Lessons From Holding Your Breath For 22 Minutes!

By Shaun Cooper, Director & Senior Mentorship Coach, Lighthouse International

Stig Severinsen is a Danish scientist, Doctor and free-diver who captured the world record in 2012 for holding his breath underwater for 22 minutes! You read that correctly - 22 minutes. This is not an ability he was born with but he developed this incredible ability through being completely committed to mastering this basic function of living. So what can we learn in his journey to achieving such an amazing feat?

On Embracing Pain

Legends learn to embrace pain and use it to help them grow and realise their potential more...

"I always just laugh in the face of pain. There is no pain, just your perception of pain. Sometimes I leave my body and view it from three feet above and other times I completely erase my memory and have no clue what I have been thinking about.”

On Mastery

In a world accustomed to quick-fixes, we see extraordinary achievements being accomplished by ‘super-humans’ and out of the limits for 'us mere morals'. However, by being committed to mastering something in our lives it’s amazing who we can become and what we can accomplish.

"I consider myself quite normal and firmly believe most people can train themselves to do incredible things. It just takes around those 10,000 hours (or a lifetime) and many people are not willing to put that commitment into something. They wanna look cool and have a quick fix, but that is not really how true mastery comes along. It takes dedication, time, perseverance, and faith."

The Importance of Deep Conscious Breathing

It's been found that we breathe around 25,000 times a day, however most of us don’t optimise this important function nor do many of us appreciate the immense benefit that breathing correctly has on our physical, mental, and emotional well being:

"Breathing is such a fundamental part of life and enhanced breathing has proven to improve functions in numerous areas: improving cardiovascular capacity, balancing the nervous system, endocrine system (hormones), digestive system, and more."

"Lower your heart rate and change your brainwave activity. In a normal state, your brain would be in Beta, but once you relax and feel good it goes into Alpha. That is a great state of mind and often linked to an experience of extreme joyfulness and happiness."

Imagine the impact this could well have on our energy levels, our ability to focus, our self-awareness, feeling calmer and what we could achieve through this. Here's a video of his world record feat...

What struck you most from what Stig Severinsen shared here? Share your comments below...

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