Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

I am more aware than ever about my breathing. I have done something as simple as downloading a snoring app and adding a wedge pillow. I can't believe how much more energy I have during the day now that I'm not snoring and actually getting a full flow of oxygen through the evening. And the history is exceptional as well.

Very interesting and informative book.

一回でも読んだ方が良い本です

The book tells me the significance of breath. Breath is not just a tool to exchange gas. It works in many aspects of our body. One of the tasks is to regulate the nervous system. Most people do not think we can manipulate autonomous nerves. However, we can control them by breath. If we need to calm ourselves, we should breathe slowly. Contrary to our stereotype, CO2 plays a role in our body. Chemoreceptors in our brainstem sensor the concentration of CO2 and regulate the frequency of breath. We tend to breathe much more than we need. Therefore, the CO2 we keep inside our body tends to be less. We should breathe slowly to increase the CO2. It will make us healthier.

Amazing book, easy to read and covers many points.

I think this book may be a life changer. I am already seeing positive changes in my sleep quality. It is also very readable.

This will make you think about your breathing and entrain you to do it slower. It will also take you on a journey from a room in the Haight where you will watch him encounter people,traditions that have been discovered and lost and changed. I would have liked to have seen more science about the effects of carbon dioxide, but at least he is not trying to sell you anything but some ideas about health and of course his book. I’ve known about breathing for a long time but was happy to be reminded of it as a technique for relation that worked so well that it almost made pleasurable an hour under the drill preparing a broken tooth for a new crown. He summarizes: Shut your mouth Breath through your nose Exhale. (Fully) Chew Breathe more, on occasion Hold your breath How we breath matters. There are some crazy things like tapping his nose shut for ten days under Stanford supervision to prove just how bad an idea this is, but I enjoyed the read.

Breathing is important. This simple idea is discussed thorugh the author’s “joirney” There are a lot of historical stories all about breathing. However, as a healthy individual practicing yoga and other interventions, the stroies are simply boring and the various methods are not interesting.

Insightful!

This is quite a good book. I really enjoyed it. Like Mike Pollan, who wrote the excellent "How to Change Your Mind", the author travels the world while researching the book to try things out for himself. And then writes about his experiences in an engaging way. Some sticklers may take issue with how he writes about the finer points of Tibetan breathing techniques. I'm not sure if there will ever be universal agreement about their history and practice, but the author makes clear that he is really novice who is telling us an often fascinating story about his journey of discovery about breathing. The strength of the book is how he learns that there are so many (to me, suprising) things about breathing that are critically important for our health. For example, he talks about how many modern maladies like asthma, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and even psoriasis could either be reduced or reversed simply by changing the way we inhale and exhale. He talks about how the shape of our months and face have changed over the past 300 years, and how this has led to so many breathing and health issues (including sleep apnea which affects so many adults now). It has to do with our food, and how it's so much easier to chew. He talks about the adverse affects of mouth breathing (which 80% of us do) and how, in an experiment, his health rebounded when he trained himself to only breath through his nose. There is also a lot of good information about breathing exercises, how they're done, why we think they work; and how this information has been ignored, for the most part, by modern medicine. If you're stressed, if you snore, if you have sleep apnea, if you have other respiratory issues, or if you know people who suffer from these (or Covid-19 breathing issues) ... then this book might be an eye opener. It's both informative, and quite readable and engaging like a great magazine article. And offers simple and easy ways for you to feel better and healthier.

A great book, very informative and a must for people who have breathing difficulties to help with gaining more control of their breathing

Book Recommendation - A New York Times bestseller Author: James Nestor Title: Breath – The New Science of a Lost Art Published by Riverhead Books, New York, 2020 The book is available in most public libraries including the Dauphin County and Cumberland County Library Systems. The cost of the hard cover book from Amazon is $18.37. A paper back version and a summary are also available. The book is also available in E book and audio book formats. The book has been placed on the purchase request list for the Bethany Village Library. Quotes from the book cover pages follow: “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 functions on its head. You will never breath the same again.” Dr. Stephen Park Albert Einstein College of Medicine: “An eye opening, epic journey of human devolution that explains why so many of us are sick and tired. A must-read book that exposes what our health care system doesn’t see.” Joshua Foer, New York Times “A transformative book that changes how you think about your body and mind.” Comments by Bethany resident Charley Sproule: I have a lifelong snoring problem. Over the years I have tried a variety of methods to solve the problem. One helpful action is avoiding sleeping on my back, but this does not eliminate my snoring. Another attempt was using a device to open my nostrils. You tape it on to the outside of your nose. For me, the only result was some lost skin when I remove it in the morning. A medical specialist recommended surgery to remove some loose flesh in the back of my throat. I decided that was too invasive and did not schedule the surgery. The book Breath recommends another possible solution which is a method for keeping your mouth closed when sleeping. So far, the method has been working for me. The book contains step by step instructions on exercises to improve breathing, lung capacity and overall health. Readers who participate in yoga are likely familiar with alternate nostril breathing. A variety of other techniques are described in the book. For example, box breathing is used by Navy seals in tense situations. The book provides links to video instructions on some of the recommended techniques. The history of breathing practice described in the book includes many cultures and is fascinating and informative. Some divers have learned how to hold their breath for twelve minutes. Some runners have broken their records after using the techniques described in the book. A variety of health problems addressed by the techniques are described in the book. Cautions and limitations are also discussed.

Best book regarding the topic