Book 138 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: I Have a Theory!

Book – Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

Book Description: There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Reflection:

If you are anything like me, as soon as you finish reading this book you will probably say, “Shit…I’ve been breathing wrong my whole damn life!”.

This book ranks up there with Why We Sleep as one of the biggest forehead slappers I’ve encountered on this journey. Sleeping and breathing, 2 of the most essential things we do as humans, and I literally knew less than nothing about it either. Needless to say, this book blew me away and I learned a ton.

I felt like the author was describing my life when he walked us through all our modern breathing issues. I have autoimmune diseases, I have chronic sinusitis, I’m seemingly allergic to everything these days, and I DON’T KNOW WHY! I run 3-5 miles each day, play tennis 2-3 times a week, do 2 HIIT workouts a week, and I take frequent long walks with my family. I’m very physically active, but I struggle to breathe through it all. I feel like my nose is constantly running and at the same time clogged. It literally drives me nuts and I’ve been trying to figure out how to correct it for a decade. Eventually I just resigned myself to believe that this is just something I have to learn how to deal with and fight through.

After reading this book, it actually immediately prompted me to take up daily breathing exercises as my monthly challenge I do each month where I try something new each day for 30 days and see how I like it. After 30 days of trying this for 10-15 minutes each morning I found that I really enjoyed the meditative qualities of the breathing exercises and I thought it made a big impact in opening up my airways along with healthy daily dose of Vitamin C before I went on a run.

This all started to lead my mind down a rabbit hole of a grand theory I started to formulate in my mind about the spiritual nature of breathing and why it has played such an important part in religion / meditation throughout the ages.

Remember when I shared my reflection about the 1 Billion heartbeats each mammal gets that we learned about in the book The Body by Bill Bryson? Well, what is the 1 tool we have at our disposal that we can control at will to naturally regulate how fast or slow our heart beats? That’s right…our breath.

My theory is that a long time ago, a few people figured out that if you can control your breath…you can control your heart rate. If you controlled your heart rate and kept it low…you lived longer. People started to wonder why certain people seemingly lived longer and longer than others, so they showed them how by controlling their breath. We probably call this meditation these days, but back then it was just concentrated controlled breathing exercises.

After a while, these wise people began to deepen this practice around breathing and controlling your heart rate. People began to see the benefits, were happier, and living longer lives. From there, we naturally started to put a story around it, because we’re humans, and all the sudden things like spirituality, religion, and philosophy’s on how to live a long and happy life began to come into being. We never looked back!

So…if you want to live longer, happier, and healthier life, figure out how to control your breath to make the most of your 1 billion heartbeats.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. That is until I change it when I remember that I don’t know anything.

Question: How’s the quality of your breathing?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor