Featured Breathing Tools for Relaxation and Clarity
What is Conscious Breathing?
Modern research in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology shows that even small changes in how we breathe can have a profound effect on the body. Conscious breathing influences the nervous system, physical performance, recovery, rejuvenation and long-term wellbeing.
CO₂ is the body’s regulator of breathing balance.
Explore the Cardiseries for advanced CO2 tolerance training
Discover how conscious breathing and CO₂ tolerance shape the body, nervous system, and mind.
Breathe better and experience life-changing benefits for the mind, body and soul
Discover the power of CO2 for body recovery, strength endurance, and resilience
Improve your circulation, heart, skin, respiratory, and gastrointestinal systems and experience change
Courses & Education
CO2 ACADEMY
One of the most overlooked factors in breathing is carbon dioxide. Far from being a waste gas, CO₂ plays a central role in regulating mental clarity, physical function, and long-term health.
Meet the founder of Conscious Breathing
Anders Olsson is the founder of Conscious Breathing and a globally recognized authority on breathing science and CO₂ physiology. His work has influenced tens of thousands of people worldwide and is featured in James Nestor’s bestselling book Breath for his exceptional understanding of how breathing shapes human health, calmness, and longevity.
Wim Hof vs Conscious Breathing
A common question is what makes Conscious Breathing different from Wim Hof breathing. Which way to breathe is correct? Which method is best? Is it possible to combine the two?
Cardihaler™
Developed by Anders Olsson
Trusted by 100,000+ people worldwide
Advanced CO₂ Breathing Device for Performance, Recovery & Longevity
Shop extra Components and accessories for your devices
BREATHE
There is nothing new about the importance of breathing. Just a few minutes of oxygen deprivation is enough to destroy the brain’s ability to process incoming information forever. Access three free guided inXhale exercises to support calm, ease, and smoother breathing.
No experience needed.
Frequently asked questions
How fast can you get results from breath training?
It differs a lot from person to person when an effect can be expected. Some people will notice improvements immediately, while it will take a little longer for others.
In general, as in most other cases, a tiny effort produces a tiny result. So we highly recommend that you do the entire training program for 28 days and use all four tools included in the conscious breathing training:
- Breath awareness. Awareness is often the first step to change. The first step in the 7 steps of the Conscious Breathing program is, therefore, to become more aware of your breathing by answering the 20 questions in the breathing index.
- Mouth taping at night. Many of us have our mouths open while we sleep. Mouth breathing at rest automatically means that we are overbreathing. This hyperventilation creates an imbalance between oxygen (too much) and carbon dioxide (too little). Taping your mouth shut at night with Sleep Tape is an extremely simple, yet very powerful tool. Since it is not easy to keep an eye on your breathing while sleeping, using Sleep Tape ensures that your mouth stays closed during the night and ensures nasal breathing only. Nasal breathing provides a calmer sleep and minimal energy leakage, which increases the opportunity for your body to engage in healing, repairing, and recovery.
- Train with the Relaxator. By using the Relaxator Breath Trainer, you can change your breathing habits so that they meet the needs of your body. The Relaxator will help you breathe lower, slower, and more rhythmically. It will also improve the muscle tone of your upper respiratory tract and strengthen your diaphragm, your most important breathing muscle.
- Physical activity with closed mouth. Optimum breathing begins in your nose. If your nose is tight and you have difficulty breathing through it, it is often a sign that your breathing has room for improvement. In your nose, under the turbinates, there are erectile tissues. They will puff up if your carbon dioxide pressure is too low, as a defense mechanism, a way to help prevent carbon dioxide outflow, since carbon dioxide leaves your body upon exhalation. Physical activity with your mouth closed will improve your ability to breathe through your nose. As you improve your breathing and restore your carbon dioxide pressure, the nasal erectile tissue will decrease in size, and your nose will then feel less narrow.
More information on the 28 Days Breath Training Program can be found here.
Why shall I exhale through my nose when working out?
Question: I go to a gym regularly. I am riding at full speed and try keeping my mouth shut. It works out pretty well. BUT then I go into a leader-led group, and the instructor constantly tells me to exhale through my mouth. I ignore it. Is there any reason for thinking panting is good? The only advantage I see is that with open exhalation I do not have to blow my nose that often! After all, I manage it quite well, so why change a concept that works? However, I want to know why it is good to exhale through your mouth.
Answer: Start by asking your instructor what he or she thinks are the most important benefits of exhaling through your mouth. The reply will help you understand the depth of knowledge the instructor has about breathing. In general, the knowledge of breathing in the training world may not always be that deep.
Here are some benefits of exhaling through your nose:
- Water retention. A Swedish study showed that 42% more water leaves the body when exhaling through the mouth compared to the nose. So you will retain more water when exhaling through the nose.
