Breathholding is the new black | Stig Severinsen | TEDxOdense

[Music] [Music] usually I wake up pretty early but this morning I don't need breakfasts because I don't want to elevate the heart rate nor my oxygen consumption I'll do a little morning yoga and then I stretch my lungs then I drink a little hot homemade concoction made of organic ginger beetroot and cayenne pepper because I need my inner fire to be powerful since this is no ordinary day then I wait for my team to arrive because when in Greenland there's nothing you can do alone you absolutely needs local support I get the 20 minute countdown from my team 20 minutes to go i undress quickly and i stand ready in my speedos the doctor duct tapes a state-of-the-art heart rate monitor to my chest and I feel ready my little mascot birth is already sitting at the triangular entrance hole that has been caught in the ice and I sit right next to him and I start my breathing routine then I get the one-minute countdown the doctor takes a blood sample from my finger they want to illah they want to investigate the stress level in my body before I dive I attach myself to the safety line and lower my legs into icy water then I signal to my team that I'm okay I take my final breath I pack a few times and then I plunged into the clear liquid [Applause] and then I start swimming then I find the perfect balance between arms and breaststroke leg it's like a frog kick and I have to optimize my technique so I don't waste oxygen and then I glide more and more at this point I'm so numb I'm paralyzed in my whole body that the coldness doesn't matter I'm way beyond that point and I have to just keep working keep working keep working I have only to focus on working pushing my body to the maximum limit if your mind gets stiff like your body then the whole thing can be a disaster because if my mind freaks out you're going to panic and panic is what kills just sleep almost in that emptiness and that freedom I kind of do everything in a slow motion maybe I take a little look where's the line okay I'm on the right track I mean then I know when I come to the end I have to look for the hole so this is the dangerous moment I have to find the right way to exit and hopefully have time my dive and my training so that the hole is there and I exit for joy [Music] I finished the dive 250 feet which is still the current Guinness world record and I take my first breath the internal struggle and numbing pain in my body and mind is my business it's my job all I want to show us the beauty and I hope that it looks a bit like a ballet because I want to show that our body can do amazing things and I want to show that there's always light at the end of the tunnel maybe you think that this looks like a scene out of Avatar something from a science fiction movie in outer space and actually just last month I had the great honor and privilege to meet people that have actually gone to outer space this was during the hundreds 15th anniversary gala dinner in the Explorers Club where I've been a proud member for the last few years and I got to meet rusty Schweickart who was the Apollo lunar module pilot on the Apollo 9 mission in 69 and we got to talk about this incredible feeling of freedom of floating without gravity and he explained this beautiful life-changing moment when he was doing a spacewalk and he was soaring about planet Earth between life and infinity the great news today is that you don't have to go to outer space to experience this we can all experience this and if you hold your breath you can go on an amazing inner journey people always ask me Steve why do I have to be so extreme but I have to hold your breath so long why do we have to dive so deep why do we have to almost kill yourself in the process it's so dangerous but to me it's not extreme it's not extreme at all I'll tell you what is the most extreme life or going for milk we all know the feeling it's late at night you open the fridge no milk no problem you jump on the old bike head down the road careless you don't put a helmet on you forget the lights the car doesn't see you bang that's extreme to me freediving is not dangerous breath-holding is not dangerous even blacking out is not dangerous what is dangerous is doing it carelessly without taking all the precautions every single time just like going from milk without lights I lost my best friend seven years ago Alex was a beautiful angel when he lived on this planet a passionate marine biologist just like myself and he loved teaching people especially kids about the wonders of the sea but one day helping a girl recovering a lost fin he made a simple mistake he broke the first rule of diving witches never dive alone and in his selfless act of kindness he simply forgot and he died on that day after Alex died I was inspired to create an online program on water safety rescue and survival and today this probe that program is being used all over the world and it's even now mandatory for the Danish Navy SEALs in training so please never dive alone because there are no warning signs it's just like getting hit by a truck you don't see it coming I will tell you what is really extreme though some years ago I was featured in a magazine called Men's Journal I did another Guinness World Record and I made this little feature called the ice guru now while this article didn't change my life the the magazine certainly did because when I picked it up my heart broke I wrote another story about a young man called Andrew only 25 years of age and he was sent to Iraq as a army gunner and quickly he started developing trouble sleeping he also showed other symptoms of PTSD of post-traumatic stress disorder and he was given as many as 20 different medications and and psychotic drugs think about that for a moment 20 different hard-core drugs that is not only extreme that's extremely disgusting so I thought to myself there must be something I can do there must be a better way because using drugs will never get to the root cause of problems like PTSD and stress it will only numb the pain and you might as well just get higher get drunk breathing and breath-holding however I felt could heal the wounds at zero experience but I had a plan so I booked a pool and some hotel rooms in the most beautiful hotel I could find in Southern California where I lived at that time and then I let the word out and I invited veterans to come and join my PTSD liberation workshop and one of these people was Jeff my name is Jeff Grace I just finished up the PTSD liberation workshop I was diagnosed with PTSD and medically discharged because of other injuries along with the PTSD was grouped into that and I struggled with it every day and one way or the other you know anything from just the the lighting is right the sun's the right position some dirt or sand blues across the road and stuff like that and boom I'm back in Iraq or Afghanistan I've been deployed to both and I seen the typical things I've been in IEDs I've been shot I've been having I've had my buddy in my hands and any past you know I've been throughout that and so here I am the the last day of the PTSD liberation workshop and I've I've been able to remember many childhood memories that peih-gee has these clouded and you know because my brain has been just blocking out