Mastering the Inner Breath
Nasal Techniques, the Wim Hof Method, and the Architecture of Human Performance
The fundamental element of cold therapy lies in understanding that you must breathe continuously to survive the experience. It is a deceptively simple concept, yet one that most people have forgotten how to perform correctly. I am a staunch advocate for nasal breathing, a practice rooted in biological design but often ignored in the West. By exploring the connection between our unique evolutionary anatomy and modern athletic techniques, we can unlock a higher state of health and performance. My approach combines the efficiency of nasal breathing with the intensive cycles of the Wim Hof method to create a physiological environment where the body can thrive even under the most traumatic physical conditions, such as extreme cold.
Humans are unique in the animal kingdom because we possess a descended larynx, which allows for nuanced speech but also creates a shared tube for the nose and mouth. While this allows us to speak, most mammals default to breathing through their noses while eating and drinking with their mouths. Even sea mammals like whales and seals maintain this separation to function efficiently in the water. When we breathe through the nose, we engage a system designed to filter particulates, capture dust through mucus, and warm the air to the correct temperature before it ever reaches the lungs. Conversely, mouth breathing is inefficient and often leads to the inhalation of debris that later manifests as phlegm and respiratory stress. By returning to nasal breathing, we transition from a low-capacity state to a high-IQ, high-performance athletic state where every breath is used more effectively.
The science of effective breathing revolves around gas exchange at the microscopic level within the alveoli of the lungs. Many people mistakenly hyperventilate, moving air in and out so quickly that the thin membranes between blood vessels and air pockets do not have time to pull in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Nasal breathing naturally slows this volume, allowing for a gentle and efficient exchange. When this is compounded with the Wim Hof method—a technique derived from Ayurvedic yoga—the results are transformative. By performing thirty deep, rhythmic breaths followed by a full exhalation and a breath-hold, you begin to carbonize the blood. While it sounds counterintuitive, increasing carbon dioxide in the blood actually raises your capacity to absorb oxygen, moving from a standard two-to-one ratio to a superior three-to-two ratio. This fifteen to twenty percent increase in oxygen availability provides the fuel necessary for heightened athletic performance and mental clarity.
When you bring this mastery of breath into cold water, the mental and physical benefits converge. Instead of the reflexive, panicked clenching that most people experience in the cold, a trained breather remains in control. By concentrating on the thirty-breath cycle and the timed holds, the traumatic sensation of the cold becomes a secondary experience existing outside of yourself. This mental acuity allows you to endure the exposure while your body automatically reconfigures its vascular system for maximum efficiency. You become the master of your own fate, using the breath as an anchor to think your way through challenges that would otherwise overwhelm the senses.
In conclusion, the journey toward high performance starts with reclaiming the forgotten art of nasal breathing and integrating it with disciplined techniques like those taught by Patrick McCowan and Wim Hof. Though the transition from being a mouth breather to a nasal breather may initially cause a sense of panic or air hunger, the body eventually adjusts to this superior state of normalcy. By consciously managing the gas exchange in our blood and maintaining rhythmic control during physical stress, we do more than just survive the cold; we reconfigure our very physiology to be more resilient and capable. This practice is the foundation of a high-capacity life, turning a basic biological function into a powerful tool for athletic and mental mastery.
So the next element of the cold therapy is understanding that you need to breathe continuously or you don't make it. It's real simple. Now, I'm an advocate for nasal breathing. There was a really great book that was created by a guy named McCowan, Patrick McCowan, and it was called the oxygen advantage. Now this book, the oxygen advantage explains how there's a specific breathing technique that was created by this Russian athlete slash scientists that actually helped the Olympic team win all kinds of medals. And what was rediscovered by this Russian athlete was that there's a forgotten thing called breathing.
Breathing right this is a simple thing but in the west generally the western people have been so retarded and so stomped down as far as basic concepts and intellectual honesty that people have forgotten to learn how to learn how to breathe right and the basic concept is this you speak and eat and drink with your mouth but you breathe through your nose. And in the animal kingdom, there's all kinds of examples of just most mammals do this by default.
