, meditation, breath work and so on, I'm learning that, for me, there's an order to things:
An unconcious anxious thought happens, undetectable. Then a physical sensation in my body comes on a fraction of a second before the emotional response, and then the conscious thinking starts to amplify it all. But breathholding is an excellent way to learn the physical sensations associated with the anxiety response. And that allows you to cut it off before it triggers the emotional and conscious thinking amplification cycle. If you learn to do that, and stay with the positive response, smile at it to make it stronger, negativity or anxiety kinda bounce off, and your breath hold will become easier.
And you can do the same with anxiety in everyday life, too )

This is absolutely true. Something I need to focus on, I think deep down I realise that I can control the breathing and use it as a form of mindfulness and meditation. Determined.

 

[FranP]

Please stop doing co2 tables NOW! what you need is to develop the skill of relaxation (yes it's a skill and any skill can be learnt). I repeat: you do NOT NEED co2 tables. Please take a look at following tutorials:



Here some easy exercises to get you going and find peace in your brerathholding:

I've started thinking about this and have been meaning to watch your videos. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[FranP]

Do you visualise in your mind whilst you doing your stamina training? A lot of this is just about being relaxed and in the right frame of mind. I'd try not to worry about how long you're trying to hold for and instead focus on the calm you get from the training. I often picture myself descending calmly along a drop line, the sounds, and the dark. I find it takes my mind off everything and makes it a lot easier.

Thanks Aquamac, I've started listening to music that has a freediving feel to help me get distracted with the sounds. Good idea?

 

[Leander]

What helped for me was to let go of 'training'. I hate lifting weights for training, instead I work as a mover. I hate going on a sports cycling, instead I leave late for work. I hate doing CO2 tables, instead I just hold my breath whenever I feel like, in the supermarket, when walking, during a boring conversation with someone who just cannot shut up. And I do those holds just because holding my breath feels nice, not to break a record. It won't bring me to 5 minute holds as quickly as it would by training, but is perfect for making a breath hold feel like a normal part of life.