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  • Published: 14 May 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241289099
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

Breath

The New Science of a Lost Art




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 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 like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya and Tummo, 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 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.

  • Published: 14 May 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241289099
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

Praise for Breath

'Who would have thought something as simple as changing the way we breathe could be so revolutionary for our health? James Nestor is the perfect guide to the pulmonary world and has written a fascinating book, full of dazzling revelations'

Dr Rangan Chatterjee

'I highly recommend this book'

Wim Hof, on Instagram

'If there's one book you read this year, make it this one'

Chris Evans

'In the past few years, there have been several potentially life-changing books, from Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep and Shane O'Mara's In Praise of Walking, to Norman Doidge's The Brain's Way of Healing. Breath deserves a place alongside such volumes. Read it, and I guarantee you will want to change the way you breathe'

<i>Evening Standard</i>

'James Nestor's fascinating new book is playful and optimistic'

<i>Spectator</i>

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