A chapter by chapter high-quality summary of James Nestor´s book Breath, including chapter details and analysis of the main themes of the original book.

About the original Breath book:

Nothing is more important to our health and well-being than breathing: take in air, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Humans, on the other hand, have lost the capacity to breathe properly as a species, with disastrous repercussions.

Journalist James Nestor sets out to discover what went wrong and how to solve it. The solutions aren’t in pulmonology labs, as one might think, but rather in muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of SPaulo. Nestor seeks for men and women who are researching the secret science underlying traditional breathing techniques like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo, and pairs up with pulmonary tinkerers to put long-held assumptions about how we breathe to the test.

Modern research shows that even little changes in the way we breathe may improve athletic performance, regenerate internal organs, stop snoring, asthma, and autoimmune illness, and even straighten scoliotic spines. Even though none of this should be possible, it is.

Breath deconstructs what we thought we understood about our most fundamental biological function, drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and cutting-edge research in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology. You’ll never be able to breathe the same way again.

Breath Summary is written by Peter Cuomo.