When you hold your breath to the maximum your body will allow, be it underwater or just in air, you can gain a few seconds extra by slowly releasing your breath. It will feel better and your body won’t react like it is suffocating while you are doing it. Why does this happen? We’ve all tried to hold our breath for as long as we can. We take a huge intake of air and then hold it as much as we can. But, when you breathe out slowly the “air” that’s in your lungs, you don’t feel like you are going to suffocate while doing it. In fact, it’s almost like a great relief. Why is that?
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For a “fun” demonstration of the whole CO2 gives you the urge to breathe thing- try hyperventilating. (Note: don’t actually try this). When you hyperventilate you actually expell too *much* CO2. Do this long enough and it causes the pH of your blood to change, leading to some really freaky symptoms like your hands going numb and then clenching and curling in. I’ve been in this state and it’s not pleasant. The weirdest thing is that if you stop breathing you don’t feel the urge to breathe again for a long time, because you don’t have enough CO2 built up. I once held my breath for like 2 minutes and was completely comfortable the whole time- no feeling of pressure in my lungs at all. I had to remind myself to take in some oxygen after awhile.
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