The Breathwork-Cold Plunge Debate, When You *Shouldn’t* Do Wim Hof Breath & What Happens When 1 Million People Breathe Together

**Ben Greenfield** (0:00)
My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

**Nick Sweeney** (0:05)
And the doctor told me, you're not gonna walk normally again, your career's a ****. That was the beginning of my journey into breath. I am trying to get a billion people breathing in perfect sync. This is my mission, it's my best guess on how to make the world a better place. You'll have a lot of fun, and you'll find a lot of benefits.

**Ben Greenfield** (0:27)
Welcome to the Boundless Life, with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.
My guest on today's show is Nick Sweeney. He made an app called Coherence. It's kind of like a breathwork coach in your pocket. He has this super unique form of breathwork called Vortex, which I've done a few times, as you'll hear in this show. He's leading this global breathwork movement with the goal of a million people doing synchronized breathing together. And you can access all the show notes, grab his app, everything else at bengreenfieldlife.com/nickpodcast.
That's bengreenfieldlife.com/n I C K podcast. Let's go talk with Nick. All right, Nick, so I actually did my homework for today's show. I did not just one, but two of your breathwork sessions in my sauna over the past week, just like the ones you have on YouTube. First of all, they were great. And there was some new stuff in there, like this whole Vortex thing, where I was like counting down from 13 all the way down to one. I'll let you explain it in greater detail. But before we jump into your your backstory and how you got into this in the first place, how do you describe this whole like Vortex breathwork thing to people?

**Nick Sweeney** (2:03)
Yeah, well, first and foremost, thank you. I'm honored and it's a pleasure to be here because when I lost my ability to walk in a biking accident in college, I read your Boundless book from front to back and was a walking textbook. And so good, good portion of that is why I'm here today. And so I wanted to extend some gratitude first and foremost. Secondly, the Vortex is a inward spiral pattern that follows the Fibonacci sequence that you see in nature, that comes from, you see it in galaxies, you see it in Vortex mathematics, you see it in 369 mathematics and sacred geometry. And without getting to woo woo, the Vortex breath is a throttle on your nervous system where it slows you down. You're forced to slow your breath down and make it extremely intentional. And so 13 in, 13 out, eight in, eight out, five in, five out, three in, three out, two in, two out, one in, one out, hold, is you hitting the reset on your nervous system in terms of slowing that breath down and using your core to barely move your nose hairs and barely move your breath.
So it is a centering breath. It's balancing the different branches of the nervous system.
And it's something that came to me a few years ago, and I had never seen it done before. And I started applying it to my practice as a way to finish and enter into meditations. And I found it to be very effective. So not a lot of scientific literature on that. In fact, it's like zero at the moment. I know your audience likes the evidence, but that is the tip of the spear, if you will.

**Ben Greenfield** (3:58)
Yeah, show me the PubMed. Okay, so 1313-8855-332211, like 13 in, 13 out, 8 in, 8 out, 5 in, 5 out, et cetera.
Why those numbers specifically?

**Nick Sweeney** (4:13)
So that is the specific 1.618 ratio mathematic sequence of the Fibonacci. And you see that in the seashells, you see that in different things, but that is also something that, that mathematic sequence is in our bodies. It's in our bronchial tubes. It's in the way that our heart vortex is as well. And so there was just this pairing of this mathematic idea and this physiological mechanism of the breath, putting those two things together.
And there is a specific unique effect that happens there. But those are just simple numbers, and you can actually go from 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 13, 13, 21, 21, 34, 34, 55, 55, all the way up.

**Ben Greenfield** (5:07)
You could do 55 count in, 55 count out, like on one.

**Nick Sweeney** (5:11)
I'm struggling, and I do not look composed when I'm doing it, but I have done it.