- Optimum CO2 pressure. Maintaining an optimum carbon dioxide (CO2) pressure. The same study also shows that the breathing volume increased by 12% when exhaling through your mouth compared to your nose, which means that the outflow of carbon dioxide also increased. A reduced carbon dioxide pressure in the blood results in poorer oxygenation of your muscles (the Bohr effect). Since CO2 also has a widening and relaxing effect on the smooth muscles surrounding your blood vessels, it is more difficult for the blood to reach your muscles. Low CO2 pressure is probably a major reason many people experience a lower heart rate with nasal breathing during exercise.
- Re-heated and re-moisturized nose. If you exhale through your nose, your nose is re-heated and re-moisturized by the exhalation air from your lungs, which is 100% saturated with water vapor and warmed to 37° C (98.6° F). If you exhale through your mouth, your nose will eventually not work optimally as it gets colder and drier over time.
- Clean away bacteria and viruses. Particles, bacteria, and viruses trapped in your nose on inhalation, will disappear when exhaling through your nose. If you also breathe in through your mouth, you skip your body’s first line of defense against external intruders (your nose), and more particles, bacteria, and viruses will end up in your lungs. This will create inflammation, and your lungs will have to produce more mucus to get rid of the particles. Both will contribute to narrower air passages.
- Efficient lung gas exchange. The oxygen you inhale is transferred to the blood in the lung's alveoli, while the CO2 produced in your body goes in the opposite direction. This is called the gas exchange. Since your nose has a narrower passage compared to your mouth, a higher pressure is maintained in your lungs if you exhale through your nose. This higher pressure makes the alveoli work more efficiently.
Why do you sometimes need to take a big breath?
QUESTION: Why do I sometimes feel the urge to take a big (deep) breath, sigh, or yawn? And this occurs completely automatically. Does the body suddenly need more oxygen or what is the reason?
ANSWER: You need to take big breaths and breathe in a lot of air because you have held your breath and, thus, increased the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in your body.
When we breathe the intended way, that is, breathing in a way that corresponds to the body’s needs, we maintain a balance between oxygen and CO2. We take in oxygen from the outside as we breathe in, while CO2 is constantly produced in the body and leaves the body on exhalation.
However, when our breathing is stressed — shallow, fast, big, irregular, noisy, tense, labored, and through the mouth — an imbalance between oxygen and carbon dioxide occurs. Shallow, fast, big (which some call deep), noisy, tense breathing through the mouth provides too much oxygen and too little carbon dioxide while holding the breath provides the reverse: too little oxygen and too much carbon dioxide. Irregular and labored breathing alternates between the two.
What makes us take the next breath? Surprisingly it is not a lack of oxygen that stimulates breathing. It is the level of CO2 in the body, the CO2 pressure, that controls breathing. As CO2 levels rise, the respiratory center is triggered, which stimulates the phrenic nerve, which, in turn, stimulates the diaphragm to move downward, and we inhale.
On the subsequent exhalation, we exhale the excess CO2. When enough CO2 has been built up in the body, the respiratory center is triggered again, and a new breathing cycle begins.
When you need to take a big breath, you have probably held your breath, or breathed too little, so that too much CO2 has been built up. The big breath is, after all, accompanied by an equally big exhalation, and then the body gets rid of the excess CO2.
The need to take big breaths and to sigh and yawn increases if you have the habit of breathing fast, shallowly, and/or big as this over time increases the outflow of CO2. This type of breathing reduces the CO2 pressure in the body, which makes the breathing center more sensitive, i.e. we develop a lower tolerance for CO2, and the need to sigh or take big breaths increases.
Conscious Breathing involves breath awareness, tools, and exercises to help increase the CO2 tolerance, which will lead to optimal oxygenation.
Here are a couple of articles that further explain the role of carbon dioxide in the body:
Can nasal breathing give us too much carbon dioxide?
QUESTION: When breathing through the mouth, we exhale more carbon dioxide than the body produces, and your theory is that the respiratory tract in the nose is blocked to prevent excessive carbon dioxide outflow. I have previously read the book Relaxation and Mental Training — For a Richer Lifeby Eva Johansson, and it says this: “It is also important that you breathe out properly.”
Then, an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the blood is prevented, which in itself can create anxiety. This makes me a bit confused. Have I misunderstood something? If we breathe through the nose, may we get too much carbon dioxide in the blood?
ANSWER: As with everything else, it is all about balance, so we may have too much carbon dioxide, and we may have too little. Excessive levels of carbon dioxide are especially common when you have damaged lung tissue and have been diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or pulmonary emphysema. For most other people, however, the opposite is true: that the level of carbon dioxide is too low.
However, many people seem to have misunderstood the importance of carbon dioxide for a body in balance and see it only as a residual product that is produced when nutrients are converted to energy in the cells and that it should leave the body as quickly as possible.
I think this common misconception is one reason why it says what it does in Eva Johansson’s book. My view is that carbon dioxide is as far from a simple residual product as it can possibly be. In a rather healthy person, it is the level of carbon dioxide that controls the rate and volume of the breathing. As you get worse, oxygen levels become more important in triggering the breathing reflex, but in most of us it is the carbon dioxide pressure that controls the breathing.
