Breath. New facts about lost art

You will no longer be able to breathe as you once did!

It doesn't matter what you eat or whether you exercise. Your body composition and level of intelligence do not matter if you do not know how to breathe properly.

There is nothing more important for health and well-being than breathing. It seems like a simple process: inhalation—exhalation, and so it goes 25 thousand times a day. But humans as a biological species have lost the ability to breathe correctly, which has detrimental consequences for us.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to find out what went wrong and how it can be fixed. He seeks answers not in pulmonology labs, but in dusty excavations of ancient burials, in secret Soviet research institutes, in choral circles in New Jersey, and on smog-filled streets of São Paulo. Nestor meets people who possess secret knowledge based on ancient breathing practices such as pranayama, sudarshan kriya, and tummo, and together they scientifically test established notions about breathing.

Modern research shows that even small changes we make in the process of inhalation or exhalation can dramatically improve athletic performance, rejuvenate internal organs, eliminate snoring, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and even straighten a spine damaged by scoliosis.

Turning to ancient medical texts that are thousands of years old and to cutting-edge research in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology overturns our habitual notions of breathing as a basic biological function.