On breath holding
We had a rigorous daily schedule of asana (postures) practice, pranayama (yogic breathing), meditation, philosophy, and pedagogy as part of my initial yoga teacher training in India in 2013. I’ve been a devoted practitioner of pranayama ever since. A couple of years later, I was compelled to become more even disciplined in the way I practiced pranayama, when I was diagnosed with compromised lungs; almost COPD! I began using a nebulizer with saline every day for 10 minutes, practicing Ujjayi (Victorious) breathing, holding the air inside my lungs (internal retention), along with other pranayama techniques to strengthen my lungs.
A decade later, I came across the book, Built to Move (1). In the chapter on breathing, I found the Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT). It tests your carbon dioxide resistance, i.e., your ability to hold your breath, as a function of healthy breathing.
It goes like this:
Sit or stand with your spine straight.
Inhale normally through your nose; exhale normally though your nose.
Pinch your nostrils shut.
Start a stopwatch.
Time how long it is before you’re compelled to breathe.
How’d you do?
If you held your breath for less than 30 seconds, your carbon dioxide resistance needs improvement. Thirty to 40 seconds is considered normal.
Why would withholding oxygen be beneficial? Holding the breath, both internally and externally (empty lungs), is practiced in different pranayama. Ujjayi, Nadi Shodana, Bhastraki, Kapul Bhati. I didn’t understand the physiology, though, the why.
We inhale oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, a by-product of energy production that happens in the mitochrondria, the energy factories in each cell. That carbon dioxide is eventually exhaled. It’s is not just a waste product, however.
Christian Bohr, in 1904, discovered that carbon dioxide turns the blood acidic, prompting the hemoglobin to release the oxygen it picks up from the lungs. This free oxygen is then available to your tissues. Counterintuitive, isn’t it? This is now called the Bohr Effect, and it led to the practice of increasing carbon dioxide tolerance.(2)(3)
Yandell Henderson confirmed this with animals in the lab. He found that a healthy body didn’t need more oxygen, but more carbon dioxide. Slow breathing resulted in more carbon dioxide. Fast breathing, or mild hyperventilation, resulted in less.(2)
Too little carbon dioxide, from breathing too fast as when panicking, reduces carbon dioxide in the blood. Breathing faster and faster makes the person hunger for more oxygen, which can only be sated by breathing slowly or in a bag to reduce oxygen levels and increase carbon dioxide.
As Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, I-34: Calm is retained by the controlled exhalation or retention of the breath.(4) Those yogis knew.
If you’d like to learn how to become a better breather, contact me.
Built to Move, the Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully, by Kelly Starrett & Juliet Starrett, Chapter 2. Published by Alfred E. Knopf, 2023, Canada.
Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor. Published by Penguin Life, 2020, UK
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_effect
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Published by Integral Publications, 1990, Yogaville, VA, USA