43 Quotes by James Nestor

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-regulating system of the body.

The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.

And they all likely benefited from the same calming effect.

Left-nostril breathing shifts blood flow to the opposite side of the prefrontal cortex, the right area that plays a role in creative thought, emotions, formation of mental abstractions, and negative emotions.

The point of this exercise isn’t to inflict unnecessary pain. It’s to get the body comfortable with higher levels of carbon dioxide, so that we’ll unconsciously breathe less during our resting hours and the next time we work out. So that we’ll release more oxygen, increase our endurance, and better support all the functions in our bodies.

After several rounds of deep breaths to open my rib cage, Martin asked me to start counting from one to ten over and over with every exhale. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – then keep repeating it,” she said. At the end of the exhale, when I was so out of breath I couldn’t vocalize anymore, I was to keep counting, but to do so silently, letting my voice trail down into a “sub-whisper.

After much trial and error, I settled on 3M Nexcare Durapore “durable cloth” tape, an all-purpose surgical tape with a gentle adhesive. It was comfortable, had no chemical scent, and didn’t leave residue.

But the changes triggered by the rapid industrialization of farmed foods were severely damaging. Within just a few generations of eating this stuff, modern humans became the worst breathers in Homo history, the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.

The fix is easy: breathe less. But that’s harder than it sounds. We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit.