Read Patricks book years ago and just reminding myself of his excellent and SIMPLE methods to activate the relaxation response. SLOW, gentle, barely noticeable abdominal nose breathing... to the point where you almost feel you need to take a larger breath (it is NOT deep breathing). When stressed our mouth becomes dry but if you do Patricks breathing correctly, your mouth fills with saliva ... that's the sign that your body has de-stressed and you are well oxygenated. Simple but profound and beats Wim Hof any day:

 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/cpc-16-quantum-17015529

I wrote in that blog this: How does cold improve immune regulation??? One fallacy I'd like to slay from the Internet is that it is brought on by breathing patterns. This is a false narrative built by Wim Hoff. It works on a bio-physical mechanism within the WBC which is normally loaded with deuterium to help boost immune response. This means that WBC has more deuterium in them to raise temperature to affect immune function and proton flows. So today I'd like to give you education on both sides of the equation. I truly like Wim Hoff and I love that he brings humans back to nature in the cold I just am not in love that he has no earthly idea why what he does works.

Wim apparently doesn’t know: that heavy “in and out breathing”, as he teaches is beneficial. It is not. This method significantly reduces carbon dioxide in the blood making the blood more alkaline and hemoglobin in alkaline blood has a harder time releasing oxygen to the tissues than in normal blood (which is slightly alkaline).

Due to the Bohr Effect, hypocapnia causes cerebral hypoxia which sounds dangerous and opposite to what Wim Hof states in his classes. It causes headaches and cognitive haze that submariners and astronauts get. Just two parts per million increase in CO2 can cause this in space. NASA uses 2 ppm for its CO2 scrubbers and cosmonauts use 6 ppm for their scrubbers causing problems for astronauts who return from the ISS in a Soyuz space capsule like Scott Kelly did last year. This is why cosmonauts use much less water during re-entry and take a ton of salt instead. Astronauts drink a ton more water with salt but they need to rely on wearing a diaper during re-entry because of the fluid shifts that occur when they come back into gravity and inside the magnetosphere from the vacuum of space. Ironically, this difference in technique between space workers in Russia and the USA is a big tell why some people urinate too much at night and those who do not. Wim’s breathing technique resembles what Kelly faced in his space return and also sounds similar to the childhood fainting game that aims to create euphoria or giddiness.