Patrick McKeown's 5 Breathing Exercises for Relaxing

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Oxygen Advantage" by Patrick McKeown. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What are Patrick McKeown’s breathing exercises? How can you train yourself to test your carbon dioxide tolerance?

In The Oxygen Advantage, Patrick McKeown offers several exercises to improve your respiratory health. Among these exercises are a carbon dioxide tolerance test and unblocking your nose.

Keep reading to learn the specifics of these helpful breathing exercises.

Exercise #1: Testing Your Carbon Dioxide Tolerance

Patrick McKeown’s breathing exercises include regularly testing your carbon dioxide tolerance to track how healthy your breathing habits currently are. The breathing exercises that McKeown recommends vary depending on your current CO₂ tolerance, so testing it helps you know which exercises to include in your routine. Tackling intense breathing exercises before your body is ready will tire you out quickly with minimal benefits, and trying and failing at these exercises will only discourage you from sticking with the program.

To test your carbon dioxide tolerance, take a normal breath; then, at the end of your exhale, plug your nose and hold your breath. Time how long it takes before you first feel the need to breathe (not how long you can hold out before you have to breathe).

This time represents how tolerant your body is to carbon dioxide, and it’ll increase as your tolerance increases. A typical adult who exercises frequently can go 20 seconds before feeling the need to breathe, but McKeown recommends training your body until you can make it to 40 seconds to achieve peak physical fitness.

For the most accurate assessment, perform this exercise immediately after waking up. Your unconscious breathing while asleep will be the same every night, putting your respiratory system in a neutral state and ensuring that your test will be consistent and objective.

Exercise #2: Unblocking the Nose

As we’ve established, the first step in improving your breathing habits is breathing through your nose at all times. McKeown notes that unfortunately, nasal congestion is a major obstacle for many habitual mouth breathers who want to make this change. Mouth breathing can cause your nasal capillaries to become inflamed and your nose to produce more mucus, which contributes to nasal congestion.

(Shortform note: The condition of inflamed nasal capillaries resulting in increased mucus production is called vasomotor rhinitis. However, if your nasal congestion is accompanied by an itchy nose, itchy or watery eyes, and a sore or irritated throat, it’s likely that you’re simply suffering from allergies rather than excessive breathing—this is called allergic rhinitis.)

Luckily, McKeown prescribes a specific exercise to break out of this cycle and start breathing through your nose. Exhale, then plug your nose, hold your breath, and walk around until you feel a strong need to breathe. Let go of your nose and take a calm, slow nasal breath in. Recover for a short time, then repeat until your nose is less congested. Eventually, repeating this exercise will allow you to hold your breath for longer, and as your body adapts, your nose will become permanently clearer.

(Shortform note: According to the Buteyko Clinic, the company where McKeown serves as Director of Education and Training, you can perform this exercise while seated and still successfully unblock your nose. Additionally, they note that if this exercise is ineffective, you can try an alternative practice: Dissolve salt and baking soda in warm water, then use a plastic syringe to squirt this water through your blocked nasal passages and into your throat to clear them directly.)

Exercise #3: Breath Reset

This next exercise resets your breath from heavy breathing back to a calm state. McKeown recommends using it as a post-workout cooldown.

To practice this exercise, walk around, breathing smoothly and slowly. Exhale, then hold your breath for two to five seconds. Release and breathe normally for 10 seconds, and repeat until you’ve reset to your normal at-rest breathing pattern.

The Importance of Cooling Down

Why is it necessary to cool down post-workout? During exercise, your heart beats faster, pumping blood to your extremities. Your moving muscles help to pump blood from your extremities back into the heart—however, if you abruptly stop moving, this pumping stops, causing blood to pool and stagnate in your extremities. This can cause dizziness or fainting. It arguably makes sense that McKeown would recommend holding your breath to avoid this problem because (as we’ve discussed) restoring carbon dioxide in your blood dilates your blood vessels, increasing blood flow and preventing symptoms like dizziness or fainting.

However, some other experts recommend cooling down after exercise by intentionally slowing your breathing rather than holding your breath. To ensure that this breathing successfully calms your system, maintain a 1:2 cadence in which your exhales are twice as long as your inhales—for instance, a four-second inhale followed by an eight-second exhale.

Exercise #4: Basic Carbon Dioxide Training

The core exercise you’ll use to increase your carbon dioxide tolerance is a breathing procedure you can do while sitting or lying down (McKeown calls this the “Breathe Light to Breathe Right” exercise). If your carbon dioxide tolerance time is 15 seconds or more, you’ll typically be able to complete and benefit from this exercise. McKeown recommends practicing this for 10 minutes, three times a day.

Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Breathe slowly and deliberately with your diaphragm—the hand on your belly should move while the hand on your chest remains relatively still. Press into your body with your hands, physically pushing against the breath as you inhale. The goal here is to reduce the amount of air you breathe in—with every breath, inhale less air until you’re breathing far less air than you typically do. If you feel like you’re breathing less than your body wants you to, you’re successfully training your carbon dioxide tolerance.

When performing this exercise, relax your body—none of your muscles should feel tense. If you ever feel yourself involuntarily tense up or your breathing becomes jerky and unstable, take a break—the goal is smooth, easy breathing that slightly challenges your desire to breathe. If you struggle to achieve this, you may need to build some carbon dioxide tolerance before adding this exercise to your routine. You can use nasal breathing and the breath reset exercise described above to do so.

Exercise #5: Carbon Dioxide Training in Motion

Once you’ve practiced the basic carbon dioxide training at rest and your carbon dioxide tolerance has measurably increased, McKeown recommends working your way up to executing the training during physical exercise—while walking, running, or cycling. This intense practice will further increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide. There’s no need to use your hands when doing this, but continue to keep your body relaxed and stretch your ability to breathe less than you feel like you need to.

Note that McKeown doesn’t recommend advancing to any breath exercise more intense than the basic carbon dioxide training if you suffer from a medical condition that could be exacerbated by physical exertion. In this case, consult your physician before undertaking these more advanced breathing exercises. Similarly, if you start to feel dizzy or sick, stop the exercise immediately.

(Shortform note: Why might these exercises prove dangerous? Some experts note that if your body isn’t accustomed to exercise and you suddenly put it under intense stress, you run the risk of rhabdomyolysis—when muscle cells burst, leaking into the blood and causing kidney failure. Another possibility is that McKeown is warning against the risks of respiratory acidosis—when you fail to exhale enough carbon dioxide from your blood, turning it acidic. Dizziness when holding your breath may be an early sign of respiratory acidosis, as the carbon dioxide overloading your bloodstream forces oxygen out, cutting off oxygen to the brain.)

Set the Right Breathing Rhythm to Avoid Injury

Some experts say that as you start paying attention to how you breathe during physical exercise, it’s important to get the rhythm of your breath right—the wrong breath timing can cause injury. As you walk or run, you momentarily lose stability in your core every time you exhale, putting greater stress on whichever foot is hitting the ground. If the rhythm of your breath means that your exhale lines up with the same foot hitting the ground every time, you’ll put chronic stress on one side of your body.

To avoid this, practice breathing at an asymmetrical cadence, where you inhale for three steps and exhale for two steps. This way, the foot you land on every time you exhale will naturally alternate, evening out the stress across your body. You can apply this practice to walking, running, and presumably cycling (although it may not be necessary while cycling, as it’s considerably less stressful on your joints than running).

Patrick McKeown’s 5 Breathing Exercises for Relaxing