Did you notice that your ability for breath holds decreased over time?
I ve been doing breath work daily for over a year now. In the beginning i would regularly feel the endorphin rush / psychedelic effects and was managing on average 3 min breath holds sometimes even up to 4.
However it has been few months now that breath retention has become a real struggle, I hardly manage 1 minute these days.
And the usual feel good effect has almost disappeared.
I feel like I regressed instead of progressing and I wonder why.
I still do feel energy boost afterwards and increased focus but nothing like it was in the beginning.
The cold plunges still have the same beneficial effect.
Big things that affect this are food, cardio wellness and general inflammation. To a lesser extent also caffeine.
First, it's best done on an empty stomach. Having a full stomach will always reduce my breath hold length by a good half.
Second, if I'm not getting regular exercise, results suffer greatly. At least walking 10k steps per day.
On inflammation, the breathwork is good to reset a discombobulated nervous system, but if there is chronic neuro inflammation from diet or other sources then things can get tricky. I've found in some cases it can actually increase anxiety or irritability, for instance. Too much caffeine also interferes.
The time of day also seems to matter, and something around intent that I can't quite define. Like are you doing it as a way to get a high or escape some bad feeling, or are you doing it to reconnect deeply into your body and take charge of your nervous system?
I think in some cases it is achieving a kind of chemical high, and any high wears off and stops working. Not just cheap highs, but even those attained through hard achievement etc.
For me there is rarely some great high, and if there is then I did too much, and I expect a crash. There's an art to it for sure, and there are probably some dangers too, keeping in mind the recent C's session. At the very least it can be releasing trauma too fast if done too much.
It's possible that you experienced such good initial results that you emotionally latched onto it, and it stopping working is a sign of over-reliance and a need to reassess and look into other avenues for a while.
For me, I stopped for a while because it kind of stopped working, and I got the sense that it was actually giving me anxiety. In that time off I stacked a truckload of other good habits, and have healed in other ways to some extent. Now when I do it, it's a great 10 minute reconnecting experience, and I finish it feeling refreshed and awakened.