How Does David Blaine Hold His Breath?

Disclaimer: Holding one's breath underwater is an extreme stunt that should only be attempted by trained professionals. I should know because I tried to hold my breath while writing this article, and it was bloody difficult. 

On June 11th, 2019, David Blaine arrived in Manchester as part of his UK Tour: Real or Magic. Although my interest in magic had been dwindling for a couple of years, I couldn’t resist going to see it. After all, it was the hottest ticket in magic; almost every magician had nabbed one, and I’m so glad I did, too.

It was one of the most astonishing pieces of live theatre, let alone magic shows, I have ever seen.

I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s genuinely a show that I have frequently referenced in the years since. Partly because the magic in the first act was so jaw-droppingly good, from his incomparable card-to-mouth trick to his incredible support act from Asi Wind, but it was the second half that truly stuck with me: Blaine held his breath underwater.

Theatrically, it was pretty simple. No music, no bravado, we all sat and watched a dude just floating in water whilst a timer hovered above him. Out of context, it sounds a little creepy, sure, but nobody could take their eyes off of him. One by one, as each second slowly ticked by, members of the crowd began to cheer for him, growing louder and louder, so much so that the closer we inched to the ten-minute mark, the energy in the room became palpable. It was as if we were witnessing a historical event or the final race at the Olympic Games.

I did not doubt that what Blaine was doing was real, so how could his body endure something so gruelling? And not just once, but night after night? And, more importantly, why?

*INHALES*

Well, Blaine is famously partial to the odd death-defying stunt. Throughout his career, he has been buried alive, electrified, and suspended in a glass box without food for forty days, to name but a few. Most recently, he floated across the Arizona desert, dangling from nothing but a big old bunch of helium balloons, reminiscent of a Pixar classic. 

This is all quite unusual when you consider how he started off doing Ambitious Card on the telly. In an excellent David Blaine Analysis video (or Blainalysis, if you will), Jack Rhodes argues that the juxtaposition of extreme endurance stunts and close-up magic helps suggest that perhaps the card “tricks” are also real.

This is, as Jack puts it, one ‘ballsy double bluff.’

Now, out of all the stunts that made Blaine a household name, why did he choose to end his show that night in Manchester with a breath hold?

Blaine has talked about his childhood obsession with Houdini, and his influence certainly shows. But in the late '80s, a news story about a boy trapped under a frozen river who survived 45 minutes of submergence without brain damage truly inspired him. 'If the boy could survive without breathing for that long, there must be a way that I could do it,’ Blaine thought. Furthermore, being the showman he is, he planned to break the world record on prime-time television.

The idea was easier said than done.

There are numerous risks to holding your breath, as you can imagine, such as reduced oxygen levels, higher rates of CO2 in your bloodstream, lung injury, cardiac arrest, blacking out and dying, and those are just the fun ones! 

So, with the consultancy of top neurosurgeons and doctors, Blaine explored other ways of achieving the effect, as, after all, he is a magician. This included a device aptly named a ‘rebreather’, which was ‘a tube from Home Depot, with a balloon duct-taped to it'. That didn’t work. Then he tried holding his breath in perflubron rather than water, a chemical so high in oxygen you could theoretically breathe it.

Spoiler alert: you can’t.

Only one possible solution remained: actually doing it. 

*GASP*

Blaine described the world-record holder at the time, Tom Sietas, as ‘perfectly built for holding his breath,’ because he is the perfect size and weight, and ‘his total lung capacity is twice the size of an average person.’

Genetic advantages that enhance this skill do appear elsewhere in certain societies. The nomadic Bajau people, for instance, are native to Southeast Asia and can free-dive (diving without any apparatus) for 13 minutes and 200 feet deep, which can come in handy as they hunt for fish.

According to a study from the Cell journal in 2018, the Bajau have this incredible ability due to a genetically enlarged spleen, ‘providing them with a larger reservoir of oxygenated red blood cells.’

Yet, Blaine was never blessed with these qualities. When he began his journey to setting the world record, he considered himself ‘fat’ and ‘big-boned’ (his words, not mine!), so if he was going to really hold his breath underwater, he had to undergo extreme training. He dropped 50 pounds, controlled his diet, and trained so hard that his resting heart rate went as low as 38 bpm, ‘which is lower than most Olympic athletes’.

The way Blaine talks about the process makes it sound as though it was some kind of addiction. He would regularly ‘purge’ his lungs by holding his breath for five minutes at a time, then breathe for a minute, and repeat for an hour every morning, leaving himself frazzled and dazed. I even remember him talking about the training process during his tour show, specifically how Navy Seals would carry weights underwater up and down the lengths of swimming pools until the very moment they blacked out. The idea was to train them to be so close to death that the process would desensitise them to it. Happy days!

In 2006, the time came for Blaine’s world record attempt. Unfortunately, interference from television executives made it all the more challenging, as they insisted the event would be more entertaining if he escaped from handcuffs whilst holding his breath. What they didn’t consider was the added movements of him fiddling with the handcuffs actually wasted crucial oxygen and energy that he needed to hold his breath, thus counterintuitively mucking the whole thing up. The world record at the time was 8m58s. Blaine managed 7m30s. He had failed.

*WHEEZE*

A few years later, Blaine re-attempted the stunt, but with a couple of differences: this was a ‘pure O2 static apnea record’, meaning he was able to breathe pure oxygen first, lowering his levels of CO2 and allowing him to hold his breath for much longer; he also attempted it on Oprah.

In his TED Talk, Blaine details the changes occurring whilst submerged, and it’s pretty horrific: his heartbeat continuously fluctuated, his limbs went numb, and, most surprisingly, he had a very, very, very strong urge to breathe.

Remarkably, Blaine beat the world record at 17 minutes and four seconds, an achievement that took years in the making. Although it has since been broken (the current record is held by Budimir Šobat of Croatia, who set it in March 2021 at 24 minutes 37.36 seconds), you can still hear in Blaine’s voice when he speaks of the breath hold how much that moment and magic, in general, mean to him.

Will David Blaine try to reclaim the title once again? Who knows? He doesn’t seem to be in a rush to. The fact is that he managed to accomplish something very few people have been able to do. Something that I, as well as the lucky audiences who got to see his show nearly five years ago, am able to say I witnessed him do live: hold his breath underwater for ten minutes. 

In many ways, Blaine and Šobat, who themselves possess no genetic fish-like advantages, prove that pretty much anyone can attempt to beat the world record or achieve their very own personal best at the very least. Even actress Kate Winslet hit the headlines in the last couple of years as it was revealed that she managed to hold her breath for over seven minutes whilst filming the sequel to Avatar. 

However, reading this article, researching Blaine's interviews, and visiting the world of Avatar at Disney World isn’t enough to join the breath-hold club. You’ve got many years of training ahead of you to reach the optimum physical ability required. So, if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath…

*SIGH*