There's some mammals that have not evolved or have specific propensities. As in, when you actually compare mammals, they actually come into two categories. And this is an interesting kind of thing. There's mammals who have their nose directly connected to their lungs and their mouth directly connected to their stomach. There's two different tubes. And this two different tube situation is a common genetic propensity. And then there's this thing called the descended larynx. The descended larynx is a thing that is in certain mammals where you have a shared tube between the nose and the mouth going to the lungs or the stomach. And this is interesting development that can be traced back to all kinds of different theories. The point is, is that humans are very specifically unique in that we have what's called a descended larynx. Our voice box is specifically positioned so that we can move air past it. So we actually generate sounds from our larynx, but those sounds are changed or modified by our lips and mouth structure.
The opening and closing of your jaw, the opening and closing or pursing of your lips, where your tongue is within your mouth creates these very diverse and unique patterns that allow us for very complex and nuanced speech. Most animals lack this ability. So humans are very unique in that fact that we have a descended larynx and we can actually create all these sounds with our mouths and our voice box. This is a very unique situation. So anyways, when you actually get back to it as in generally breathing, most of the animal kingdom breathes through their nose. They just, that's all they breathe. They breathe through their nose and then they eat and drink through their mouths. If you watch even sea mammals, such as whales. Whales breathe through their nose. They take in a breath through their nose, they breathe out through their nose. Their blowhole on the top of their head is their nose. That's where the air comes in and out of. It's the same thing for seals and other mammals that are always in the water. They breathe through their noses and they eat with their mouths. They can eat underwater because they're holding their breath with their nose and they're still chewing their food and eating it underwater while not coming up for air. I mean, this is really fascinating stuff.
Anyways, so this Russian scientist, and there's this... There's a name for his specific technique because he was the one who kind of researched it, popularized it, and then brought it into the athletic field by actually having all these Olympic athletes win these Olympic awards by nasal therapy. Breathing and so the nasal breathing idea is that you breathe through your nose and as you train yourself to breathe through your nose you get better at it see most many people have not been trained how to eat properly breathe properly do anything properly whatsoever in the west it's completely retarded time everything is retarded. So nasal breathing was brought into the athletic sphere. And what was really fascinating is as people started learning how to do nasal breathing, their athletic performance increased. Even though they were taking less breaths per minute, they were more efficiently using the breath that they had. Now, when you compound nasal breathing on top of the Wim Hof breathing method, you get this double benefit. So with the nasal breathing concept, you're actually breathing less, but using more. What ends up happening is that as you slow down your breathing, so instead of taking 30 breaths per minute, you take 15 breaths per minute.
At first you have a sense of panic like you're drowning, but your body just goes through an adjustment period. As you go through this adjustment period, you go from the sense of drowning to the sense of normalcy. What ends up happening is that your body slows down the intake and exhaust of air and pauses in the middle. So what's important to understand is that when you're breathing, you're inhaling energy. Air, we call air, which is all kinds of different molecules. It's oxygen and carbon dioxide, and there's all kinds of other elements in that air. Now, when you breathe through your nose, your nose actually filters out the particulates so you're actually breathing cleaner air by breathing through your nose. When you breathe through your nasal passage, your nasal passage by design moves the air in multiple different directions, warms it up, so when it goes into your lungs, it's at the correct temperature. It also filters out the physical filaments or physical particulate through your nasal passages and your nose and the mucus that's inside your nasal passage actually captures all the physical particulates so you're breathing cleaner air by breathing through your nose.
So breathing into your nose is cleaner air than breathing the same air outside of you into your mouth. Through your mouth into your lungs is actually, you're picking up all kinds of particulate physical matter, dust and debris and pollen and filaments and all kinds of stuff that is going right into your lungs, which you have to cough up later. Eventually you go through a thing that is viewed as sickness where you start coughing up phlegm and things from your lungs. And that is stuff that was captured because you're breathing through your mouth. Mouth breathers is considered to be a basically low IQ thing. Mouth breathers is not a good thing.
