James Nestor

The book is specifically about breathing--evolutionary history, biology, how it affects the body, and the impact on health, mental wellness, cognitive performance, sport/physical performance, etc. Also covers several breathing practices ranging from yogi and ancient practices to modern scientific applications. You'll learn:
• How breathing works, and how human evolution and lifestyle changes have led to physiological changes with implications for how we breathe.
• Details of research studies and their findings on breathing's impact on health and disease, cognitive and physical performance, well-being and longevity.
• Specific recommendations, techniques, and tips for optimal breathing, including: how to breathe more efficiently, leverage optimal levels of carbon dioxide, shift your posture and reshape your face/jaw for better airflow, and adopt a range of ancient and modern breathing practices (Buteyko method, breath-holding, Tummo technique, Wim Hof method, Breathwork, etc.)

Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-breath-james-nestor/… (more)

One of the best nonfiction books I’ve read this year.

The writer is a fantastic storyteller. He weaves the complex area of evolution, biology and anthropology into a personal memoir. In this, he achieves a tremendous feat of telling us about a simple thing that we all think we know, breathing.

Pulmonauts - I learnt about group folks interested in breathing techniques and ideas which are not validated by the broader scientific community, but it is quite useful. Their methods are either written in ancients texts like Vedas and also practised in a niche manner by scientists and doctors.

Few key takeaways:
-Breathing is one of the lowest hanging fruits in terms of health improvement.
-Mouth-breathing and over-breathing is terrible.
-More oxygen is good for health is a myth
-There is some benefit of having carbon dioxide inside our body.
-Techniques like holotropic breathing, WimHof method, Tummo breathing are areas worth exploring.… (more)

There is a lot of really fascinating information in this book! Unfortunately, the author tends to jump from topic to topic, and leave a lot of things unresolved. I get that he's trying to build a narrative and create some tension, but in an informational book like this, we don't really need a narrative or tension. The narrative he builds is about his own experience of using breath to cure some lifelong health problems and improve his general health. To build tension, he jumps between telling his own story, and telling the stories of how scientists learned what we currently know about breath. Frustratingly, he has a habit to leave some of these stories unfinished. For instance, there's a fascinating section about a yoga guru who could control his heart rate and body temperature with his breath. Nestor describes how scientists hooked this man up to a bunch of measuring equipment and made him do his tricks... but then never tells us what scientists learned from these experiments. There are several other unresolved stories like that.

However, the information about breathing and breath is really fascinating. But maybe I should have just skipped to the end and read the section that describes all the breathing exercises and their benefits.… (more)