Nestor also learned alternate nostril breathing, which banished his reflux, box breathing, and breath hold walking - which sounds excruciating when you begin. Find BookPage, About BookPage June 2020. For the first ten days, Nestor had to keep his nostrils plugged so he could only breathe through his mouth. Advertise Read it, and I guarantee you will want to change the way you breathe. Breathe. The techniques are described in detail at the end of the book, along with a list of helpful apps and Youtube tutorials, not to mention his own website. "I … I’ve been practising various forms of breathing exercises for about 30 years now. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Penguin Life, £16.99) is published on 30 July. Library James Nestor. • And of course, social media drives us to put our most personal moments online. Slow down. Health & wellbeing To New York, to meet a woman who had studied with Carl Stough, a choir conductor who discovered that using the diaphragm to maximum capacity to exhale stale air helped not just singers and sprinters, but could cure respiratory diseases such as emphysema and asthma. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Penguin Life, £16.99), buy it here. • Our obsession with productivity is a defining characteristic of modern society. Buy it for £14.78 from guardianbookshop.com. On his doctor’s recommendation, he signed up to a course of Sudarshan Kriya breathing and within twenty minutes of focusing on breathing slowly through his nose in the first session, he writes, “then something happened… it was as if I’d been taken from one place and deposited somewhere else. • He details the history of breathing, from ancient cultures to modern innovations that have changed our facial structures and thus our breathing patterns. When he put his hand to his forehead, it was dripping in sweat. Review: “Breath” by James Nestor. Smart watches streamline and gamify our workouts and sleep cycles. 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. He went back the following week and the same thing happened again. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Breath deserves a place alongside such volumes. Within three nights, his snoring time had reduced from 4 hours to ten minutes and the longer he breathed through his nose, the clearer and bigger his nasal cavities became. Riverhead, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7352-1361-6 ... many people breathe too fast. Smartphones make us permanently available. He felt awful, and worse as the days went by. Write a review. Stop. • From yogis to monks, from voice teachers to athletic trainers, from people with scoliosis to those with asthma, Breath details how these rediscovered breath practices are providing the promise of a better, longer, healthier life. In his new book, "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art," Nestor tells the tale of exploring secret Soviet facilities, the smoggy streets of São Paulo and beyond, to learn the hidden science behind powerful ancient breathing practices.