Book Review – Breath, the new science of a lost art

I read Breath – The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor after one of the Long White Cloud Qigong instructors mentioned it during one of our monthly Zoom meetups and thought I would write a review so that others can know what to expect from the book. It is always interesting to stay abreast of what is currently being published on topics that relate to qigong, the quality of content often varies greatly though, so a personal recommendation helps to focus attention towards books that are more likely to be interesting and useful. The book did not disappoint – I found a lot to like inside it, as well as a few things, not exactly to dislike, but that are reflective of the general state of understanding of the breathing function and breathing techniques, which is itself informative…

In the book, the author comes up with the term “pulmonaut” to describe someone who embarks on a journey to discover the effects that different breathing techniques can have on our health and wellbeing. The book follows the authors own journey as he explores different breathing techniques and meets with and explores the work of a variety of modern day pulmonauts. He has some great adventures along the way, meeting some interesting characters, and testing out a wide variety of breathing techniques.

Some of the things I really liked from the book:

I really like that the author surveyed a wide variety of different breathing techniques, including techniques that focused on slow breathing, fast breathing, and even breath holding. Within the book he gives a sampling of most if not all of the different most popular breathing techniques that are commonly found in the world today. He covered everything from Yogic breathing techniques, to Buteyko, to Wim Hof, to Holotropic breathwork, and many others in between. Many of them are covered within the body of the book, and he makes mentions of still others, such as the navy seal ‘box breathing’ technique, in the references at the end of the book – showing how extensively he researched his subject.

I also really like that he went as close to the source as he practically could when researching these different techniques, and that he tried as many of them as he could on himself so that he could write about them from personal experience. This led to some interesting adventures that he recounts, meeting unusual people, and trying unusual techniques in different settings from yoga studios to parks, to laboratories all over the world.

I also liked that the author was honest with the reader about his experience with the different techniques. If he had a truly revelatory experience he tells us about it, and equally if a technique didn’t really do much for him, or he had doubts about it, or he thought it was actually much the same as another technique he had already tried – he lets us know that as well.

I like that he tried to look beyond just breathing techniques in understanding the factors that influence this vital function. He didn’t get too far with this – looking a little at diet and also specifically the role of chewing in facial bone development, including some of the work of Western A. Price and more recently Dr John Mew, but at least he made some effort in this direction.

I liked that he had a focus on scientific research, even participating in some of this himself, taking a multitude of measurements of different health indicators to see the effect that different types of breathing have.

I liked that the book has a couple of great sections at the end, one on different breathing techniques if readers want to try them for themselves – as well as sources of where you can learn more about each technique, another of not just references but also notes of different sources he discovered in his research so that the reader can investigate further if they wish.

Things that I found a little disappointing…

Much of the focus within the book is on current ‘pulmonauts’ or ones from relatively recent history, and their research into different breathing techniques. This is quite in keeping with the theme of the title – “The New Science of a Lost Art”. Unfortunately the content of the book also reflects the second part of the title, the “Lost Art” part.

In the book, the author occasionally makes use of some nice quotes from older historical sources, including some really nice Chinese ones, but he doesn’t really look into these older ‘lost arts’ in any depth. The focus is very much on modern ‘pulmonauts’ and their attempts to understand breathing and create different breathing techniques.

As I mentioned earlier, I really liked that the author explored both slow breathing techniques and then faster ones as well. As he wrote about them, he described his experience of them and some of the evidence that supports their benefits, but he didn’t really tie them together and how they relate to each other. Then finally towards the end of the book in chapter 10, I saw a glimmer of hope as he describes his journey to Brazil to meet with Luiz Sergio Alvares DeRose, who he describes as a renowned expert on the foundations of yoga. I didn’t know what the chapter would contain, as the whole book is written very much in a narrative story telling style, but I thought – finally he is meeting with an expert with traditional knowledge who will tie together all of these different aspects of breathing that he has explored through the rest of the book in a somewhat disjointed way. Finally he is going to sum this up and give the big picture of breathing, and how all of these pieces fit together…

Earlier in the book he quotes fellow modern day pulmonaut Anders Ollson talking about what inspired his own journey into experimenting with the breath saying “There were yogi books about prana, and then there were medical books focusing on pathologies – blood gases and disease and CPAP”. Anders saw the knowledge gap and wanted to link these up and understand breathing in a practical way, inspiring his own journey of exploration. Unfortunately the authors visit with DeRose did nothing to fill this gap though – instead it just fell into the same category of it being “about prana”.

