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How Slow Breathing and Breath-Holding Extend Your Lifespan + Easy Ways to Practice

Nikshep Myle │Updated: 23 August 2024

Introduction

Let’s start with two brief activities.

First, breathe at your normal pace and run a stopwatch to count the number of breaths you take in a minute. Note this.

Second, start by taking a deep breath in, a deep breath out, breathe in deep one more time, and hold. 1… 2… 10… 20… 60… (120?!) Where did you tap out? Note this.

In the animal kingdom, a fascinating pattern emerges when we examine the breathing rates and lifespans of different animals.

Take the mouse: it breathes at a frantic pace ranging between 120 to 160+ breaths¹ per minute and lives only six months to two years². Contrast this with the elephant, which breathes just 4 to 12 times per minute³ and lives between 60 to 80+ years⁴. Or dive into the ocean, and you’ll find the bowhead whale, a giant that breathes 1 to 6 times per minute⁵ and lives over 200 years⁶.

The human lifespan seems to line up similarly, with an average breath rate between 15 to 20 times⁷ and a life expectancy of 70+ years. But could the key to longevity lie in our breath? And could it be improved?

The answer is yes, with many studies pointing to the benefits of slow breathing for overall wellbeing and some clearly finding that the longer you can hold your breath, the longer you’re likely to live.

What’s even better is that improving your breath function is simple. Because you can train and increase your breath hold (and slow your breathing) considerably without relying on special equipment.

At the same time, it isn’t easy. Because, first, extending your breath hold safely takes time and consistent effort. Second, it’s not just about how long you can hold your breath — how slow you breathe is equally, if not more, important.

Before we begin, I’d like to mention that while I’ve cited research sources wherever I could, some segments aren’t resting on controlled lab studies. I invite you to test out these ideas yourselves to bridge the gap.

Framingham Heart Study

Most times when people think of longevity, the deciding factors that come to their mind are genetics, environment, exercise, and diet.

But the Framingham Heart Study⁸ brings more insights to the table that seem both simple and explosive. Prior to delving into what it reveals, let’s look at why the Study is relevant.

Started in 1948, the Framingham Heart Study is a long-term cohort study of the people living in Framingham, Massachusetts. A cohort study tracks a group with something in common to observe what happens to them. And it happens over a long period. In this case, the study tracked 5,209 adults and is still ongoing, at present tracking the third generation of participants⁹.

Naturally, a study as extensive as this had some incredible findings over the decades¹⁰, including:

Recognizing the major risks for heart problems like high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and physical inactivity.
Finding that cigarette smoking increases the risk of heart disease.
Observing that diabetes and obesity increase the risk of heart problems.
Discovering that the relationship between heart shape and function differs between men and women, both genetically and due to environmental factors.

Now, what the Framingham Study found that’s relevant for longevity is that a higher lung capacity equates to a longer lifespan¹¹.

Further detailed research¹² from the study involving 2,423 participants found that better lung function is associated with better heart function. Moreover, the lung function measures were inversely related to the risk of heart failure. In other words, enhanced lung function is protective against heart failure.

There are two aspects to improved lung function. One, it’s about extracting more oxygen from the same amount of air or increasing oxygen efficiency. Two, it’s about taking in more air with each breath or expanding lung capacity.

Exercise typically helps improve oxygen efficiency, which is why most athletes have impressive lung function. Especially free divers.

Which leads us to:

Free Diving

Free diving is scuba diving without the baggage of an oxygen tank. That’s right, free divers rely on a single breath (and a lot of guts) while diving into the ocean. And professionals are known to have breath holds going over four minutes.

They achieve this by training to increase their tolerance to high levels of carbon dioxide and improve their ability to function with low levels of oxygen.

Ideally, to demonstrate a link between this sort of training and lifespan, I wanted to use the example of the Bajau sea nomads. For centuries, these nomads have inhabited the waters near the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.

But what they’re renowned for is their breath-holding capabilities, remaining underwater for up to 13 minutes¹³ on a single breath (longer than the average Dolphin¹⁴) — and that’s while hunting 200 feet below the surface.

However, I couldn’t find information on their life expectancy.

An example that may have some correlation is that of the Hunza people, who have an average life expectancy of 120 years¹⁵ and live at an altitude of 8,000 feet¹⁶.

What’s common between the mountain-dwelling Hunza and the sea-faring Bajau, other than their active lifestyles? It’s how their bodies have adapted to lower levels of oxygen. With less oxygen availability, your body adapts to extracting oxygen more efficiently with each breath.

Fortunately, this doesn’t imply that you have to live in the mountains or regularly dive underwater to improve how your body handles oxygen and carbon dioxide. Free divers rely on hypoxic (or oxygen deprivation) training, which can be performed safely on dry land, to enhance lung function and expand their breath holds.

