Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

A short review about a book about breathing

I haven’t read a self-help style book in a while but decided to read this after seeing Nat Eliason recommend this in an Instagram Reels. He’s trying to become this #booktok guy or something. Cool stuff.

Breath is a book that documents James Nestor’s journey in trying to improve his health by improving the way he breathes. The main idea of the book is that nose breathing is way superior than mouth breathing.

This book was pretty interesting from a historical angle as it explored how different people around the world in history discovered the benefits of nasal breathing and various breathing techniques thousands or hundreds of years ago and documented them.

It also brought you along on a journey with James Nestor as he tries to fix his own issues with sleep and breathing through breathing exercises, forced nasal breathing, meditation and overall become a more healthy person.

Unless you find the history of how humans evolved their breathing over thousands of years interesting, I wouldn’t recommend this book because the entire thing can be summarised into “Breathe through your nose, mouth breathing is bad”.