Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
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Average rating3.9
No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being 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. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. 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, 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 medical texts and recent 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. You will never breathe the same again.
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Not super sure about this one. I find myself regarding some of Nestor's claims as I do MLM essential oils (I don't know why I'm not just saying Young Living) that talk about how diffusing peppermint eradicates plantar fasciitis. It's all a little too one-sided, unfounded, and convenient for my personality.
I think it is interesting to look at how the way humans breathe has (literally) evolved over time, and how respiratory health connects to other aspects of health. Certainly this is an overlooked area of US medicine, and I do believe the focus of our healthcare is often more reactive than proactive or preemptive.
I think the other way this fell flat for me was that it was so individually focused. I'm more interested in structural and institutional context than tunnel vision on personal responsibility. Other qualms: it was repetitive. There were noticeably few women interviewed in the book. Also, I just found out this author was on Joe Rogan's podcast? That is the nail in the coffin of my derision.
Living through a respiratory pandemic as someone who gets bronchitis all the time, many of the claims are alluring in their simplicity. And when I've been coughing for four months, I'll try anything to get my back to stop hurting from the exertion of hacking up my lungs because my body can't figure itself out. So hey, maybe I'll circle back to try some of Nestor's breathing exercises in future moments of desperation. But for now, I am unimpressed.
Good book with a lot of information on breathing. A better summary would have been nice.
