A young girl sits across from Patrick McKeown, one finger resting against the side of her nose. He asks her to breathe in normally, breathe out, and pinch her nose shut. Then he coaches her through the hold: nod gently, keep going, pretend you are swimming underwater toward a diving stick you tossed to the bottom of the pool. The exercise is simple, almost playful, and it is built on a claim that sounds like folklore until you watch it happen on camera: a stuffy nose can be opened, at least temporarily, by holding your breath. In a 12-minute video from the Buteyko Clinic International channel, McKeown walks through this nose-unblocking drill, explains why a blocked nose pushes children into mouth breathing, and makes a case for keeping the lips closed and the breath flowing through the nose. Whatever you think of the method, the video rewards close attention to its mechanics, its reasoning, and its honest limits.
McKeown begins by testing the girl's airflow. She blocks one nostril, breathes out, and reports that one side is clear while the other feels stuffy. He describes the left nostril as fully open and the right as "a little bit stuffy" (around 0:12 in the video). That diagnostic step matters because the drill is designed to work on the obstructed side.
The sequence is repeatable and specific. Take a normal breath in, breathe out, then pinch the nose and hold gently. Nod the head slightly up and down. Hold for as long as comfortable, release, and return to normal breathing for a short recovery. McKeown says to do the exercise six times, and he emphasizes that the hold should be comfortable rather than forced. The video is clear that this is a practice to repeat, not a one-time fix. "It just takes practice," he tells her (around 3:19).
The swimming image is not decoration. McKeown frames the hold as diving for an object at the bottom of a pool, which gives children a reason to stay still and keeps the attention off the discomfort of holding the breath. It is a teacher's trick, and it works because it turns a physiological task into a game.
McKeown says this mechanism has been known since 1923: when a person holds their breath, the nose can open up. He treats it almost with wonder: "it's like magic, literally," he says of the effect (around 1:55). He does not reduce it to a single cause, but he offers an explanation he calls "technical" and then gives anyway. During the breath hold, he says, a gas called nitric oxide builds up in the nasal cavity. On release, the instruction is to breathe in rather than out, carrying that nitric oxide down into the lungs. In his telling, the same mechanism opens the airway deeper down, because the nose, throat, bronchi, and bronchioles are one connected airway rather than separate systems.
That connection is the core of his argument for nasal breathing. The nose filters and conditions air before it reaches the lungs, and McKeown's point is that a mouth-breathing habit bypasses that protection. The video does not present a controlled study of nitric oxide or nasal patency; it presents a coaching method built on the claim and on what the child demonstrates in real time. Viewers should treat the mechanism as the speaker's explanation, and the observed effect as the thing to test for themselves.
He also gives a number for context. McKeown says that in the United States, 40 percent of children have rhinitis, and that the picture is probably similar in Europe and Ireland (around 2:05). Rhinitis, in his framing, is the reason so many children have a stuffy nose that needs addressing, and he distinguishes between types. Allergic rhinitis is the hay-fever variety; perennial rhinitis is the stuffy-all-the-time kind. Knowing which one a child has, he suggests, shapes what the breath-hold exercise can and cannot tell you.
The video's central problem is not the stuffy nose itself but the habit it triggers. McKeown describes "air hunger" as the sensation that drives a child to switch from nose to mouth, and he lists several sources. One is anatomy: a nose that is "just a little bit too small," perhaps inherited, can make a person feel short of air even when the nose is technically working (around 0:39). Another is simple obstruction from congestion or inflammation.
His advice on air hunger is pointed and specific. Do not switch to mouth breathing, he says; keep breathing through the nose, because the air hunger eases with practice and as the obstruction eases (around 0:49). The breath-hold exercise is designed to give the child a way to feel that the nose can open, which is a different experience from forcing the mouth open to get air.
The description accompanying the video offers a broader frame. It states that the physiologic breathing mode in humans is nasal at every age, and that mouth breathing often outlasts the mechanical problem that started it. It describes "mouth breathing syndrome" as a set of signs and symptoms that can appear when nasal breathing has been replaced by mouth breathing for six months or longer. That detail changes the stakes. A stuffy nose during a cold is one thing. A habit that persists after the cold is gone is another, and it is the habit McKeown is working to break.
One of the more practical moments comes when McKeown explains mouth taping as a reminder. A child who is watching TV, reading, or playing may forget to keep the lips together, and McKeown says that is precisely when children need a cue (around 4:12). The tape draws the lips together, and the sensation of it reminds the child to breathe through the nose. He is clear that children can still talk, watch, and play while wearing it.
He ties this back to the breath hold. When the girl is distracted, the tape keeps the lips closed so the nose stays the default route for air. The combination is the point: the hold opens the passage, and the tape keeps it the primary path during everyday life. Treat the tape as part of a habit-training routine rather than a standalone remedy, and check with a health professional before using it on a child, especially if the child has trouble breathing.
McKeown makes an argument that anyone who has sat near a sneezing colleague will recognize. He asks the girl whether a child beside her who is coughing sends germs into the air. She agrees that they do. He then asks what would happen if the child next to that one sat with an open mouth, and whether it makes sense for germs to travel from one mouth to another. The point is a logical one: a nose is designed to filter and warm air, and an open mouth offers a direct route for what is coughed into the room (around 6:18). He suggests that once children realize this, they may be more motivated to breathe through the nose.
This is a persuasive frame, and it is also a simplified one. The video is making an intuitive case about filtration and exposure, not presenting detailed evidence about transmission. It is worth seeing the argument for what it is: a teaching device meant to make nasal breathing feel like a choice with social stakes, not a medical proof.
The most useful caution in the video comes near its end. McKeown says that if a child keeps opening the mouth during the exercise because of air hunger, even when performing the hold correctly, the problem may lie farther back in the nose (around 7:55). Enlarged adenoids are one possibility, but he says enlarged adenoids alone would rarely cause mouth breathing, except when the airway is already small. That is where, in his view, dentists have an important role, particularly when they examine the child's jaw, palate, and airway.
That is a meaningful handoff. The breath-hold exercise is a useful tool for learning nasal breathing and for seeing whether a stuffy side opens. It is not a diagnosis. If a child's breathing is persistently mouth-based, if exercises do not clear the nose, or if the child shows signs of difficulty breathing, McKeown's own framing points toward a dentist, physician, or other clinician who can look at the underlying anatomy.
If you want to try the drill, watch the full video and follow the sequence exactly: test each nostril, do the hold six times, use the swimming image to keep the child engaged, and always breathe in through the nose on release. Keep sessions short, and let the child rest between holds. Pay attention to whether the exercise makes breathing easier or simply makes the child anxious. Use the claims about nitric oxide and the 40 percent rhinitis figure as McKeown's statements, not as settled findings you need to repeat. And if the stuffy nose returns, persists, or seems tied to the way a child sleeps or eats, bring the question to a clinician.
The deeper lesson of the video is not the trick of holding your breath. It is the idea that breathing through the nose is a habit worth protecting, and that a child's relationship to air can be shaped by play, practice, and a few gentle cues. McKeown's method is one way into that work, and this video is a clear place to start.
