Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

The point was to get the diaphragm accustomed to this wider range so that deep and easy breathing became unconscious. “Keep moving your lips!” Martin egged me on. “Get out the last little molecule of air!”

about how they’d breathed in ways that expanded the size of their lungs by 30 percent or more.

In colder climates, our noses would grow narrower and longer to more efficiently heat up air before it entered our lungs; our skin would grow lighter to take in more sunshine for production of vitamin D. In sunny and warm environments, we adapted wider and flatter noses, which were more efficient at inhaling hot and humid air; our skin would grow d

pulmonauts exploring novel therapies in breathing,

Olsson and I emerge from the shady tranquility of Golden Gate Park, stopping to face the wind-ripped Pacific Ocean. We’ve just jogged a few miles, inhaling fast and exhaling very long breaths to a count of about seven or higher, trying to keep our lungs roughly half full.

The techniques were many and they varied, but the purpose of each was to train patients to always breathe as closely as possible to their metabolic needs, which almost always meant taking in less air.

The phenomenon, called nasal cycles, was first described in 1895 by a German physician named Richard Kayser.

During the deepest, most restful stages of sleep, the pituitary gland, a pea-size ball at the base of the brain, secretes hormones that control the release of adrenaline, endorphins, growth hormone, and other substances, including vasopressin, which communicates with cells to store more water.

It turns out that when breathing at a normal rate, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air. The majority of that oxygen is exhaled back out. By taking longer breaths, we allow our lungs to soak up more in fewer breaths. “If, with training and patience, you can perform the same exercise workload with only 14 bre