Book- Breathe by James Nestor

I came across this book when I was exploring about health. Coincidentally, Sravani suggested the book while I just picked it up. Glad to come across this book. I have always heard about the importance of breathing but never paid much attention to the details of it. Breathing is so ubiquitous, what's so mysterious in it could be a general question but, as we are always told to be aware of our breathe, I got curious of it.  In Breathe, James explore the magic of breathing by taking up on the journey of expermenting various methods and also by interacting with people who master the art of breathing and live a wholesome life.  As soon as I began to read this book, I became more aware of my breathe and was in awe of his discovery of amazing stories, journeys woven around breath.

A few key take aways from Breathe-

Shut your mouth. Breathe through your nose. The more you breathe through your nose, the better your well being would improve in general. 

Focus on sustaining carbon dioxide for long time rather than gulping oxygen. It means to focus on exhale with a lot of techniques. 

Chew. I took a note of all the foods I consumed in general and I hardly chew hard food these days, thanks to the consumption of whole foods. Chewing can change our face anatomy, even till the age of 70!

Breathe more, on ocassion- Learnt about the technique tummo, which can regulate core temperatures of our body. A lot of techniques in general talk about breathing more for occasion, to emphasize on how we can control our autonomic nervous system rather than be mere passengers of it. Without knowing a lot about these techniques, I used to plunge into cold water and somehow sustain cold for little time. I used to rely on listening to my body, being more aware of my body response and walk out whenever I felt, I can't endure it. I'm looking forward to these winters where I can learn a few of these practices and try it out. 

Hold your breathe- A lot of experiments by a lot of people to study chemoreceptor flexibility. Communication between chemoreceptors and amygdalae works both ways: these structures are constantly exchanging information and adjusting breathing every second of every minute of the day. If communication breaks down, havoc ensues. 

How we breathe matters- The perfect breathe the author discovered through his decade journey is this- Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhales for 5.5 seconds. That's 5.5 breaths a minute for toatal of about 5.5 litrese of air. The fitness industry is all rage creating a lot of devices based on this simple aspect- breathing. It costs nothing to be aware of your breathe. If one wishes to get onto feedback loop and be crazy, panicky, worrying about breathing rightly, I wonder if that helps us for our wellbeing.