The patterns

How do you do Wim Hof breathing?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20266 sources

Sit or lie down. Take 30 deep breaths in a row, breathe out, and hold with empty lungs until you feel the urge to breathe. Then take one big breath and hold it for 15 seconds. That’s one round. Do three or four. Never in or near water, and never while driving.

Wim Hof breathing looks like a relaxation exercise, and it’s often filed next to box breathing and 4-7-8. It works the other way. The slow patterns calm you down. Thirty fast, deep breaths rev you up, blow off carbon dioxide, and make the hold afterward feel strangely easy. That easy hold is the part that can make you pass out.

One round, step by step

These are the method’s own instructions, from its site.

1. Sit or lie down somewhere comfortable and safe.
2. Breathe in deeply through your nose or mouth, pushing your belly out. When your lungs are full, let the breath go through your mouth without force. Take 30 of these, one right after the other.
3. After the last breath out, hold your breath until you feel the urge to breathe again.
4. Take one giant breath in, letting your belly expand, and hold it for 15 seconds. Then let go.
5. That’s one round. Repeat the full cycle 3 to 4 times.

The site warns that you may feel light-headed and get tingling in your fingers and feet, and that passing out “can potentially be very dangerous in or near water” or when driving. This site has no timer for fast rounds yet, on purpose.

What it does in your body

Breathing fast and deep blows off carbon dioxide faster than your body makes it. Low carbon dioxide is what causes the tingling, the lightheadedness and, in strong cases, hands that cramp into a claw. Your urge to breathe is driven mostly by carbon dioxide, so with less of it the hold feels easy, even while your oxygen keeps falling.

It’s a bit like a car’s fuel warning light that’s been reset to come on later. The tank empties at the same speed, you just get less notice.

A surprising true story

In 2014, Dutch researchers trained 12 young men in the method for about 10 days, with Wim Hof himself, then injected them with a dose of bacterial endotoxin, a piece of a bacteria’s outer wall that brings on flu-like symptoms. The trained men had less than half the peak symptoms of 12 untrained men, and their inflammation signals were lower.

The breathing alone sent their adrenaline up before the injection. During the breathing, their blood oxygen dipped to around 50 percent at times. That’s far below where it normally sits, and it’s why the method’s rules about water and driving aren’t fine print.

In the 2023 Stanford trial, a group did a shorter version for five minutes a day (30 breaths, then a 15 second hold on empty, three rounds). Their mood rose, but not clearly more than the meditation group’s.

Before you start, see is Wim Hof breathing safe and who should skip which breathing exercises.

The Wim Hof method has what each round does to your body and what the famous studies did and didn’t show.