David Blaine Oprah Winfrey Interview: Explains How He Trained to Hold Breath for 17 Minutes

David Blaine wrote his notes 2009 on the back of a deck of playing cards for his public speaking engagement at the TEDMED conference in which he explained how he prepared to hold his breath under water for more than 17 minutes during a televised stunt in 2008, reported The Huffington Post on June 7.

Blaine appeared on The Oprah Winfrey show in 2008 in which he broke the Guinness world record for breath-holding, staying underwater for 17 minutes and 4.5 seconds.

He asked Winfrey if he could be on her show after he failed to break the world record for breath holding in a public stunt two years earlier.

The illusionist had spent one week submerged underwater in an 8-foot sphere at Lincoln Center in New York City where he breathed through an air tube an ingested only Gatorade and other liquid nutrients in 2006.

After a week underwater in his aquarium, Blaine was taken from the water, locked in chains and placed back in the tank. He attempted to simultaneously escape from the chains and break the world record for holding one's breath, which at the time was 8 minutes and 58 seconds. The event was televised as part of a two-hour special on ABC.

Blaine was pulled from the aquarium by divers nearly two minutes short of his goal. He had removed two handcuffs and was trying to remove chains when the divers jumped in to save him.

In the TEDTalk, Blaine explained that he had become unconscious and had to be rescued. He said he learned that the movement necessary to try to get out of the handcuffs and chains required that he use up oxygen and that may have been detrimental to his goal of breaking the world record.

Watch Blaine's TEDTalk lecture below.

Blaine became a household name with the TV special David Blaine: Street Magic in which he performed illusions for passersby on the street right in front of handheld cameras.
With Buried Alive, Blaine was entombed underground for seven days in a transparent plastic coffin and visible to pedestrians above. The event led him to become famed for the endurance stunt.

The pursuit led to other attempts on Blaine's part to survive extreme conditions, such as Frozen in Time, which saw him encased in a block of ice for almost three days, and Vertigo, where he stood atop a 100-foot pillar for 35 hours.

View a photo of Blaine's notes on the back of playing cards here.