Is your Breathing Unhealthy? | James Nestor on the new science of breathing

This is part 3 of a How To Academy talk.

There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travelled the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya and Tummo, to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for BBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. His book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, spent 18 weeks of the New York Times bestseller list in the first year of publication. On YouTube, James has been featured on JRE Clips (Blame Modern Diets, Mouth-Breather is Bad for you, Ancient Civilisation Responsible for Yoga Breathing), TEDx Talks, Tom Bilyeu, The Outcome, Oxygen Advantage, Mulligan Brothers Interviews, Long Now Foundation, Lewis Howes, Rangan, Awakening with Russell, Jim Kwik and Penguin Books UK.

Hannah MacInnes is a broadcaster and journalist. Alongside hosting How To Academy’s live programmes and podcast, she presents a cultural show on Times Radio and interviews on-stage at a number of other major literary events. She is the host of The Klosters Forum Podcast series and has written for the Radio Times, the Evening Standard and TLS. Before going freelance she worked for 8 years at BBC Newsnight, as Planning Editor and as a Producer / Filmmaker.