things and now I'm able to remember them you know good things from my childhood that's that's priceless this morning I huh this morning I woke up and I have not remembered a dream and I can't even tell you it more than two years and this morning I woke up and I remembered my dream and it was a good dream and I just you know I was so happy you know that I yelled into the other room at my girl for like yeah I'm so happy you know so through his his training of breath holding and meditation and it's not some hippy term meditation look I'm a vet you know young I'm only 28 I've seen the as vets would call it as we call it you know I'm here to tell you that it works it's it's not some something to even laugh at you know I've gotten better because of it yeah I can't stress enough how important this has been to my life in general I can actually like imagine and smell and see and almost like I touch things from my childhood that we're non-existent before at all you know and I'm I was really depressed just that alone you know to have your childhood memories literally stolen from you because my brain would always just be like you know no restart from this point forget everything in your past and it was really hard it was a struggle you know no matter how hard I tried him out how many therapists I went to I won't get into the whole going to see you psycho psychiatrists and all that thing but because I've been to many you know clearly I still couldn't remember anything so this worked though over the years my team and I'm pathology I've been collecting data about PTSD and I want to share some of the most interesting results with you here today first of all of course we often connect veterans and PTSD but we saw that sexual assaults actually was reported higher and the vast majority of people when they answered what has caught what had cost the PTSD was actually personal tragedy then we asked how long after the trauma did you experience the PTSD and we had another big group of immediately of course the shock but we also found that after three to five years there was another large group so this is a ticking bomb finally we asked how long have you suffered from PTSD and the feedback was rather devastating because nearly 70 percent reported that after five years they were still struggling and suffering this led to a few realizations first of all PTSD is a global tragedy it's something that hits not only families it devastates communities countries and we absolutely need to do something about it we must be very careful not to stigmatize these people secondly it made me realize that the current treatment apparently isn't very successful because people are still suffering after five years thirdly it made me realize that I needed to transition in my life go from passion to purpose I needed to quit or stop being this world champion free diver flying all around the world doing my crazy circus acts in a glass cage to actually using my experience and expertise to help people that are suffering and make them break out of their cages so this is what we've been working on and today I want to share another result with you because after the dive under the ice that you saw a few minutes ago the doctors took another blood sample and they saw that there was no change in stress level in my blood in the stress hormones and this puzzled them because I've been under such extreme conditions but I truly believe that we can all learn to manage stress PTSD and we can learn to become comfortable in an uncomfortable situation so that's what I do today I travel around the world and teach people ways to optimize their health and performance through breathing and breath holding I teach senior citizens people in rehabilitation Olympian athletes stressed-out business managers are trained they Royal Air Force and I trained Navy SEALs and different Special Operations groups I call it relaxed on-demand and when you go underwater and have to hold your breath at the same time you achieve what I believe is the highest level of self management I call it meditation underwater because you truly meditate you go into another state we see here that there's a spike in alpha wave frequency in the brain and that is also kind of a dreamy state when you hold your breath you open the gateway to your heart and I don't mean this as a metaphor when you hold your breath you activate a natural response in your body called the mammalian die response I like to call it our inner dolphin and you all have one and when that dolphin wakes up you trigger the vagus nerve the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain to your heart so we actually do get a physical contact with your heart it also runs into your lungs your internal organs and your intestines and it's a part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic or rest and digest when you hold your breath a little longer the diaphragm starts to move you build up carbon dioxide now you might think you're getting a good apps workout and you are but you're also releasing and dissolving stress trauma and fear from the solar plexus region breath holding as shown today is the natural part of breathing it's very overlooked which is a shame because it has so many benefits when done correctly breath holding is power and magic it can help you heal it can help you change broken patterns and it can make you make better decisions it can even help you transform stress into relaxation we hear so much about meditation mindfulness and conscious breathing I say just as important is holding your breath holding your breath can help you quiet your busy mind it can help you get a shortcut to inner freedom and peace breath-holding is the silent part of breathing it is the yin to the yang after every dive after every breath hold I always end with a smile I do so because I want everyone to see the beauty of breath holding breath holding is not just blacking out breath holding is the new black you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 400,237

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Achievement, Adventure, Benefit, Body, Brain, Championship, Control, Drugs, Extreme Sports, Medical research, Oceans, Recovery, Sports, Struggle, Success, Water

Id: R53GljF7IxU

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/senorslimm]

He's definitely a badass. Might pick up his book.

Although from watching some of his videos on YouTube, he doesn't come across as a good teacher in his videos. The sane can be said for Wim too. They're both doers. I've learned far more from other YouTubers vids or WHM instructors I've met.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/_BrianBoss_]

Just watched this earlier today

[u/MrMiiinecart]

B R E A T H

[u/ProcyonRaul]

I noticed the video said absolutely nothing about HOW he does/teaches breath holding. He does mention that the mammalian dive response triggers the vagus nerve, which is good to know. There's also a little bit of talk about chemical stress markers and how they don't change when breath holding and swimming under water, but not much in the way of details.

I'm sure there's significant overlap with Wim Hof breathing, but not sure exactly how much.

Tl;dr breath holding may be good for PTSD and/or handling stress. Just like the title says.

Saved you 20 minutes.