It’s no secret that breathwork can have a transformative impact on our minds and bodies, but working out what’s right for you can be a little complex.

These days there’s growing interest in one form of breathwork in particular: Wim Hof breathing. Spurred on by interest in the Wim Hof method – a three-pronged approach to wellness that involves cold exposure, deep breathing and dedication – the dynamic practice has attracted attention for its supposed ability to relieve stress, improve sleep and boost emotional resilience.

On this week’s episode of The Gut Life, we wanted to explore how Wim Hof breathing can help to reduce stress and potentially impact gut health as a result. So, to find out more, I sat down with Emma Estrela, a Wim Hof instructor and devotee who has led retreats across the world since qualifying in 2017, to discuss whether the Wim Hof method can be used to do just that.  

During the episode, she explained more about how deep breathing affects our physiology, and why that’s such a good thing for dealing with stress. She also explained how using our diaphragm effectively can aid digestion. 

You can check out some of the things I learned below or tune in to episode three of The Gut Life to hear everything Estrela had to say about Wim Hof breathing (and more). 

If you’ve never come across Wim Hof breathing before, you should know it can be intense. It’s what’s known in breathwork circles as a ‘dynamic’ form of the practice, which means it’s energetic and active rather than slow and passive. It involves a series of repeated deep breaths followed by a breath hold, concluding with what’s known as a ‘recovery breath’.

“The beauty of the Wim Hof method is its pauses – it has a retention time,” Estrela says. “Initially you do the strong, deep connected breathing at speed, and then you have the retention time which triggers the body’s ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response.” 

Now, the idea of triggering your body’s stress response may not seem like the best way to reduce stress, but stay with us for a second. We won’t go too deep into the science, but what you need to know is that the repeated deep breaths lower the amount of carbon dioxide in your body.

While this makes it easier for you to hold your breath, it also changes the chemical make-up of your blood, which makes it harder for your body’s cells to use oxygen. This is what puts your body into a temporary state of stress and causes a natural spike in adrenaline.

This stress response triggers your body to strengthen its oxygen pathways to end this period of scarcity, therefore entering you back into a more relaxed state.  

But what has this got to do with relieving stress in the long term? “In one round of Wim Hof, you’re exercising both the sympathetic (fight, flight or freeze) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) systems,” Estrela explains. “This helps you to stretch your adaptive mechanisms [ie your ability to respond to stress], including the vagus nerve.”

The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body and is responsible for controlling the ‘rest and digest’ stress response. Having a strong or ‘toned’ vagus nerve can be hugely beneficial for relieving stress in the long term because it makes it easier for that rest and digest state to be activated, therefore helping you to relax and calm down faster when faced with a stressful situation. 

The stimulation of the diaphragm, which occurs during deep breathing, can also have a positive impact on gut health, Emma says.

“Deep breathing is really good for our gut health because it helps with peristalsis [the muscle contractions that move food through the digestive tract],” she explains. “So, when you activate your diaphragm, you’re kind of massaging your digestive system.”

Strengthening your body’s ability to deal with stress and enter the rest and digest state can also help, as the fight, flight or freeze response we experience when we’re stressed out puts us leads to our body de-prioritising essential functions such as our digestive system. 

It’s worth noting that Wim Hof breathing can be intense, so if you’re prone to panic attacks or hyperventilation, it’s probably best sticking to some slow, deep breathing. 

The same can be said if you’re pregnant or worried about any other aspect of your health – always consult your GP before trying a new approach.

To get started with Wim Hof breathing, Estrela recommends taking the following steps:

1. Get comfortable

“It’s best to do Wim Hof breathing lying down but if you can’t do that just make sure you’re in a comfortable spot on a sofa or soft surface because you can get lightheaded and experience some tingling sensations,” she says. “Make sure you’ve got relaxed shoulders and place one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest so you can feel where the breath is coming in.”

2. Take 30 deep breaths

“All you’re going to do is take roughly 30 breaths with a full inhale, and then a relaxed exhale,” she explains. “The exhale should feel like a sigh or about 40-60% of a full exhale, so you’re not completely empty.”

3. Hold your breath

“Finally, we’re going to do one full breath in, a relaxed exhale and then stop breathing,” she says. “The period after that is called the retention time, where you just lie there and do sweet nothing – your body is just going to do what the body needs to do.”

4. Breathe out

“When you feel that first urge to breathe – you’ll probably feel it in the middle of the chest area where it gets kind of tight – just take an inhale,” Estrela adds. “This is called the recovery breath.”

5. Hold again

“Once you’ve inhaled, hold and count for 15 seconds, then exhale to finish one round,” she concludes. In a typical session of Wim Hof breathing, this cycle is repeated one or two more times.  

Want to learn more about looking after your gut? Click on the links below to listen to the first three episodes of The Gut Life.

Images: Getty