Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (BOOK REVIEW)

Begin with the Breath.

Inhale. Exhale. 

In. Out. 

We humans breathe on average 25,000 times during a 24 hour day, explains journalist James Nestor in his beautiful best-selling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, and yet, 90% of us are breathing poorly.

Heavy breaths instead of light breathing.

Fast breaths instead of slow breathing.

Shallow breaths through our mouths and into our chests, rather than deep breathing through our noses and into our bellies via our diaphragms.

Who knew that how we breathe is essential to our overall health and well being?

Turns out, we’ve known for a long time - but we seem to have forgotten.

Science is now beginning to prove what Team Human has known for millennia - how we breathe informs who we are, and who we will become.

The troubling news?

Chronic shallow “mouth to chest” breathing is the most visible symptom of what Harvard University human evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, author of The Story Of The Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2014), provocatively calls the “dysevolution” of our species—we homo sapiens are literally becoming more diseased, more weak, and more unhappy, and 90% of us are nudging along these trends with every (bad) breath we take.

The good news?

Team Human is resilient and adaptable, and we can rediscover how to breathe properly with coaching and practice. 

The best news of all?

Optimizing our breathing leads to a cascading series of health benefits, especially given that we Humans live in the midst of interesting civilizational times.

Curious to learn more?

Stay in the flow with us here!