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Jan/Feb 2024 Book Club:

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

Facilitator: Liz Gibbons

When: Monday Jan 8th 7:30p-9p (first third)

Monday Jan 22nd 7:30p-9p (second third)

Monday Feb 5th 7:30p-9p (last third

Page count: 304

Originally Published: 2020

Book Summary There is nothing more essential to  our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out,  repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have  lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went  wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs,  as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites,  secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy  streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the  hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama,  Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to  scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to  the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance;  rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune  disease; and even 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 in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human  physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we  knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will  never breathe the same again.