Nose breathers is high IQ, high capacity, high athletic thing. Mouth breathers are for people who don't know any better and are killing themselves slowly. This is how simple it is. So nasal breathing is essential to have high health, high performance, and overall better experiences. So when you start breathing through your nose regularly, you start slowing down your breathing. What ends up happening is breathe in, you pause, and you breathe out through your nose. In through your nose, pause, breathe out through your nose. In through your nose, pause, breathe out through your nose.
And by doing the cycle of actually controlled, regular, deep breathing through your nose, you're more efficiently exchanging gases because what happens is that you breathe in what we call air, your body separates the oxygen from that air, pulls it through the lungs, through these things called the avelioi. These little tiny air sacs that are super, super tiny that have blood vessels going past them. And there's an exchange that happens between, this is the theory, is that you have air in your lungs and you have blood in these vessels. Very thin membranes between the blood vessels and the air pocket. And what happens is it's so thin that through this membrane, your body can pull in oxygen molecules and release carbon dioxide. See, carbon dioxide is carbon and oxygen together. Oxygen is just oxygen by itself. So your body pulls in oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. Because as your body is going through a metabolic process, it's using oxygen and then creating a byproduct called carbon dioxide, which is carbon and oxygen together in one molecule that has to be exhausted as an exhaust gas.
Now, what ends up happening is in this small, small little area, these little air sacs in your lungs, there's a little membrane where there's an exchange between oxygen and carbon dioxide. These gases are exchanged at a very, very small molecular level at a very, very slow rate. Like it doesn't happen very fast. So what ends up happening is if you start breathing fast, you do something called hyperventilating. Now, most people hyperventilate and do not realize that they think it's normal because they do it all the time. But hyperventilating is actually breathing too fast to allow the gas exchange. You're taking in gas in your lungs and you're expelling it right away without an exchange happening in between because the whole point of breathing is filling your lungs with air so that at the very microscopic level your lungs and your blood vessels can exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide or vice versa. See how that works? So you're pulling in oxygen, releasing carbon dioxide. Mostly what happens is you breathe in oxygen and you breathe out mostly carbon dioxide. This is the regular process, but most people have no idea. They're not conscious of it. They're not athletes. They never looked into it. They have no idea what's going on about anything at the best of times.
But this is how high-performing athletes think about breathing. Now... The specific method of breathing called nasal breathing actually causes you when you keep your mouth shut and you have to breathe your nose, it actually slows down the volume per minute of air going in and out. So by slowing down the volume, it allows for the gentle exchange of gases between your lungs and your blood to happen more efficiently. Right so what ends up happening is that by instead of hyperventilating i was going when you're hyperventilating you're not getting any air you're actually just going through a process by which you're just pulling air in throwing air out pulling air in throwing an air by arrow but you're not getting much oxygen you are getting some but not much because it's a very inefficient way to do things it's pretty stupid. Stupid people hyperventilate, right? This is how it works. And people die when they're hyperventilating because they do stupid things. Because they're not thinking. They've lost control. They've lost their minds. They've lost their ability to be the master of their own fate. And people who hyperventilate often die.
People who breathe calmly and relaxed and keep thinking live through all kinds of situations. Because they're able to think their way through. They're able to make decisions that save their lives. See the comparison here? So when you think of nasal breathing, nasal breathing slows down the amount of gases going in. When you pause with the intake, you pause when your lungs are full. It allows for a full exchange of gases from your lungs to your blood supply. And then when you breathe out, you're exhausting. You're eliminating the carbon dioxide. When you breathe back in, you're bringing in more air, which allows for more oxygen to come into your lungs, which allows for more cleaner exchange between your blood vessels and your lungs. So nasal breathing is how you efficiently breathe all the time. Once you adopt this as a process, it becomes actually more easy over time. At first, it becomes a kind of a panic session when you first start doing only nasal breathing because most people just are not, they don't know how to breathe. They don't realize that they've been breathing wrong for a long time. It takes a while to readjust.
