Top Highlights

• Blaine could relax so completely, both mentally and physically, that his heart rate would drop to below fifty beats per minute, sometimes below twenty.
• So how did he will his way through it? “That’s where the training comes in,” he said. “It gives you the confidence to pull through a situation that isn’t so easy.”
• Each morning he’d do a series of ordinary breath-holds (starting with regular air instead of pure oxygen) separated by short intervals, gradually increasing the duration and the pain.
• He had long been a believer in the notion that willpower is a muscle that can be strengthened. He picked up this idea partly through reading about the Victorian training of his childhood hero, Houdini, and partly by trial and error.
• He got in the habit of continually setting goals that had to be met, like running so far every day, or jumping to grab a leaf from the branch of a certain tree every time he walked under it.