Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

A New York Times BestsellerA Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPRA fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breatheand how weve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray LoveNo matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if youre not breathing properly.There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twentyfive thousand 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 arent 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 So 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 longheld beliefs about how we breathe.Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jumpstart 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 cuttingedge 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.