Now there's this thing called VO2 max, which is another process I'm not going to get into it today but it's all about increasing your maximum capacity to exchange gases efficiently the vo2 max is part of that book i was talking about the oxygen advantage i'm not going to get into that today but there's all these exercises you can do to actually increase your vo2 max which increases your capacity athletically now let's just move on from the nasal breathing into the wim hof breathing because that's what we're trying to get to with this cold cold therapy. Nose breathing, nasal breathing is really important. Once you become a nasal breather, you actually gain capacity to do everything. Everything becomes easier for you. After you go through the process of the transition, the transition might be difficult for a while, but then it becomes second nature and you become a nasal breather rather than a mouth breather. A mouth breather is a denigrating term. It's not a positive term. Mouth breathers are, you just picture in your mind a mouth breather. They're just not a positive thing.
All right, so getting back to the Wim Hof method. Now, Wim Hof compounded on this nasal breathing concept, but he doesn't promote nasal breathing. He just promotes breathing generally. But for my combination, I combined nasal breathing with Wim Hof breathing techniques. Now, with Wim Hof, he actually recommends breathing deeply, so inhaling deeply and exhaling deeply, as in a deep, slow in, slow deep out right so it's like a deep breath not a shallow breath shallow breath means hyperventilating which is not helpful you want to do a deep slow intake a deep slow exhale inhale slow deep exhale slow and you do 30 in a row so deep in out in out in out 30 times nice and slow rhythmically. When you get to the end of your 30th breath, you breathe out completely so your lungs are empty and then you hold your breath. You hold your breath and you start counting. Count one, two, three, four, five, right? One, 1,000, two, 1,000, three, 1,000. You keep going until you have this panic feeling like you're starving for oxygen.
And then what you do is you breathe in deeply and then continue on for 30 breaths to recover from that breath holding session when you get to the 30 breath in and out nice and slow you hold your breath again you breathe out completely and hold your breath again and you count one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand you keep counting until you get to the point of the panic where you feel like you're starving for oxygen and then you breathe in nice and deeply and breathe out for 30 cycles again. And then you hold your breath again by breathing out, hold your breath, count to whatever you get to. And you can even note it down on a piece of paper how much count you got to each time you go through the cycle and do about 10 cycles per session as you're practicing this breathing technique. Now, what ends up happening is you get into the cycle of expectation and compensation, as in you now know what to expect through this procedure. You're gonna do 30 breaths, hold your 30 slow breaths, hold your breath for so much time, and then do another 30 breaths, hold your breath again, another 30, hold your breath. And as you do these cycles, you're gonna notice over time, you're gonna be able to hold your breath longer without getting the panic sensation.
So at first you might hold your breath for 10 seconds, then 12, then 14, then 18, then 20, and then 22, right? You'll actually start increasing your ability of breath for a period of time that keeps extending out. Now there's people who are underwater divers who are called free divers. There's people who free dive and I think it's like five to 10 minutes they can hold their breath for underwater as they go right down as deep as possible in the water and they turn around and come back up and they have no equipment whatsoever. They're just holding their breath as they dive down, turn around and come back up and resurface and breathe. This is called free diving and free divers are pushing the limits of what is possible or what people thought was possible for holding your breath and doing physical activity underneath the water because what they're doing is amazing. So they're actually showing that when you actually develop the capacity, you can do a lot with not much breath and you can hold your breath for a long time and still make it. So there's free divers that are really pushing the limits of what's possible here.
When it comes to cold water, the idea here is you actually get into a system where you build up your capacity to do this 30 breaths hold your breath 30 breaths hold your breath and by doing this you actually get into the expectation of what what's going on or what your capacity is how long you hold your breath for and what this is doing is building up your mental acuity your mental ability to deal with this thing to go through the routine of it it becomes familiar to you you don't have to think too deeply about it because it becomes second nature. As it becomes second nature, this is important because when you're challenged by the cold, as in you're getting into a cold pool and you do this breathing, this is where you have to remember how to breathe properly. And when you're remembering how to breathe properly, but it's already second nature to you, it's easier. Easier than the first time doing it after you've done it for a while it's easier than the first time doing it the first second time the third time the more you do it the easier it gets and the more it becomes second nature and what happens is when you get into cold water rather than holding your breath which most people do as a reaction to cold water you hold your breath you just like clench up you hold your breath and that's not good for you because you're going to lose oxygen and panic.
