Breath by James Nestor

I recently read Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. I’ll fully admit, for half the time that I was listening to it, I thought the title was “Breathe.” But no matter what the title, I found it very interesting.

Breath is Nestor’s journey to find out why he had so many various health issues, and then how to correct them. On his journey, he discovered all sorts of facts about early man, ancient yoga, special breathing techniques, and the mechanics of how our pulmonary system works.

As with many books about how the human body works, there was a fair amount of evolution of man in this, so if you don’t like that, don’t read it. But I was able to put that aside to learn about how to improve our health based on simply changing the way we breathe. 

To be fair, I learned many of these breathing techniques as a young adult through drama and choral classes. Yes, even when they weren’t very popular with most doctors. And then I learned more of them when I was taking yoga and barre regularly. I frequently use some of them during high-stress situations to calm down or refocus. I use them constantly when I’m on a stage or in a gym/workout. However, I never really thought about applying them to my every day life to improve my over-all health. That was very interesting to me, and something I’ll be trying out.

Over all, I’m very happy my sister-in-law recommended this to me.

Read more books reviews on my blog!