Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

“Few of these scientists set out to study breathing. But, somehow, in some way, breathing kept finding them. They discovered that our capacity to breathe has changed through the long processes of human evolution, and that the way we breathe has gotten markedly worse since the dawn of the Industrial Age. They discovered that 90 percent of us—very likely me, you, and almost everyone you know—is breathing incorrectly and that this failure is either causing or aggravating a laundry list of chronic diseases.” 

The vast majority of people today breathe incorrectly because of evolutionary changes to human physiology and, more recently, because of the effects of rapid industrialization, which led to a number of chronic illnesses. Increasingly, scientists are starting to study breathing and are recognizing its importance to human health.

“No matter what we eat, how much we exercise, how resilient our genes are, how skinny or young or wise we are—none of it will matter unless we’re breathing correctly. That’s what these researchers discovered. The missing pillar in health is breath. It all starts there.”

Nestor notes that breathing is the basic building block to all health, yet most people do not think about it when considering their overall wellbeing. Nestor’s book, which draws on current scientific research as well as ancient texts and practices, aims to rectify this oversight by explaining the centrality of breathing to human health.

“I call this a ‘lost art’ because so many of these new discoveries aren’t new at all. Most of the techniques I’ll be exploring have been around for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. They were created, documented, forgotten, and discovered in another culture at another time, then forgotten again. This went on for centuries.” 

While the study of breathing may seem like a new field of research, Nestor argues this is not the case. He cites the work of ancient scholars and pulmonauts—respiratory tinkerers and inventors—who have studied, practiced, and taught breathing techniques for generations, centuries, and even millennia. Nestor’s description of breathing as an “art” also highlights that it is just as much a creative and cultural act as it is a biological function for survival.