By James Nestor
9.5/10
An in-depth look at the lost art of breathing. Broken down into bite-size chapters outlining different perspectives on breathing and exploring its many health benefits. This book teaches you how to breathe “correctly” and avoid or fix some common breathing pitfalls. These include snoring, sleep apnea, and even stress and high blood pressure.
My Take Aways:
Many of these techniques are not new but had become lost over time and then rediscovered in another part of the world.
Breathe in and out through your nose! The author does an experiment where we plugs his nose for 10 days and breathes exclusively through his mouth. His health and wellbeing is closely monitored and indicate his body is under stress simply by breathing through his mouth.
I started taping my mouth shut at night and noticed improvements in sleep quality, energy during the day as well as find it easier to breathe through my nose more often. Muscle memory I suppose.
The ideal breath is said to be a 5.5 second inhale and a 5.5 second.
Breathing is powerful. We can regulate our nervous system by breathing differently. This can help with anxiety and communicate to the body that it is safe. It can also be used to stress the body and create energy when desired. The fact that the quality of our breathing could impact our mental wellness blew me away!
I love how easy it is to apply these breathing techniques and found myself starting to breathe differently ever as I was reading the book.
Overall a simple and engaging overview of some neat history and application of a tool we are born with and can shift right away, the breath.
Happy breathing,
Emmett