According to author and journalist James Nestor, breathing is the key to transforming our lives. It is the secret to solving workplace stress and burn out.
In his book “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art,” James says that when we consider our health and well-being, we scrutinize the foods we eat or the amount of stress we’re under. Rarely, if ever, do we consider the ways we breathe — yet poor breathing habits are linked to a laundry list of chronic health problems and roadblocks to success: lost focus and concentration, anxiety, sleep issues, and even cavities and crooked teeth.
James will show how we’ve lost the art of breathing properly and teach us how to get it back again with a mix of humor, history, and simple, constructive takeaways. James teaches us that even slight adjustments to our breathing can profoundly improve workplace efficiency, athletic performance, anxiety and sleep.
Breath became an instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and London Sunday Times bestseller, and will soon be translated into 30 languages. It has earned praise from New York Times bestselling author of “Moonwalking with Einstein,” Joshua Foer, who calls it a “transformative book that changes how you think about your body and mind.” Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat Pray Love,” calls James’ work “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual, and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe — and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.”
James has spoken about the importance of proper breathing at the Stanford Medical School, the United Nations, and Global Classroom (World Health Organization+UNICEF), as well as more than 60 radio and television shows, including Fresh Air with Terry Gross, ABC’s Nightline, CBS Morning News, and dozens of NPR programs. To date, he has written for publications such as Scientific American, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name a few.
James has also teamed up with National Geographic Explorer and marine scientist David Gruber to create Project CETI — an ambitious undertaking to help us connect with and better understand the animals we share the planet with. Using technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, Project CETI hopes to one day crack interspecies communication, and was accepted as a TED Audacious Project. James is also the author of DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What The Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves.