Notes and excerpts from the book, Breath by James Nestor
I highly, highly, highly, very, very, really, really, highly recommend the new book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor.
I finished it earlier this week and it’s the first new book I’ve read this year — new in the sense that it was just released a couple months ago.
It’s one of those jaw-dropping, underlining nearly every page, change-your-life kind of books.
Two comparisons: 1) Last year Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker completely changed the way I think about sleep, and 2) in 2011 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen completely changed the way I think about running, and convinced me to become a barefoot runner.
I was hooked on Breath the whole way through and inspired by how it brought together so many of the themes I’ve been learning about recently — there’s even a section on the Wim Hof Method, which connects perfectly to my wild experiences in Iceland and Poland earlier this year.
Also, the book’s appendix has a great list of breathing methods that are easy to follow and start practicing right away.
Here are a few of my favorite excerpts and concepts.
Three excerpts
To begin, let us rejoice in the jaw-dropping, mystical power of the nose (Chapter 3: Nose, p. 38-39):
Smell is life’s oldest sense. Standing here alone, nostrils flaring, it occurs to me that breathing is so much more than just getting air into our bodies. It’s the most intimate connection to our surroundings.
Everything you or I or any other breathing thing has ever put in its mouth, or in its nose, or soaked in through its skin, is hand-me-down space dust that’s been around for 13.8 billion years. This wayward matter has been split apart by sunlight, spread throughout the universe, and come back together again. To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and give pieces of ourselves back out. Respiration is, at its core, reciprocation.
Next, here’s my one big takeaway from Breath — the one thing to remember if you remember nothing else: breathe through your nose, avoid mouthbreathing. Nestor provides pages and pages of benefits from nose breathing, and pages and pages of detriments from mouthbreathing. Here’s one example from Chapter 3: Nose, p. 39:
The nose is crucial because it clears air, heats it, and moistens it for easier absorption. Most of us know this. But what so many people never consider is the nose’s unexpected role in problems like erectile dysfunction. Or how it can trigger a cavalcade of hormones and chemicals that lower blood pressure and ease digestion. How it responds to the stages of a woman’s menstrual cycle. How it regulates our heart rate, opens the vessels in our toes, and stores memories. How the density of your nasal hairs helps determine whether you’ll suffer from asthma.
Finally, an example of how a recurring theme for me, less is more — which has revealed itself in places like War and Peace, and my Media Diet 2020 — applies to breathing too (from Chapter 6: Less, p. 86):
One thing that every medical or freelance pulmonaut I’ve talked to over the past several years has agreed on is that, just as we’ve become a culture of overeaters, we’ve also become a culture of overbreathers. Most of us breathe too much, and up to a quarter of the modern population suffers from more serious chronic overbreathing.
The fix is easy: breathe less. But that’s harder than it sounds. We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit…
The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less.