Breath

The New Science of a Lost Art

Hardcover, 304 pages

English language

Published April 2, 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:
978-0-7352-1363-0
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4 stars (28 reviews)

There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. In Breath, journalist James Nestor travels the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can:

  • jump-start athletic performance
  • rejuvenate internal organs
  • halt snoring, allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease, and even straighten scoliotic spines

None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.

6 editions

Light on science but very nice introduction to nasal breathing!

5 stars

I had practised nasal breathing a couple of years before reading Breath, but this book provided a lot of historical context and personal accounts of self experimentation, which was nice to have read. This is a great book to recommend when introducing people to nasal breathing. There are several other books who are more heavy on the science that also goes into much more detail, but they are quite dry and gives much less context to the phenomenon.

Review of 'Breath' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I could not get past the amount of """science""" and just bad logical arguments in this book. If the book removed all occurrences of the word science and just leaned in to the fact that it's completely anecdotal and personal experience based, I think I would have kept reading.

Review of 'Breath' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

There's a lot to be said about breathing and its place in our lives but I'm not sure this book is saying it. Oh, it might be but it's not convincing for some reason. It's a little too dramatic--a little too "this revolutionary truth is being overlooked"--but at the same time, there are such overlooked truths about breath, I think . . . Maybe I need to do all the breathing exercises and experience it directly but some are scary--they come with warnings--and others need to be repeated over a long period for results that aren't exactly clear.

The first surprising truth is that mouth breathing is bad for you. The "proof" is experienced by the author who has his nose sealed off as an experiment, but I'm not sure it proves what he says it does. It may merely show that having your nose sealed off has adverse results. …

Review of 'Breath' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Great journalism with new research, anecdotes, and curated techniques. It’s a fast-moving personal journey using old and new age advice, and the author makes clear is something still in progress. A monograph from Stanford University Press is cited that was published in 2018, and several studies were mentioned that are currently underway, so breath and orthodontics seem to be going through a revival. A New York dentist, Dr. Michael Gelb, said in the book, “In ten years, nobody will be using traditional orthodontics”.

The entire book wasn’t 5 stars. Part 1 is the author’s personal experiments (interesting and short), Part 2 is the art and science of breathing (easily the best section), and Part 3 was “Breathing +”, which explored pushing the limits of breath and didn’t really interest me at all. This is 5 stars because it’s a quick book with immediate health benefits you can practice (my average …

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Subjects

  • Respiration
  • Breathing exercises