No matter what we eat, how much we exercise, how thin we are, how young or smart we are, none of it matters if we are not breathing correctly. Nothing is more essential to our health and well-being than breathing. We breathe in and out air 25,000 times a day. But humanity as a species has lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to find out what went wrong and how we can fix it. The answers are not to be found in the breathing lab as we might expect, but in ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and muddy excavations in the smog-covered streets of São Paulo. Nestor follows the men and women who explore the science behind ancient breathing practices such as pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo, teaming up with lung tweakers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research has shown that with just a few adjustments to the way we breathe in and out, we can dramatically improve our athletic performance, rejuvenate our internal organs, put a stop to snoring, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and even straighten the spine in scoliosis. None of this should be possible. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and the latest cutting-edge research in respiratory, psychological, biochemical, and human physiology, Breath overturns the conventional wisdom we thought we knew about our most basic biological functions. You will never breathe the same way again.