Book review: Breath – The new science of a lost art by James Nestor

Why Did I read this book?

If you have already read this book or maybe just heard about it, its most likely because of Joe Rogan experience #1506. Breathing as a subject is interesting for me as long time meditator, so I was hooked immediately when podcast started. I had to read the book, so I bought it after podcast ended and read it in one week which is pretty fast for me.

Premise

Even though we know much more than ancient civilizations, we have forgotten something. That’s how to breath. There is big difference on mouth breathing and nose breathing. James Nestor’s book examines this from two different angles: 1. How did our ancestors breath and how we are currently breathing 2. James Nestor’s own experiment on mouth breathing and its adverse effects. End part of book focuses on different breathing techniques.

Who is this for?

First and foremost anyone who is mouth breather, habitual snorer or suffers breathing problems.

I suggest this book also for athletes and biohacker’s who wanna elevate their game through different breathing techniques.

For both groups breathing history and James Nestor’s own experiments are interesting for read.

Top 5 Interesting takeaways

1. It’s fascinating that breathing was big part of ancient cultures. James gives examples like Chinese Tao books dating back to 400 BCE focuses purely on breathing, Hindus idea of spirit and breath and how Native Americans thought that breathing through mouse sapped body’s strength and causes many diseases. We can still learn from ancient cultures!

2. Book states that surprisingly lung capacity is greatest indicator for life span, not genetics, diet or daily exercise. This is big and bold claim, James offers 3 different studies as sources. My uneducated opinion is that James made some shortcuts here and maybe its too early to say this. Best study to support James claim is probably this. Study states that “The UB researchers found that the 20 percent of men with the poorest lung function when the study began were more than twice as likely to have died during follow-up than men with the best lung function.” Nevertheless, lung capacity is very important for our health.

3. Studies have discovered that optimized breathing rate for health is about 5,5 breaths per minute, meaning 5,5 seconds inhale and 5,5 seconds exhale. This is so called “perfect breath”

4. Constant habitual mouth breathing causes or aggravates multiple diseases. Mouth breathing should be seen backup breathing system, not the main system.

5. You can actually increase your athletic performance by just nose breathing. This is something that I wanna test out, new experiment coming up!

Positives

• James own experiment on mouth breathing is fascinating
• Breath has everything – History of breathing, modern day problems with breathing, James experiment and different ways to improve your health by breathing
• Appendix with different breathing methods gives good summary for the reader

Negatives

• I didn’t enjoy descriptive writing style on some chapters, that put some extra length to the book

Influences on my life

One way to define good book is the influence you get after reading it. I can honestly say that this book did have influence on my life. I shared the knowledge and recommended the book to my inner circle, and hell.. I even wrote blog post about it. But most importantly, I view breathing totally different now. I am now experimenting different breathing techniques more seriously than before. I am motivated to find out what techniques are best for me in terms of overall feeling, blood pressure and heart rate variability. I also try to remind myself every now and then about the perfect breath in state of hurry or stress.. 5,5 seconds in.. 5,5 seconds out..