You will never breathe the same again.
Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
Award-winning science journalist, James Nestor, travels the world to find out what went wrong in our evolution of breathing — and how to fix it.
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International Bestseller
New York Times Top 10 Bestseller (20 weeks) • 3 Million Copies Sold • Wall Street Journal Bestseller • Los Angeles Times Bestseller • Sunday Times (UK) Bestseller • Spanish, Italian, Croatian & German Language Bestseller
Modern research in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can help jump-start athletic performance, rejuvenate internal organs, halt snoring, allergies, asthma, and some autoimmune disease, and even straighten spines.
None of this should be possible, and yet it is.
Award Winner
Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors
• Finalist for the Royal Society Science Book of the Year • A Best Book of the Year by Washington Post, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Good Reads
"Our breath is a beautiful, healing, mysterious gift, and so is this book. I already feel like it’s going to change my life."
"This book is amazing. Most people have no idea how to do breathing exercises and how beneficial they are. Over the last few weeks I’ve been using the methods I learned from his book and I can tell you there are absolutely some real benefits to be had from this. “
— Joe Rogan
"With his entertaining, eerily well-timed new book, James Nestor explains the science behind proper breathing and how we can transform our lungs and our lives. The book is brisk and detailed, a well-written read that is always entertaining, as he melds the personal, the historical, and the scientific.”
— The Boston Globe
"Life-changing…Read it and I guarantee you will want to change the way you breath."
— Evening Standard (UK)
"I highly recommend this book."
— Wim Hof
"In Breath, author and journalist James Nestor lays out in spellbinding and at once comedic and riveting fashion his ten year personal investigation of breathing. Who could imagine a “self help book” that reads like a page turning novel?! I couldn’t put it down."
— Steven R Gundry MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Plant Paradox series
“If you want to read a book about the power of the breath, this is it!”
— Patrick McKeown, author of The Oxygen Advantage
"Who would have thought something as simple as changing the way you breathe could be so revolutionary for our health? James Nestor is the perfect guide to the pulmonary world and has written a fascinating book, full of dazzling revelations."
— Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, international bestselling author of The Stress Solution
"James Nestor’s perfectly timed book looks at what is known through research and what is known by experience – often his own painful experience – as he submits to experiments and breathwork techniques to learn more about something we typically take for granted. Reading this book, I gained both a greater appreciation for my respiratory system and a personal-best long-distance run (breathing through the nose = greater endurance)."
— NPR
"If there’s one book you read this year, make it this one."
— Chris Evans
“It’s a rare popular-science book that keeps a reader up late, eyes glued to the pages. But Breath is just that fascinating. It will alarm you. It will gross you out. And it will inspire you. Who knew respiration could be so scintillating?”
— Spirituality & Health
"This is the best book I've ever read! You won’t be able to put it down."
— Dr. John Douillard DC CAP, author of Body, Mind, and Sport
"I would have thought that breathing was pretty simple and well understood. Then I read this book. Now I know it's a hugely complex and wondrous process which we need to understand much better. Fascinating and provocative stuff."
— Dr. Daniel M. Davis, author of The Beautiful Cure
“If you breathe, you need this book.”
— Wallace J. Nichols, PhD, New York Times–bestselling author of Blue Mind
“A transformative book that changes how you think about your body and mind.”
— Joshua Foer, New York Times–bestselling author of Moonwalking with Einstein
“Breath is an utterly fascinating journey into the ways we are wired. No matter who you are, you’ll want to read this.”
— Po Bronson, New York Times–bestselling author of NutureShock
“An eye-opening, epic journey of human devolution that explains why so many of us are sick and tired. A must-read book that exposes what our health care system doesn’t see.”
— Dr. Steven Y. Park, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, author of Sleep, Interrupted
“I don’t say this often, but I mean it: This book changed my life.”
— Caroline Paul, bestselling author of The Gutsy Girl
“A welcome, invigorating user’s manual for the respiratory system.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Although we all breathe, there is an art and science to breathing correctly . . . Full of fascinating information an compelling arguments, this eye-opening (or more aptly a mouth-closing and nostril-opening) work is highly recommended.”
— Library Journal
“Breath provides a new perspective of modern day technology and how we’ve unknowingly abandoned the answers we’ve always had. James Nestor artfully brings back what modern society has walked away from by combining ancestral techniques and new age technology in one elegant book.”
— Scientific Inquirer
“Breath shows us just how extraordinary the act of breathing is and why so much depends on how we do it. An enthralling, surprising, and often funny adventure into our most overlooked and undervalued function.”
— Bonnie Tsui, bestselling author of Why We Swim and American Chinatown
“Thank you James Nestor; your book Breath has already changed my life!!! Get this book for someone you love or even like.”
— Louie Anderson
