Before I get into my adventure in breath-holding, a brief announcement: Here’s your opportunity to find out how David Blaine goes to extremes. If you’ve got any questions for Mr. Blaine, the magician, endurance artist and subject of my Findings column on breath-holding, you can submit them as comments. Mr. Blaine, who’s training for his attempt at the world breath-holding record next week, said he’d be glad to provide some answers.

When I watched Mr. Blaine train on Grand Cayman Island, he told me I could easily learn to hold my breath underwater for more than three minutes. I found this more unlikely than his attempt to go 16 minutes. I didn’t doubt this skill could be taught, but I figured I was a terrible candidate because holding my breath underwater has always given me a claustrophobic feeling. A prolonged stay in Neptune’s realm was never my ambition. But Mr. Blaine and Ralph Potkin, the pulminologist monitoring his vital signs during an experiment on Grand Cayman, insisted it was the best way to understand how champion apneists (breath-holders) manage to last so long.

So I took a quick apnea course — the only way safe way to learn, since it’s dangerous to try it on your own. It was run by a duo that has been called “the first couple of free diving”: Kirk Krack, a coach of world-champion apneists who is the president of Performance Freediving; and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank , his wife, who in her career has held six world records in free diving (including one in the event called static apnea — 6 minutes and 16 seconds of breath-holding in a swimming pool). She and Mr. Krack, who is Mr. Blaine’s coach, supervised the long breath-hold at the Grand Cayman swimming pool described in my column and photographed by Mike Nelson.

Once we finished covering Mr. Blaine’s session, Mike and I got in the pool for our lesson. Ms. Cruickshank starting by teaching us a couple of techniques: a series of relaxed inhalations called a breathe-up, and exhalations to purge carbon dioxide. Then we put our faces in the water for a one-minute breath-hold. I managed to last the minute, but as they called the signal I was ready to burst — and silently convinced I was going to flunk the course.

After a longer breathe-up that lasted four minutes, followed by 30 seconds of purging carbon dioxide, we put our faces down for a two-minute trial. Mr. Krack calmly instructed me to relax muscle by muscle, starting with the toes and feet and working all the way up to the neck and the jaw and the tongue. Before I knew it, I was amazed to hear the one-minute signal — and more amazed to be feeling no pain. That ready-to-burst feeling didn’t come until we were told to stop at the two-minute mark.

Now we did a a slightly longer breathe-up to prepare for a three-minute breath-hold. Before we started, I was still dubious — and wondering if I’d have to come up early — but with Mr. Krack’s soothing encouragement (“You’re doing great”) and relaxation instructions, the first couple of minutes passed easily enough. It got tougher during the third minute, but it was tolerable.

When we graduated to a four-minute attempt, I started feeling some strain by the three-minute signal, and after we passed 3:15 I couldn’t resist the urge to exhale underwater (which we’d been told not to do, because it actually shortens the time you can stay underwater.) I was still aiming to stay down the full four minutes, but Mr. Krack saw me struggling and ordered me to come up slowly. I emerged at 3:41.

“You probably could have made it to four minutes,” Mr. Krack said, “but I’d rather be safe.”

I was a little disappointed not to make four minutes, which I guess shows how easily one becomes a full-fledged convert to apneism. With less than an hour’s instruction, I more than tripled my one-minute limit, and my fellow pupil, Mike, lasted four and a half minutes. Mike had some informal experience with free diving and had previously done a two-minute breath-hold, but he seemed just as surprised as I was at the rapid improvement from a short lesson.

The ancestors of our species emerged from the ocean a long time ago, but apparently our bodies are still pretty good at surviving underwater — provided they get the right guidance and supervision. I’d read about the mammalian diving reflex (it’s described in my column) and how it conserves oxygen underwater, but I didn’t really appreciate it until I felt its effects. And I didn’t appreciate how much progress free divers and their coaches have made at pushing the limits of human endurance until Mr. Blaine put my time in perspective.

“Houdini used to brag about going three and a half minutes underwater,” Mr. Blaine said. “Look at how easily you beat Houdini.”

Of course, 3:41 is nothing compared with the 9-minute breath-holds by today’s champions, or the the 16-minute breath-holds by apneists who start off with pure oxygen, as Mr. Blaine will be doing in his attempt at the world record next Wednesday on “Oprah.” If you’ve got any questions for him about breath-holding — or any of his other feats of endurance — ask away.

One final request: Don’t try any of this at home. Or in a swimming pool or any other body of water. You can suddenly black out and drown unless you’re being supervised by an expert like Mr. Krack or Ms. Cruickshank. They made sure that Mike and I were conscious by regularly ordering us to make signals with our fingers, and they’ll be keeping a close eye on Mr. Blaine when he tries for his world record next week.