Breath. The New Science of a Lost Art

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. Science journalist James Nestor travels the world to discover what went wrong and how to fix it. He tracks down a group of outlier researchers, working in ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo, who have unearthed thousand-year-old breathing practices.
Then he teams up with leading scientists to test the ways in which these methods affect the body and mind, and how best to apply them to our everyday lives. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can help rejuvenate internal organs, blunt autoimmune disease, and straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies across the sciences, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of our most basic biological function on its head.
You will never breathe the same again.