Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.

The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less.

It’s one of the reasons so many of us snore today, why our noses are stuffed, our airways clogged. Why we need sprays, pills, or surgical drilling just to get a breath of fresh air.

Feinstein of carbon dioxide therapy.

For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. This is a fact that most doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically gotten wrong. The lungs are the weight-regula

Last night, Olsson snored for three minutes while I clocked in at six, a 4,000 percent decrease from ten days ago. Our sleep apnea, which disappeared the first night of nasal breathing, has remained nonexistent. My blood pressure this morning was 20 points lower than its highest point at the beginning of the experiment; on average I’ve dropped 10 p

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 o

The human face began rapidly deteriorating, too. Mouths shrank and facial bones grew stunted.

The Art of Living Foundation.

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