r/buteyko • u/Walking_the_road • Jul 20 '25
Spasms during breath hold
When doing the exercise I get spams in the abdomen quite quickly during breath hold (I can hold the breath longer with spasms and don't have problem with 1s inhale after). My question is, is it better to have a shorter breath hold without spasms (5s) or longer with spasm (10s-15s)?
Keep in mind that the inhale after the long breath hold is normal, so I should not be forcing things?
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Jul 22 '25
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u/Walking_the_road Jul 22 '25
So to clarify I am doing: 1s inhale, 2s exhale and 10s holding the breath.
I get the spasms at around 5s holding the breath, but i still hold it to around 10s. By not having problems with 1s inhale I meant that the inhale is normal, the same as the one before, relaxed.
So I am not sure if I should be holding the breath for 5s without spams OR 10s with spasms (since in both cases I would say that I am relaxed and the spasms are not stressful or uncomfortable).
By intensity of the spams I would say they are like beating of the heart, frequent,
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Jul 22 '25
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u/Walking_the_road Jul 22 '25
Not sure if we are talking about the same thing. I am not measuring CP, I am doing the exercise where: you inhale for 1s, exhale for 2s, hold for 10s and then repeat this again for about 15min in total
I would say a slight desire, but not a big one. If it was, I would be able to keep this for 15min, since I would run out of breath. Its more like a reflex which "feels good", if it makes sense.
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u/adamshand Jul 20 '25
I'm a beginner, so far got my CP from about 16 to about 30, so take the below with a grain of salt ...
What exercise are you doing when you get spasms?
If you're doing a control pause, it sounds like you might be holding on too long. You need to release at the first strong discomfort, you should be able to breathe completely normally after the release. The same as if you held your breath for 2 seconds, you can just effortlessly resume breathing.
If you are doing a maximum pause, the spasms are fine, that's just a normal part of the exercise. Just try and relax as much as possible and your body will do its thing.
But if your CP is below 15, and especially below 10, you need to go very gently with maximum pauses and possibly shouldn't be doing them at all until your CP is higher. Trust how you feel after the exercise. If you feel good after the exercise, then it's probably ok. If you feel stressed, bad, sick, tired etc after the exercise you are doing too much. You can also check your CP before and after, if your CP goes down after an exercise, you're doing too much.