Chapter 7: Breath

My oxygen saturation was dropping. 98%… 95%… 92%. I watched the numbers fall on the pulse oximeter clipped to my finger. At the same time, my heart rate slowed. 65 beats per minute down to 58, then lower.

I was sitting perfectly still on my meditation cushion. No air in my lungs. Just holding the emptiness after a full exhale.

All I had done was breathe.

Thirty deep, rapid breaths - in and out, faster than felt natural. Then one final exhale, pushing out every bit of air. And now this: watching my body respond to the absence of oxygen while my mind stayed eerily calm.

Eighty-five seconds. Ninety. The first time I’d ever held my breath this long.

When the urge to breathe finally came, I inhaled. The numbers climbed back up. But what struck me wasn’t the recovery - it was what I felt. Energized. Alert. My whole body buzzing with something I couldn’t quite name.

This was intermittent hypoxia. Controlled, temporary oxygen deprivation that somehow left me feeling more alive, not less.

A few weeks earlier, I’d stumbled onto a video about Wim Hof - the Iceman who climbed Mount Everest in shorts and trained people to control their autonomic nervous system through breathing. I was skeptical. But curious enough to try.

The technique was simple: breathe rapidly to blow off carbon dioxide, then hold your breath and let oxygen levels drop. Your body responds - heart rate slows to conserve what oxygen remains, while somehow your system gets activated, energized, awake.

Just by breathing.

The Other Half of the Story

But this surprised me. Everything I’d learned about meditation and breathing pointed in the opposite direction.

“Take a deep breath in… slowly exhale…” Every meditation app started the same way. Calm breathing. Slow breathing. The kind that’s supposed to relax you, settle your nervous system, prepare you for stillness.

And it worked - when my body was already ready for it.

But most mornings when I sat down to meditate? My body wasn’t ready. I was sluggish. Foggy. My mind felt dull, not racing. I’d focus on my breath and within minutes I was fighting to stay awake. That slow, calming breath just made the fog thicker.

The meditation instructions were right about breath being important. But they’d only shown me half of what breath could do.

Wim Hof showed me the other half. Breath didn’t just calm - it could activate. It could cut through that morning fog and wake my system up. Suddenly I had a tool I could use when my body was in the wrong state for meditation.

Just like the run from the previous chapter changed my body’s state and made meditation possible, breath could do the same thing. But faster. In five minutes instead of twenty-five.

The Two-Way Street

Your breath affects your body in both directions.

When you inhale, your heart rate increases slightly. Your sympathetic nervous system activates - the accelerator we talked about earlier. Your body prepares for action, engagement, effort.

When you exhale, your heart rate decreases. Your parasympathetic nervous system engages - the brake. Your body shifts toward rest, recovery, calm.

This happens automatically, every single breath. Inhale, heart speeds up. Exhale, heart slows down. Your body follows your breath’s lead.

But here’s what makes this useful: you can emphasize one direction or the other.

Short, rapid breathing - like Wim Hof’s technique - keeps you in that activated state. Lots of inhales, not much time for the parasympathetic system to engage. Your body gets the message: wake up, be alert, engage.

Longer exhales - breathing where the out-breath is longer than the in-breath - does the opposite. You’re giving your parasympathetic system more time to work. Your body gets the message: it’s safe to settle, to calm down, to rest.

You can feel it happen.

Breath as a Tool

After discovering how Wim Hof breathing activated my system, I started experimenting. If rapid breathing could wake me up, what about the reverse?

I found an app called iBreathe - basically a metronome for breathing. You can set different patterns. I set it for longer exhales: breathe in for four counts, out for eight.

Eight minutes of that pattern and my body responds. Heart rate drops. That activated, wound-up feeling starts to ease. My shoulders relax without me trying to relax them.

Sometimes I’d use it right after the Wim Hof breathing - activate my system to cut through morning sluggishness, then calm it back down to a settled-but-alert state. Then I’d sit for meditation. My body was ready. Not sleepy, not agitated. Just… ready.

Other times I’d use the longer exhales without the activation first. Middle of the day, after a stressful meeting, my body still buzzing with that fight-or-flight energy. Eight minutes of longer exhales and the elephant would settle enough that meditation became possible.

Late at night, lying in bed with my mind spinning through tomorrow’s problems? Same thing. The longer exhales would signal to my body that it was safe to wind down.

The specific pattern wasn’t the point. Neither was finding the “right” technique. What mattered was learning to ask: Is my body ready? And having breath as a tool to prepare it when it wasn’t.

Getting the Elephant’s Cooperation

This is the pattern we keep seeing. In the last chapter, I couldn’t meditate after that stressful meeting until I went for a run. The running gave my body an outlet for the energy - got the elephant aligned with what I wanted to do.

Before that meeting, I’d started taking yoga at noon. Not to get flexible or build strength, but because my body needed to be prepared for what was coming. The elephant needed to be settled before I walked into that room.

Breath does the same job. It prepares the body.

We keep trying to meditate directly from wherever we are. Straight from work stress to sitting on the cushion. From lying in bed to “focus on your breath and be present.” We’re trying to use the rider - our conscious mind - to control where attention goes, to force the elephant to be still.

But the rider can’t force the elephant. The elephant weighs 6,000 pounds. If the elephant is activated, anxious, wound up from the day, the rider doesn’t have the strength to override that.

Running prepared the elephant. Yoga prepared the elephant. And breath prepares the elephant - faster, when you can’t move.

This is why breath shows up in every meditation tradition. Not because focusing on breath is meditation. But because breath is the fastest way to shift your body’s state. It’s the bridge between what you can control - the pattern of your breathing - and what you can’t directly control - your nervous system, your heart rate, whether your body is ready to settle.

You can’t force the 6,000-pound elephant to calm down through willpower. But you can speak its language. And the elephant’s language is breath.

Before You Sit

So before I meditate now, I check in. Where is my body?

Sluggish? Foggy? That morning heaviness? Maybe a few rounds of activating breath first. Wake the system up.

Wound up? Still processing something from earlier? Heart rate elevated, shoulders tense? Maybe some longer exhales. Give the parasympathetic system time to work.

Sometimes both - activate first to cut through dullness, then calm to settle into readiness.

Sometimes neither - my body is already in that alert-but-calm state and I can just sit down.

The question isn’t “What’s the right breathing technique?” It’s “What does my body need right now to be ready?”

When I finally sit down to meditate, my body is cooperative. Not because I’ve controlled it with my mind. Not because I’ve forced the elephant into submission. But because I’ve prepared it. Spoken its language. Got it aligned with what we’re about to do.

And when body and mind are aligned, when the elephant and rider are working together instead of fighting each other, meditation isn’t a battle.

It’s just sitting there.