After reading Wim Hof and James Nestor a couple years ago during the pandemic, I used their techniques in full while battling long Covid. I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels in…
You say “their technique” and “this new tool”. For someone who hasn’t read Hof and Nestor, could you point to any resources explaining the specific techniques you are referring to? If I go down the Google/YT rabbit hole, I fear I’ll be confronted with hundreds of such techniques and just get utterly confused. Thank you.
- James Nestor - Breath:
"I love this book and it‘s more a kind of overview about different breathing systems and techniques. He writes about Wim Hof and also about Oxygen Advantage. It‘s a good starting point into the topic of breathing. Highly recommended."
"Breathe is like a pop sci intro to breathing. It covers a lot and not very deeply, but it is engaging, makes a good case, and have a few actionable things that have a larger payoff (mouth tape)."
- Patrick McKeown - Oxygen Advantage:
"The base of this book is the Buteyko method and Patrick follows a very scientific approach. He can explain all hows and whys without beeing to complicated. Also highly recommended. You will find breath holds and reduced breathing in different techniques. Focus is on sports and conditioning. Highly recommended."
"O2 Advantage goes a lot deeper and helps you systematically evaluate and improve your co2 tolerance and thereby improve your body's ability to use oxygen. If I only could recommend one of these three, it would be this one with Breathe as a close second (simply because it is so accessible). It gives clear guidelines, tests, and actionable steps to improve your breathing. It is a very useful book."
- Wim Hof - The Wim Hof Method:
"It’s basically about breathing, cold exposure and the mind. The breathing work is about overbreathing (hyperventilation) followed by a breathhold. There are times that I love it, but science is mostly against it. I guess nobody knows why this works. Pavel is against breath holds after hyperventilation by the way (SECOND WIND). But there are lots of people having success using the WHM. I can also recommend the newest book."
"Wim Hof. It mainly focuses on a intense breathing technique and cold exposure. I know a lot of people that swear by them. I've never had any benefits from them that I could tell. After talking to some people that were really into this, they pointed out that I'm way more stressed all the time than they are. Adding more stress when you are already at max doesn't exactly help and probably hurts (more info here). This is my least favorite of the three as it has a very narrow benefit and that benefit isn't applicable to a lot of people. since it is basically a book on how to increase stress levels through breathing and cold."
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