I think of course there is a lot of value in exploring the relationship between the breath and prana, or qi, as it is referred to in qigong. This is an important aspect of understanding the breath. But I would also argue that the art of breathing is not as “Lost” as the title of this book implies. All of the pieces are available – there is now quite good scientific knowledge of different aspects of the breath and how they influence individual aspects of our physiology, and the traditional knowledge provides a framework that can link all of these discrete pieces of information into a comprehensive understanding of breath and the breathing function, including the role and effects of slow breathing, fast breathing, breath holding, and their connection to our internal energy.

Sadly the author does not make this link, but instead leaves his recounting of his journey of exploration into breath as a series of somewhat fragmented encounters and experiences. I think this reflects one of the fundamental weaknesses of most of the modern approaches of breathing that are popular today. There is a tendency to want to focus on just a single technique as a magic bullet solution to breathing and other health issues – but… life doesn’t really work that way…

We face many different challenges and situations on a daily basis, and a healthy breath is one that changes and adapts to match our needs in each of these situations. To truly understand our breath, we need to understand how all of the different parts of the breath fit together so that we can be flexible and adapt our breathing patterns to the ever changing situations we find ourselves in. Focusing on just one technique is great for marketing – it gives you just one thing to focus on, and one thing to sell. It is also easy for the practitioner to have just one thing to focus on and to think that this is all that they need. It is a bit like the old saying though – “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail” There is only so far it will take you before you realise that not all problems are nails, and you often need other tools to address them effectively. It takes a bit more work to understand how to use these different tools, but when you do you will be much better prepared to use your breath effectively in every situation in life.

I applaud the author for his efforts to survey broadly and bring to light many of the different breathing techniques that have become popular in recent years, in this respect he goes far beyond many other authors who often focus on just one narrow aspect. This is encouraging to see, and I think it reflects a changing and evolving awareness of breathing in the world. As some of these individual techniques have gained in popularity, this has led to more interest in breathing practices in general, and more and more people are now being exposed to not just one technique but to multiple contrasting techniques. Naturally they will be curious and want to reconcile these different approaches to breathing. If they choose to look more deeply into the traditional sources of these practices, they will find that the links can be made, and a comprehensive understanding of breathing attained.

Overall thoughts on the book

Overall I can highly recommend this book. There is a LOT to like about it, and it was enjoyable to follow the author on his journey of exploration into such a wide array of different breathing practices. I would have liked it if he had explored some of them a bit further, for example he talks about spending time with and interview freedivers, but doesn’t really give any discussion of the techniques that they use in their sport. Perhaps that particular area of breathing practice was too niche and removed from the general focus on health and wellbeing found within the book.

Don’t expect to use the book as an instructional manual. There are descriptions of some exercises you might like to try for yourself, but overall it is more a book that gives background information, and excellent references and leads of where you can look to find more on topics that are of interest to you.

Those of you reading this who have taken the Release the Power of your Breath (RPB) course, will recognize that the course goes a long way towards joining up the disjointed dots presented in this book. I would still recommend reading it though, as it will give you some insights into some of the different practices that are most popular today that you may have heard of but not had a chance to try for yourself. It also goes into some topics that were not covered in depth in the old RPB course. For those of you who have not had a chance to do the RPB course yet – it is not currently available as we are in the process of reviewing and reformatting many of our old courses to make them even more thorough, user friendly, and accessible. If this is something you are interested though, feel free to let us know and we can put you on a waiting list to receive updates when it becomes available.

John Munro

Long White Cloud Qigong