Lars Christian Larssen describes learning to stay calm during five-minute breath holds. Diaphragm contractions start around 90 seconds and used to trigger panic, but repeated exposure taught him to recognize the sensation without fear. The skill transferred to managing anxiety in other parts of his life.
Five minutes.
Around 90 seconds.
One thing I've learned about doing extreme breath hold training is the impact that physiology has on our psychology. For example, when I'm doing a breath hold for five minutes, after 90 seconds, I'll start to get contractions in my diaphragm. These contractions at the beginning were quite alarming. They sent signals to my brain and I felt quite anxious. But through progression and recognition and also through experiential learning, I've noticed that I can stay much more calm in my mind despite having these sensations in my body, which seems to have a crossover effect into other domains of anxiety.
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