Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Humans “rust” as well. As the cells in our bodies lose the ability to attract oxygen, Szent-Györgyi wrote, electrons within them will slow and stop freely interchanging with other cells, resulting in unregulated and abnormal growth. Tissues will begin “rusting” in much the same way as other materials. But we don’t call this “tissue rust.” We call i

Their transformation was a matter of training; they’d coaxed their lungs to work harder, to tap the pulmonary capabilities that the rest of us ignore. They

Dr. Michael Gelb is a renowned New York dentist who specializes in treating snoring, sleep apnea, anxiety, and other breathing-related problems.

mastery of fire and processing food, an enormous brain, and the ability to communicate in a vast range of sounds—would obstruct our mouths and throats and make it much harder for us to breathe. This recessed growth would, much later, make us prone to choke on our own bodies when we slept: to snore.*

shores of Africa.

These two energies are made in different muscle fibers throughout the body. Because anaerobic respiration is intended as a backup system, our bodies are built with fewer anaerobic muscle fibers. If we rely on these less-developed muscles too often, they eventually break down.

Our mental health relies on chemoreceptor flexibility as well.

prana, which translates to “life force” or “vital energy.”

Collectively, I’m calling these potent techniques Breathing+, because they build on the foundation of practices I described earlier in this book, and because many require extra focus and offer extra rewards. Some involve breathing really fast for a very long time; others require breathing very slow for even longer. A few entail not breathing at all