But before we look at that, you’d probably be wondering if there’s a marker to determine by how much your lifespan increases in proportion to your breath hold.

I don’t have any data on this. But the semi-good news is that in the yogic culture, they have a sort of metric that links the breath with the lifespan, which brings us to:

Slow breathing

India, the land of yoga, is teeming with anecdotal evidence and stories of yogis living extraordinary periods of time. That’s probably because, in the yogic culture¹⁷⁺¹⁸, there’s an understanding that reducing the number of breaths per minute can either increase the lifespan or increase the intensity of life in a limited span.

For example, if you lived to the age of 60 with 15 breaths per minute, this is how your lifespan would correspond to a reduction in your breathing rate:

Breaths per minute	Lifespan (years)
15	60
12	75
9	100
6	150

As I mentioned at the start of the article, this correlation applies to animals as well. The giant tortoise breathes 3 to 4 times per minute and lives up to 200 to 300 years¹⁹, but dogs and cats, with breath rates of 15 to 30 per minute, live between 10 to 17 years.

Does slow breathing have any connection to breath holds? Does extending your breath hold reduce your baseline breaths per minute?

It possibly does because breath holds improve the respiratory system’s efficiency and make your body better at using oxygen efficiently and managing carbon dioxide levels. This could lead to a reduction in your baseline breathing rate, as your body requires fewer breaths per minute to meet its oxygen needs. Additionally, breath holding stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system²⁰, promoting relaxation and slower, more controlled breathing over time.

But standard exercise may not be the complete answer to superior breath control. Although exercise improves oxygen efficiency, studies²¹ have found no considerable difference in the total lung capacity of exercisers and non-exercisers.

So even if you’re hitting the gym and exercising regularly, it may not slow your breathing and extend your breath-hold optimally. You need something more targeted to improve these breathing metrics, and that brings us to the final (and actionable) part of this article.

Ways to Increase Your Breath Hold and Slow Your Breath

Staying physically active is typically recommended, whether that’s through lifting weights, running, or swimming. You could supplement your existing activity with what I’m sharing below but note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of methods to improve breath control.

Free diving tables

Free divers train using apnea tables or freediving tables. These tables are schedules or routines with timed breathing and breath-holding intervals.

There’s an O2 table and a CO2 table. The O2 table makes your body accustomed to low oxygen levels, while the CO2 table increases your tolerance to high carbon dioxide in the blood. Used together, these tables effectively expand your breath hold.

You can practice these tables on dry land since it’s safer, but here are some disclaimers before we look at the tables:

Only practice apnea tables that are calculated based on your max breath hold.
Don’t practice both tables on the same day.
You can train with the CO2 tables for the first two weeks, aiming for 2 to 3 training sessions per week.
After two weeks of CO2 table practice, switch to the O2 tables, aiming for 2 to 3 training sessions per week.
Don’t do multiple training sessions on the same day. Train only once a day.
You can gradually increase the number of training days over time.
If practicing in water, always ensure you have someone competent to help you.
If you have medical conditions, check with your healthcare provider before undertaking this training.

The tables vary from person to person depending on their max breath hold. Below, you’ll find sample tables and steps to calculate them. But if it feels overwhelming, you can skip to the part where I’ve mentioned free apps that will automatically calculate everything for you.

Here’s a CO2 table for someone with a max breath hold of 60 seconds:

Apnea	Rest
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 105 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 90 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 75 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 60 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 45 seconds
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and finish

Here are the guidelines to calculate your CO2 table:

Find your maximum breath hold.
The breath hold time you perform in the table can be 50% of your max breath hold. That’s 30 seconds if your max hold is 60 seconds.
The rest time for the first round can be twice your maximum breath-hold.
The rest time between breath holds can decrease by 15 seconds in each round.

A standard round will look like this: you start by breathing normally and then holding your breath for the calculated duration (which will remain fixed through all the rounds). Once done, you exhale and breathe normally for the rest period. After the rest period’s over, you move into the next breath hold. This is repeated for 7 to 8 rounds.

Here’s an O2 table suitable for someone with a max hold of 60 seconds:

Apnea	Rest
Hold your breath for 30 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 33 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 36 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 39 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 42 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 45 seconds	Exhale and rest for 42 seconds
Hold your breath for 48 seconds	Exhale and finish

Here are the guidelines to calculate your O2 table:

Find your maximum breath hold.
The final breath hold you perform in the table can be 80% of your max breath hold. If your max hold is 60 seconds, then 80% of it is 48 seconds.
The rest time between breath holds can be 70% of your max breath hold. If your max hold is 60 seconds, then 70% of it is 42 seconds.

A standard round will look like this: you start by breathing normally and then holding your breath for the calculated duration. Once done, you exhale and breathe normally for a set rest period. After the rest period’s over, you move into the next breath hold. This is repeated for 7 to 8 rounds.

