Errol Doebler, onetime Navy SEAL and FBI agent, has used breathwork throughout his career. From surviving SEAL training and special operations with the 75th Ranger Regiment in Afghanistan in 2010, to dealing with the aftereffects of a traumatic brain injury, this military mindfulness skill has become a surprise go-to for his latest mission: being a parent.
“Family life stress is as real as it gets,” says Doebler, “whether we’re talking about paying the bills, putting food on the table, dealing with our children’s pain, or just getting through a tough day and still being there in the best way for your family. Breathwork gives us a fighting chance of getting through those tough moments.”
Breathwork, the practice of consciously breathing by controlling your inhale and exhale, can reduce heart rate and blood pressure, increase heart rate variability (the normal variation of time between heartbeats), and calm or energize, depending on how you do it. Its benefits are two-fold: daily sessions can have positive long-term effects, and there is a growing body of research that supports using breathwork for mental and physical resilience but its short-term effects are also powerful. Conscious breathing can start to regulate cortisol in moments, overriding our fight-or-flight response and offering a quick fix in times of stress.
For Doebler, conscious breathing was part of his personal survival tactic, an instinctive route through the intensity of SEAL training which has a notoriously high drop-out rate. The idea came to him during drownproofing, a terrifying drill that involves floating and submerging vertically in water with wrists and ankles bound, requiring intense breath control and the ability to remain calm.
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“It was a winter class and, you know, the Pacific Ocean is cold,” recalls Doebler, “When they throw you in the water you just had to start recognizing, ‘apparently when I breathe in deep through my nose and blow out hard, I settle down. So let me just keep doing that,’ not understanding why.”
Years later, as a civilian, Doebler discovered what he had been doing was breathwork. He studied the science behind it and learned the Wim Hof Method to add to his toolkit as a leadership coach and help alleviate his everyday stress. Today, Tactical Breathing (also known as Box Breathing) is an official resource for military and law enforcement personnel to maintain focus in dangerous situations, but Doebler’s current usage is closer to home.
As a work-from-home dad, he now turns to breathwork throughout the day. “I’ll try some Box Breathing,” he says, “but for me with three kids, I don’t have a whole lot of time to consciously sit there and do [even] five minutes.” So he often finds himself doing breathwork on the fly. Doebler and his wife, Jen, have even introduced breathwork to their two young sons and daughter to help them cope with stress or shock.
“I coached my kids’ hockey team and if one of them fell down, it’s [often] the first time that’s happened [for them], so they’re really scared,” Doebler says. “I walk them through the breathing, ‘in through the nose, out through the mouth,’ and when they calm down, I ask them if they’re hurt.” They always say “no,” says Doebler and, after a moment, they get on with the game. “With our kids, it’s always about calming them down first.”
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Focusing on your breath to emotionally steady yourself in a moment of parenting drama is one thing, but regular breathwork might even help with long-term stress and overwhelm. This is particularly important for working moms who, according to a recent major study, are experiencing burnout at increasing rates. Even though couples are better at sharing chores than ever before, it is moms who bear the brunt of the cognitive labor involved in parenting and running a home. They are generally thinking, planning, and even worrying more than dads, and another recent study found that women also tend to take on the emotional stress of friends and family. For some, breathwork might not just be an easy go-to, but an essential skill.
For Doebler, using breathwork for emotional regulation is a game-changer. Before his diagnosis, “I didn’t know I was suffering from traumatic brain injury,” he explains. “I just knew I was suffering from the impact of something. The stress level I felt on a daily basis was overwhelming. My wife noticed some really significant changes in my behavior, my temper.”
He added breathwork into his morning routine and, days later, he remembers Jen saying, “‘I don’t know what this thing you’re doing is, but you can’t stop. I know you’re doing the best you can to settle yourself and not project so much energy, but this really seems to be helping. You seem to be calmer.’ And I was like, ‘okay, then I won’t stop.’”
Military training and drownproofing would be stressful for anyone, but parental difficulties can carry a significant intensity, even when a problem might seem insignificant to others. “I know my story resonates because it’s so extreme, but it’s not a competition,” says Doebler. “What’s painful for you may not be painful for me. And what’s painful for me might not be painful for you. Your pain is your pain. When you’re just upset because your daughter was rude to you, that matters. That’s just as important.”
You can learn breathwork in moments, but Doebler recommends cold water therapy, the Wim Hof method, as “the best way to practice your breathwork… the cold water will take your breath away and make it hard to control your breathing, which is exactly what happens when you have a panic attack or experiencing heavy stress.” Once mastered, “you can deal with stress using your breath on the fly.”
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Dr. Guy Fincham, founder of the Brighton & Sussex Breathwork Lab in the UK, agrees that slow-paced routines like box breathing, are good “situational breathwork techniques… that you can do in the moment,” adding that “coherent breathing” (five breaths per minute), and the “physiological sigh, which is a double inhale through the nose and a long, prolonged exhale out through the mouth,” are other useful “micro-breathing” practices.
But, for Fincham, these easy, go-to techniques are part of a continuum. If slow-paced breathwork “is like walking, and then Wim Hof is more like running, and then the really intense stuff like conscious connected breathing and Holotropic, that’s like sprinting.”
A recent study reveals more intense breathwork might be a potential future focus for mental health treatments. Research into psychedelic-assisted therapies, although promising, is slow moving. While findings are generally hopeful for those with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, the long wait for watertight evidence and regional drug restrictions mean these treatments are out of the grasp of many. But the study found another route to achieving a similarly altered state of consciousness: circular breathing.
When performed in a supportive social setting with music, researchers in Berlin found volunteers had comparable experiential and physiological effects (measured in decreased CO2 saturation) to therapeutic psilocybin or LSD-powered sessions.
With growing ways to use breathwork to promote healthfulness, what’s intriguing here is the skill’s adaptability, and how its benefits can be advanced with a little consistency. “In terms of long-term benefits, you need to practice the slower-paced [techniques] daily,” says Fincham, “like you’re doing cardio.”
From ice bathing and supported group sessions to adding just a few minutes practice to your daily routine, you can take any route to mastering breathwork and draw on it whenever you need to—particularly good news for those navigating the highs and lows of being a parent.
“Any time you can recognize stress and then use your breath to calm yourself down and make more deliberate and conscious decisions,” says Doebler, “well, only good can come from that.”