This fact alone, that carbon dioxide controls our breathing, which is the body’s most important function, should be more than enough to kill the myth that carbon dioxide is dangerous. When firefighters in the United States (I do not know about the situation in Sweden) check to see if a person is still alive, they check neither the pulse nor the oxygen saturation in the blood. They check to see if the exhaled air contains carbon dioxide. If it does, it means the person is still alive. One can, thus, have a non-existent pulse but still be alive.
Normal breathing at rest is 6-12 breaths per minute at about half a liter per breath, which gives a breathing volume of 3-6 liters of air per minute and a carbon dioxide pressure of about 40-45 mmHg.
In the case of impaired breathing, it is common for us to breathe more, 18-25 breaths per minute or more, with a larger volume for each breath that gives a breathing volume of 10-15 liters per minute. When we breathe in this way, we lose carbon dioxide and thereby lower the carbon dioxide pressure to below 40 mmHg. A carbon dioxide pressure of 35 mmHg or lower is considered hyperventilation.
Over time, a new normal state is, thus, established in the body, where the respiratory reflex is triggered by even lower carbon dioxide levels in the blood. When we practice breathing, we teach the body to tolerate a higher carbon dioxide pressure so that the breathing reflex is triggered less frequently.
In addition to controlling breathing, carbon dioxide has many other important functions, including:
Germicidal agent. It has been used in the food industry since the 1930s, and, for example, cheese and coffee are packed in 100% carbon dioxide.
Expanding smooth muscles. It has a widening and relaxing effect on smooth muscles, the muscles we cannot control with the will, which are found in respiratory passages, blood vessels, intestines, the uterus, etc.
Increasing oxygenation. It causes oxygen to be more easily released from blood into our cells to be used for cellular respiration (this is called the Bohr effect).
Here is an article I wrote in an attempt to clarify the topic: “Carbon dioxide pressure is more important than blood pressure“.
What are the major benefits from Conscious Breathing?
QUESTION: I want to ask you, Anders, what is your best health benefit from Conscious Breathing?
ANSWER: My improved breathing has mainly contributed to me learning to turn off the turbo and slow down so that I am more present and aware and less stressed. This, in turn, has opened up a window of opportunities to react differently to incoming stimuli. In other words, I am no longer a slave to my learned behaviors from childhood.
- I stay healthier. I am very rarely sick nowadays. More of my resources can then be devoted to learning and development instead of trying to recover. And when I get sick, I have learned to appreciate the fact that my body is telling me to slow down. Being sick, even if it is only a mild cold, is also an opportunity to get a different perspective on life and gain new insights.
- I am kinder to my body. In the past, my body was just a simple tool in the pursuit of the goals my brain had set. Reaching these goals was far more important than the well-being of my body. These days, my body is my best friend, and “we” only do things we think are fun and make us feel good!
- I am less scared and more daring. Fear is an effective way to prevent us from living the lives we desire. By daring to be who I am, I have become the protagonist of my own life. I am no longer afraid of death, accidents, lack of money, giving speeches, embarrassments, failures or whatever others think of me. Breathing has become my faithful friend who is always with me and who I can safely lean on when I need support.
- I feel an increased sense of freedom. Improved breathing habits have helped me find an inner strength. Nowadays, I am rarely guided by needs like cravings for sugar or feel that I must have the latest technological gadget. Nor does the clock, stress, anxiety or anger have any greater influence on my life. It has also become easier to cope with setbacks as I have realized that they help me develop and grow as a human being. There is a huge feeling of freedom to increasingly being able to choose my reaction to incoming stimuli and no longer being a “slave” to old habits and learned behaviors.
- My relationships have improved. It has become easier to familiarize myself with other people’s situations and understand the reasons for their thoughts, opinions and actions. My critical and judgmental inner dialogue has been replaced with acceptance, humility and curiosity. By focusing on my breathing, I can more easily create a bit of distance between my thoughts and emotions and, to an increasing extent, keep calm in difficult situations. The result is that I feel an increased connection with everything living: animals, plants and people.
- I am more in contact with my inner guide. When I hesitate before a decision, I am helped by breathing low, rhythmically and slowly by prolonging my exhalation. This helps me stay calm and focused so that I more easily can get in touch with my inner guidance. Rhythmic breathing helps me switch from intellect and logic to gut feeling and intuition. It has given me strong confidence in my inherent ability to make the right decisions, and I feel I make increasingly wiser decisions in my everyday life, in the small as well as the large perspective.
You can read more about my journey here: Meet Anders Olsson, founder of Conscious Breathing.
Read articles and scientific research on CO₂, breathing, and human physiology
CO₂ Therapy Speeds Up Wound Healing
CO₂ Therapy Speeds Up Wound Healing
CO₂ Therapy Speeds Up Wound Healing
|Anders Olsson