There are many free apps on iOS and Android that build apnea tables based on your max breath hold and offer efficient tracking.

For iOS, you could try:

Freediving Apnea Trainer (fewer upselling pop-ups)
Apnea Freediving Exercises (better interface)

Android users could try:

No contraction tables

While practicing the CO2 tables, there’s a chance you may experience contractions, or the urge to breathe, which translates as involuntary muscle contractions in the diaphragm, neck, throat, or behind the ear.

Suppose you can hold your breath for 3 minutes, but contractions begin after 1 minute. That means for the majority of the hold, you’d be experiencing discomfort. And as this discomfort grows, it places a considerable load on your nervous system.

Some freediving schools opt for a gentler training method using no contraction tables that don’t need you to struggle against contractions. The priority with this training is relaxation, so a basic table looks like this:

Apnea	Rest
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and rest for 120 seconds
Hold your breath until the first contraction	Exhale and finish

With each round, your breath-hold will likely increase. And since you know that the round ends if you experience contractions, you’ll prioritize keeping your body as relaxed as possible.

I couldn’t find free apps that exclusively offer no contraction tables, but here are apps that come close:

Freediving Apnea Trainer (for iOS and Android): The app’s One breath mode places no restrictions on how long to hold your breath or how long to breathe. You have to manually press the forward button to move from apnea to rest.
STAmina Apnea Trainer (for iOS and Android): This app allows you to create a custom table with a fixed rest time and a flexible apnea time. Although more convenient than the other app, you’ll have to pay to unlock this feature.

Although the no contraction tables are gentler, progress with them may be slow.

Alternatively, if you’re happy with modest progress, you could try something that needs more commitment but offers significant additional benefits:

Yoga

Yoga is an effective way to increase your lung capacity and slow your baseline breathing rate, with some practices offering considerable enhancements to your breath control. But to do it safely, you want to learn from a trained teacher and take the necessary precautions.

Breath control is a staple of Kriya yoga and pranayam and includes different types of gentle breathing and retention techniques.

Box breathing, known in yoga as sama vritti, is a popular pranayam technique worldwide. It involves a 1:1:1:1 breathing ratio. If you inhale for 4 counts, then you’ve to hold your breath for 4 counts, followed by exhaling for 4 counts and holding your breath (on empty lungs) for 4 counts.

There are many other powerful techniques with advanced ratios (like 4:2:5:2 and 4:16:8:4) that activate your lungs effectively. But the breath retention techniques are considered among the most essential in pranayam. These retention techniques bring with them added benefits, not limited to:

Relaxing and calming the nervous system
Enhancing attention and vitality
Strengthening the diaphragm

Although Kriya yoga and pranayam are known to slow the breath, you could also try Hatha yoga, which has the classical yoga asanas or postures.

Attempting to forcefully slow the breath brings discomfort and doesn’t permanently reduce your baseline respiratory rate. But during Hatha yoga, you’re supposed to breathe just slightly deeper than usual²² and this gradual practice slows your breath rate.

In addition, you’ll find benefits like:

Greater flexibility
Improved cognition
Stronger muscles and ligaments
Better spinal mobility and delayed degeneration

You can find many free online resources to learn Kriya and pranayam, including on YouTube. For something slightly more meticulous and intensive, I’d recommend Isha Yoga.

And some resources to learn Hatha yoga:

Isha Hatha Yoga (only offline)
Sivananda Yoga (available online)

Breathing Life
into Longevity

In the mosaic of health and longevity, a simple yet profound piece may be our breath. The journey from hurried, unconscious breaths to deliberate, deeper breaths is a roadmap to a longer and healthier life.

We’ve seen through the Framingham Heart Study that better lung function correlates with heart health and longevity. And we’ve marveled at the free divers and the Bajau sea nomads, whose remarkable breath control more than hints at what we’re capable of.

The methods outlined—from apnea tables to yogic practices—can be done wherever you are, and performed at your own pace. As is the case with most things, it takes regular effort and time to progress, but you’ll consistently reap health benefits with these methods, especially as the months and years roll by.

In the next installment, we’ll explore cellular and chronological aging, and how your breathing can aid you in looking twenty even at sixty.

References

Introduction

Framingham Heart Study

Free Diving

Slow Breathing

Ways to Increase Your Breath Hold and Slow Your Breath

1. Free diving tables

2. No Contraction Tables

3. Yoga

Breathing Life Into Longevity

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Home Blog About Contact

How Slow Breathing and Breath-Holding Extend Your Lifespan + Easy Ways to Practice

Introduction

Framingham Heart Study

Free Diving

Slow breathing

Ways to Increase Your Breath Hold and Slow Your Breath

Free diving tables

No contraction tables

Yoga

Breathing Life into Longevity

References

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Breathing Life
into Longevity