Sudden question

[Solphage]

if vasher's a returned, how can he give breaths without doing the healing thing?

[Aaronator17]

Don't know why someone downvoted you unless they suspected you were trolling.

To answer your question, Vasher is able to supress his Divine Breath, which means that when he gives his breaths to someone, he basically gives everything except his Divine Breath. This does put him in danger though because he will quickly need to find more breath to sustain him.

[Yata he/him]

11 hours ago, Solphage said:

if vasher's a returned, how can he give breaths without doing the healing thing?

Aaronator already mostly answered but just to add something. Vasher uses specific command to give away his Breath and a bit of mental gymnastic to avoid to give away his Divine Breath. He is also able to suppress his Divine Breath to appear as a not Returned, how He could do this, is unknown. But probably it's still about mental gym too

[Weltall]

In addition to Vasher being able to give away all his Breaths other than the one that keeps him alive, Brandon mentions in the annotations (here) that a sufficiently skilled Awakener with the right commands and mental vizualization could give away some of their Breath with the 'My life to yours' command without giving away everything they have.

[Solphage]

ok, that's what i was asking about; thank you, helpful forum people :7

[+robardin he/him]

He straight up tells Vivenna that "those are my secrets" when she asks him the same thing at the very end:

Quote

"How do you keep yourself from looking like a Returned? And why don’t you die when you give away your Breaths?”

“Those are my secrets,” he said, not looking at her. “Though you should have figured out that Returned can change their forms.” 

But notice that Denth, another of the Five Scholars, could also suppress his visible Returnedness and not appear to need a weekly supply of Breath,  so it's probably something they figured out together. 

Why they would keep it to themselves is an interesting thing to consider.