Executive Mastery: From Stress to Serenity in One Hold

In the sun-baked village of Yelapa, Mexico, where the jungle spills into the sea and time seems to stretch like taffy, I found myself playing guinea pig to my own curiosity.

It was 2020, and I had been living there for a while, spearfishing for my family dinners and pushing my breath-holds to extend my underwater hunts.

The ocean was my proving ground, each dive a test of how long I could linger on the bottom, waiting for “huachinango,” the Mexican name for red snapper, or grouper to drift into range.

But that week, my focus shifted from the underwater world to a small group of clients: three high-powered executives who had flown in for private MovNat training.

They were the kind of guys who crushed boardrooms but confessed to crumbling under stress, insomnia, anxiety...the works.

After two days of crawling through sand on the beach, balancing on logs by the river, and scaling vines in the jungle, dinner brought a new topic as the sun dipped low, painting the sky in oranges and pinks.

Conversation turned to breath.

“What’s the secret to holding it?” Alex asked, a yoga-curious exec who had mentioned his nightly battles with sleep.

They were intrigued, so I suggested an experiment by the pool’s edge the next afternoon. No water, just curiosity.

“Sit comfortably,” I said. “Hold your breath as long as you can. Twice. We’ll time it.”

No instructions, no tricks, just raw attempts.

Michael, a tech whiz with a runner’s lean frame, tapped out at 45 seconds on his best try.

Deepak, a chubby numbers guru, hit 55 seconds.

Alex, who had dabbled in yoga but never dove, managed 2 minutes 20 seconds, decent for a newbie, but far from their potential.

They looked at me expectantly, wiping tension from their cheeks and brows.

“Okay,” I replied, “now let’s see what happens with guidance.”

Over the next 40 minutes, I walked them through the basics, not as athletes chasing numbers, but as explorers of their inner worlds.

We started with relaxation.

“Feel your diaphragm soften, your shoulders drop. This isn’t a fight. It’s a relationship with your body.”

I explained the science simply. The urge to breathe isn’t just CO₂ buildup. It’s a nervous system alarm, a prediction of threat shaped by mindset and neurology.

“Your brain’s wired to panic, but you can rewrite that script.”

No hyperventilation. That’s a shortcut, fooling your body but risking dizziness or worse.

I shared a quick tale from my preteen days.

I had hyperventilated, then compressed my chest with my arms wrapped around it, only to black out for half a minute.

A reckless game I didn’t grasp until later.

“We’re building true tolerance here, not using tricks.”

I warmed them up with short but progressively longer holds.

With every hold, I guided them. My voice, tone, and choice of words deliberately inducing deep calm, relaxation, trust, and patience.

That’s the “green” zone.

Soon, they were ready for a max attempt.

I told them exactly what would happen, the sensations they would experience in body and mind when they got past the “orange” zone and entered the “red” zone.

I told them how the monk would need to become the samurai to enter the final battlefield and walk through the firewall.

Michael surfaced at 2 minutes 10 seconds, nearly triple his baseline.

Deepak hit 2 minutes 38 seconds.

Alex? 4 minutes 10 seconds.

His face ecstatic as he emerged, eyes wide with disbelief.

“How?” he gasped, laughing.

They all did.

No dizziness, no panic, only a surge of triumph, like they had unlocked a secret door.

In under an hour, they had shattered their limits.

Not through grueling reps or fancy gear.

Not through any physiological or chemical trick.

But through mindset.

Physiology adapts over weeks.

But the mind?

It can flip in an instant.

It can be rewired in minutes.

Their bodies hadn’t changed. Their beliefs had.

No CO₂ “tolerance” magic, just trust in calm, overriding the brain’s autonomic alarms.

The Science Behind the Myth: It’s Not Just CO₂

These breakthroughs, multiplying your maximum breath-hold ability by 3 or 4 in a matter of minutes, not months, weren’t anomalies.

They are a window into how breath-holding really works when done right.

Traditional views pin the urge to breathe on CO₂ buildup, triggering chemoreceptors in the brainstem to demand air.

And yes, tolerance to CO₂ improves with training, but science shows it takes 1–2 weeks for physiological adaptations like chemoreceptor recalibration to kick in.

So how did my clients torch their breath-hold built-in limits in under an hour?

The answer lies beyond CO₂.

The nervous system plays a central role.

The urge is a multifaceted prediction, rhythm disruption, oxygen thresholds, and sensory cues all play a part.

Hyperventilation, like in WHM, delays it artificially by flushing CO₂, but risks vasoconstriction and reduced cerebral blood flow.

Elite freedivers avoid it for this reason.

My approach?

No tricks.

Just guiding the mind to reframe the signals.

This taps psychophysiology: intention overrides autonomic reflexes, fostering neuroplasticity faster than physiology alone.

This is why their recovery was effortless, with no migraines or motor issues, proving the method’s safety.

Studies echo this.

Psychological training delays the urge via cortical override, with mindset shifts yielding gains in minutes.

In my session, the executives’ rapid progress stemmed from learning to relax the diaphragm and nervous system, reframing discomfort as a signal, not a siren.

It’s not about enduring.

It’s about transforming the response.

Their post-max breath-hold elation, Michael’s feeling of unmatched clarity, Deepak’s intense sense of personal achievement and Alex calling his experience “meditation on steroids", all of it mirrored my own BreathHoldWork practice epiphanies.

Why This Matters: From Spearfishing to Everyday Resilience

This story isn’t just about numbers.

It’s about reclaiming control.

Mindset trumps CO₂ myths.

In spearfishing, I had hidden behind rocks, waiting for fish to approach.

The longer I stayed still, the closer they came, drawn by the unknown.

But any twitch, any vibration from eager thoughts, and they vanished.

It taught me:

Stillness isn’t absence.

It is mastery under pressure.

That insight shaped my practice.

Relaxation amid the storm of air hunger, turning instinctual alarm into intentional calm.

For readers facing anxiety or stress, this is transformative.

Unlike WHM’s intense hyperventilation, which can overload the nervous system, my method builds resilience gently, rewiring the brain for poise in chaos.

Science backs it.

Mild, controlled hypoxic bouts enhance vagal tone, reducing emotional dysregulation.

In Yelapa, those executives didn’t just extend their holds.

They rewired their response to pressure.

Your mind holds untapped power.

Are you ready to unlock it?

​

Erwan Le Corre

Founder of BreathHoldWork®

​PS: This is just a taste of what is coming in my forthcoming book​."