Breathing is a unique system in the human body; unlike, for example, digestion, breathing has both an involuntary control mechanism as well as voluntary, similar to a 747 in that it can shift between being piloted and being left on autopilot. If you are a military special operator, or have a background with martial arts or yoga, it’s likely that you inherently understand the strategy of mastering the breath. If not, you will find the most immediate practical benefits in your life from this strategy. When I learned as a martial artist to control my breathing during intense fighting bouts, it proved invaluable later during the chaos of combat. And when you begin the three breathing practices below, you will note an immediate impact in the form of lower stress; a heightened, alert focus; and a calmer mind. The process is simply to exhale twice as long as you inhale. For instance, as you inhale through the nose using the full belly breath to a count of 3, you exhale out to a count of 6. Over time, as your skill increases, you can take it to a 4:8 or 5:10 and so on. To yield some dramatic improvements with the 1:2 Breath, try a 30-day challenge of practicing it for 10 minutes each day. This is a great breathing pattern to use when in a stressful situation to gain control over your body and mind. I recommend you do it for a minimum of 5 minutes and no more than 20 minutes. I have found that the best approach is to do a single, dedicated practice of 10 to 20 minutes a day, then do a few 1- or 2-minute “spot drills” as opportunities present themselves during the day. Box Breathing with this 4-4-4-4 ratio has a neutral energetic effect: It’s not going to charge you up or put you into a sleepy relaxed state. But it will, as mentioned, make you very alert and grounded, ready for action. As your breathing threshold improves, you can increase the duration of the ratio, such as 5-5-5-5 and so on. The yoga masters believed that the human life span was determined by the number of breaths taken. According to them, slowing your breathing down would lengthen your life span. I don’t know about you, but I am in—at 4 breaths per minute versus 16, I should live 4 times as long! At any rate, my experience is that slowing your breathing rate down is very healthy and I think you will find this to be true for yourself as well. Let’s begin threshold training with a ratio of 1:2:2:1. So a 3-second inhale, 6-second hold, 6-second exhale, and a 3-second hold is, in total, an 18-count breath threshold, assuming you can repeat this cycle comfortably a minimum of 12 times in a row. This would be just shy of three breaths per minute, which is a good target to work toward. For those who need to really extend their threshold, such as SEAL trainees, you will want to work toward a 60-second threshold (that’s one long, slow breath per minute). One warning: Never practice breath-hold training in the water alone. I know it sounds obvious, but some special ops trainees have foolishly tried this and are not alive to read this as a result.
