I would challenge this as well. I grew up swimming competitively. Regularly holding my breath feels maybe oddly comforting. But maybe that’s somehow bad for me?
I was scubadiving when I was young, and so trained myself to hold my breath for long periods of time underwater (multiple minutes). In parallel, I was taking improv classes and had a lot of breathing exercises to focus and relax.
As a result today, every breath I take is unconsciously a deep and long breath, so much that the noise of the air going through my nose sometimes bothers my wife, but also when I'm falling asleep, I sometimes unconsciously hold my breath for up to one minute and it relaxes me and helps me falling asleep... I also suffer from sleep apnea and have had a CPAP for a few months now, but that at least isn't linked to any of this.
What I guess I mean is that as far as I know, I breath healthily, don't suffer from anxiety (not more than any other dude at least), and unconscious apneas are for me a way to relax.
> I doubt you would feel good if your brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
Without getting into _too much detail_, I have decent amounts of experience telling me that, for a lot of people, it would in fact feel rather good. Not to me, but I also dislike (in a sensory way, not moral) alcohol and many other things that make the brain feel a bit "fuzzy," which I think might be the more uncommon thing, actually.