And when you're in cold water and you do this breathing technique where you do the 30 breaths in, 30 breaths out, and hold your breath, and then you do the 30 breaths in, 30 breaths out, hold your breath. If you're doing this in cold water, it's giving you something actively to do with your mind while your body is physically going through a traumatic experience. But what happens is by you concentrating on breathing, you're continuing to breathe. You're continuing to be able to think. You're continuing to be in control of the situation. Which is a better position than being out of control or being overwhelmed by it. This allows you to go through the experience physically while being in control of your breathing because you need to breathe no matter what. Now, what was discovered by this capacity for doing this specific type of breathing where you breathe 30 in, 30 out, hold your breath, is that what it does, it actually carbonizes your blood supply.
And this sounds counterintuitive, but what ends up happening is when you're doing this 30 breaths in and out and then holding your breath, you increase the carbon dioxide concept, the content in your blood supply. So you actually increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood, but there's something that is counterintuitive that happens at the same time. When you increase the carbon dioxide in your blood, you also increase the capacity for your blood to absorb oxygen. So think of it as a two to one ratio. When you're normally breathing, you have a two to one ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen. So you have more carbon dioxide in your blood than you do have oxygen because of the metabolic processes going on. The metabolic waste process called carbon dioxide is overwhelming the system and your system's trying to get rid of it while you're also trying to take in oxygen to be able to do metabolic processes. The exhaust gases are more prevalent in the system than the fresh oxygen gases.
Now what's counterintuitive about this is when you do the Wim Hof breathing technique, which is an actual Ayurvedic yoga meditation breathing technique that was reconfigured to be this specific thing. You end up increasing the carbon dioxide in your blood, but this increases the capacity for you to have more oxygen in your blood. So you end up having a three to two ratio rather than a two to one ratio. And even though this three to two and two to one doesn't sound like it's much of a difference, it actually is. If you've got a 15 to 20% increase in oxygen in your blood, you have more of a capacity for athletic performance. You have more capacity to think. You have more capacity to burn that oxygen through metabolic process. So by doing this specific controlled breathing technique, you increase your carbon dioxide content in your blood, but you also increase your content, the capacity to absorb oxygen in your blood that can be metabolized through your athletic system.
Now, so this is the interesting counter-intuitive aspect of highly carbonized blood. So when you combine nasal breathing, which also has this effect, and the timed breathing that that is the yoga practice that was adopted by Wim Hof. These two things become a very powerful technique for breathing. You actually increase your ability to use ox, slowing down your breathing by breathing through your nose and then doing your breathing. Breath holding technique, you're actually carbonizing your blood, which increases your capacity to absorb oxygen. So you actually become a higher performing machine while doing this technique. Now doing this technique when you're not in water actually increases your ability to to perform athletically, you can run faster, you can run longer, you can actually lift more, you can do everything with a physical capacity with a more capacity because you actually have more potential in your blood to do this.
When you get into the water, into cold water, this is where you use this technique. It keeps you actively in control of your system, of your experience, and you're actually in the deciding position. You're actually not being overwhelmed by the cold. And so what happens is when you actually get into cold and you reflexively start breathing, you know, breathe, breathe, you're counting to the 30 breaths, and then you hold your breath, and then you exhale, you inhale, and then you do your 30 breaths again, right? So you're doing 30 breaths, and then you exhale completely, hold for as long as it takes, then you start doing, you inhale and do 30 breaths again, exhale, hold for whatever it takes, and then do it again.
When you're actually concentrating on your breathing, then the cold experience becomes a secondary experience outside of yourself. This allows you to endure the cold so your body can automatically do the adjustments to your system that you're not able to consciously do. And I'll get into the changes that happen in your system when you start actually experiencing cold as a... as a general experience. When you start actually getting into the cold regularly, your body's physiology changes, your body's mechanics changes, you start reconfiguring your vascular system so that you're more efficient at cooling down, warming up, and all those things. I'll get into that in the next section.
