Many men work towards being able to control when they orgasm and for how long. This is done for many reasons, the main reason being to prolong the pleasure-filled feelings correlated with foreplay and sexual activity. In our human bodies, our breath rate, or breathing rate, directly connects to our heart rate. Teaching yourself breath control can be beneficial for intimate and sexual activities as well as helping with anxiety and relaxation.
For example, when you are tired after working strenuously and out of breath, your heart rate beats faster and harder. When you’re relaxing or lounging around, your heartbeat is more relaxed and calmer. After a stressful event, you might sit and take deep, slow breaths in and out- which help to slow your heart and calm your body. At the beginning of a stressful moment, you might breathe heavier while hearing bad news, or out of shock.
When you’re stimulated or participating in sexual activity, your heartbeat speeds up, and your body reacts to the stress and intimate situation. For some men, learning deep rooted breath control can not only help to prolong your orgasm, but can help to train your mind and body for different types of orgasms as well. By controlling your breathing, you thusly control your heart and other automatic feelings and bodily reactions.
Have you ever thought about altering your breathing techniques when you masturbate or have intimate time with your partner? By simply changing the way you breathe, you can alter the pleasure feelings and receptors in your brain, creating an entirely new orgasmic feeling you may have never experienced.
Tips on Practicing Breath Control
Consider trying these tips when learning how to better control your breath.
- One technique that proves especially effective is breathing in deeply and holding your breath for several moments until the urge to ejaculate subsides. Some multi-orgasmic men breathe rapidly to delay ejaculation. This quick, shallow breathing is called the breath of fire in the yoga tradition.
- In one ancient Chinese tradition, it is stated: “He should close his eyes, concentrate his mind, press his tongue against the roof of his mouth, arch his spine, and stretch out his neck. He should then open his nostrils wide, close his mouth, and take in a very deep breath. If he does this in time, he will not ejaculate. Instead, the semen will return and ascend naturally by itself.” Chinese Proverb
- Practice breathing. While practicing your breathing can be boring, if you are finding it difficult devoting ten minutes or so daily to practicing breathing, we would suggest devoting every other meditation session for the next two weeks to doing these breath exercises; that will get you over the hump of conscious effort and help you to habituate these breathing methods into your normal mindfulness practice.
The objective is to use profound abdominal breathing to control your ejaculation and have more stamina and pleasure filled feelings. This requires a high degree of concentration and the ability to multi-task. While making love our tendency is to worry about the other person to the exclusion of everything else, yet this tantric method requires you to devote your attention to the mundane task of abdominal breathing.
The Four Stages of Breath Control
There are four main stages of breath control. They are inhalation, retention, exhalation, and pause.
Inhalation
Since you are designed to breathe of every minute of each day for the rest of your life, it is worthwhile to granularly train your breathing. This starts by flaring your nostrils as you deeply inhale. When you first begin the practice, try focus on perfecting your ability to flare your nostrils with each inhalation. Once you have mastered the flared nostrils, then add the next step.
“…begin a slow inhalation through flared nostrils, drawing air deep down into the bottom of your lungs by expanding the diaphragm downward and letting the abdomen balloon. When lower lungs are full, continue inhaling smoothly and let the rib cage expand to fill the mid lungs, then inhale a bit more to fill the top. It is not necessary or desirable to fill the lungs completely on each inhalation, and you should never force inhalation beyond comfortable capacity. About two-thirds full is the right measure for an inhalation. The final step in inhalation is to sink the big “energy bubble” of breath gently down into the abdominal cavity. This will cause the abdominal wall to balloon out.” Reed.
Retention
The second step is to hold your breath for a moment. After you have inhaled completely and let the breath sink, just hold still for a few seconds. More specifically, listen to this quote: “…never to force retention beyond natural capacity. Work with average retentions of 3 to 5 seconds, and after several months of regular practice, you may occasionally try a few retentions of 7 to 10 seconds…” Reed.
This type of breathing is very beneficial. “Breath retention is complex, subtle, and of central importance to the efficacy of breathing exercises. Heartbeat slows by more than half, blood pressure is substantially reduced, and cellular respiration is triggered. Cells throughout the body start “breathing” by themselves, spontaneously breaking down sugars to release oxygen and automatically excreting cellular wastes into the bloodstream for disposal.” Reed.
You will know you are doing this exercise correctly if there is a noticeable increase in body heat and perspiration after ten minutes or so of practicing your breathing. Reed gives reason for this here, “…cellular respiration generates body heat. This is first felt in the lower abdomen, then spreads slowly to the extremities.”
Exhalation
In this step, you begin your focus with sucking your gut in with your exhale. Reed states one should, “Empty the lungs in reverse order of inhalation: start at the top and end at the bottom. At the end of exhalation, pull the entire abdominal wall inward in order to push the diaphragm upward into the chest.”
This step should be done in a calm and relaxed manner.
“In cold, dry weather, exhalation should always be done through the nostrils in order to replenish heat and moisture borrowed from the turbinate on the way in. However, in warm, humid climates, you may opt for mouth exhalation, which enhances expulsion of toxins, permits more thorough evacuation of air, and helps dissipate excess body heat.” Reed. And adds, “If the breath tends to burst out in an explosive gust, it means you’ve retained too long.”
Pause
This fourth stage of breath control urges you to focus on rhythm and smooth transitions, comparing this breathing to the steps taken while salsa dancing. “When the lungs are completely empty, block the throat by closing the glottis, so that air does not rush back into the vacuum left in your lungs. Now pause for a few seconds to permit the abdominal wall and the diaphragm to relax again, then slowly begin the next inhalation through the nose. If you must gasp for the next inhalation, then you have paused too long.” Reed. He also states that, “it is not the duration or volume of breath retained that works such therapeutic wonders, but rather the smooth, rhythmic regularity of the entire breathing process.”
Once you have got these four steps of breath control down, you can move on to deep abdominal breathing techniques. Deep breathing techniques do not require as much focus and can be done while you are doing mundane activities or household chores.
Keep reading in the series to learn more!
Up Next:
How to Prolong your Orgasm with Breath Control: Specific Techniques
How to Prolong your Orgasm with Breath Control: PC Muscles & Kegel Exercise for Men
How to Prolong your Orgasm with Breath Control: Practice Plan for Men
Citations:
Reed, Daniel. The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity.
National Institutes of Health and Human Services