George W. Maschke wrote on May 14^th, 2016 at 2:52pm:

Thank you for sharing your polygraph experience, and for your candor. I would advise anyone facing polygraph "testing" to see our book The Lie Behind the Lie Detector for a detailed description of the procedure and documented information on how one may mitigate the risk of "failing." I note that your advice to "breathe steadily and deeply throughout the entire test" is likely to result in an accusation of countermeasure use.

Thank you for your reply.  I consciously tried to not alter my breathing throughout the test and kept it steady and natural.  Just going off of my experience, I can say that the examiner did not accuse me or hint to me about countermeasure use.  If he suspected anything, he didn't say anything to me about it. Of course, other people may get different results with a different person.

Also, it is worth noting that I don't know with certainty right now that I got over on the poly.  I am basing this solely on the fact that my background is continuing with a background investigator and the poly examiner did not follow up with any issues.