I strongly agree with the skepticism about breathing having any serious effect on attention.
I have a caved-in chest (about medium), have quite poor fitness and can’t swim. My lung capacity is way below average, but I have no problems at all concentrating. My attention span is significantly above average, I don’t find reading or writing long sentences difficult at all. I can easily hold large chunks of information in my head if I must. My meditation practice is doing just fine. Concentrating for an hour or more is not tricky at all. (I blame video games. Playing >8 hours/day of high-attention games during high-school does this to you.) Only distractions are tricky, but then only if I’m trying to avoid unease.
Last summer, I did about 2 months of jogging to improve my fitness. I went from not being able to run for 10 seconds to running over 20 minutes without pause. This did not affect my mental capacities in any way I could notice. (Memory might have improved, though.) At best, thinking while running improved, but I never found it hard to listen to audiobooks, even when completely out of breath or exhausted.
I strongly agree with the skepticism about breathing having any serious effect on attention.
I have a caved-in chest (about medium), have quite poor fitness and can’t swim. My lung capacity is way below average, but I have no problems at all concentrating. My attention span is significantly above average, I don’t find reading or writing long sentences difficult at all. I can easily hold large chunks of information in my head if I must. My meditation practice is doing just fine. Concentrating for an hour or more is not tricky at all. (I blame video games. Playing >8 hours/day of high-attention games during high-school does this to you.) Only distractions are tricky, but then only if I’m trying to avoid unease.
Last summer, I did about 2 months of jogging to improve my fitness. I went from not being able to run for 10 seconds to running over 20 minutes without pause. This did not affect my mental capacities in any way I could notice. (Memory might have improved, though.) At best, thinking while running improved, but I never found it hard to listen to audiobooks, even when completely out of breath or exhausted.