Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art + James Nestor
In a Nutshell
James Nestor's *Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art* reveals widespread breathing dysfunction from mouth breathing, over-breathing, and shrunken jaws due to soft modern diets, causing issues like sleep apnea, asthma, and crooked teeth—fixable by nasal breathing, reducing breaths to 10/min or fewer with light volume, and techniques like the physiological sigh (double inhale, long exhale). Key practices: tape mouth at night, use 4-7-8 or box breathing for calm, full exhalation exercises for lung capacity, and nose-only breathing during exercise/masks for nitric oxide benefits and efficiency. Self-experiments and studies show dramatic improvements in health, energy, and performance, reversing chronic issues without drugs.
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James Nestor is in San Francisco at home. He is an author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside magazine, New York Times. His book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art explores how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and how to get it back. The book spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestselling list in its first year and was awarded the best general nonfiction book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He has spoken at Stanford, Harvard Medical School, United Nations.
Most of the population suffers from some sort of breathing dysfunction; for some it's small, for others it's ruining their lives. Acknowledge the problem, then figure out how to fix it.
- Breathe through your nose: Mouth breathing exposes us to toxins and pollutants, causes breathing too much, creates stress response, misses advantages of nasal breathing.
- Breathe less: Many breathe way too much air, like eating too much food; breathing more air gets less oxygen to cells due to CO2 importance (counterintuitive).
- Average person breathes about 15 times per minute. Healthier rate: 10 breaths per minute at rest; even better, 6 breaths per minute, but focus on light volume, not huge breaths.
- On occasion, forced hyperventilation (Wim Hof method, Tumo, pranayama, kundalini) for short periods provides benefits for mental and physical health; do briefly, then hold breath or soft breathe.
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