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bodeganyc · 6 months

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Some thoughts on rockist attempts to 'adapt' Joyce's Ulysses:

The first day I sat down w/ Ulysses (2009) I was jolted coming across 'He is the boy who can enjoy invisibility' in one of the early Stephen chapters -> that lyric was so familiar to me from Sonic Youth's EVOL cut 'Secret Girl.' Since it's near the beginning of the book I imagined Kim started and put down the pages after getting some great lines for a new track (I didn't make it all the way to the end on my first try). Unfortunately Kim doesn't mention the story behind this song in her book or anywhere else (to my knowledge). The track's lyrical commentary on advertising ties in w/ Bloom's profession (he sells copy space for a Dublin newspaper) so she probably did get further than me first try on the odyssey.

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Mike Watt claims his Double Nickels tracks were Ulysses-inspired although the only direct allusion on the album is the title of the instrumental track 'June 16th' (the day the book is set, Bloomsday) on the 'Chaff' D side . Regardless these Watt songs (and Minutemen arrangements in general) evoke the feeling of reading Joyce and thinking-in-real-time so incredibly well. 'One Reporters Opinion' is an especially lovely/fun attempt at a Dedalus style self-portrait. I also love that the lines 'He's a chalk / He's a dartboard / His sex is disease / He's a stop sign' end the A side of the record. Stop sign reached.

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Fontaines D.C. have a 'heart like a James Joyce novel' on their first LP and have a newish enigmatic vibey track called 'Bloomsday' that seems inspired by the Irish identity politics woven into the book. U2 also rep Bloomsday on their 'Breathe' (not a Floyd cover unfortunately).

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Kate Bush prob has the show-stopping 'The Sensual World' which is a sonic staging of the book's erotic Molly finale (when Molly finally enjoys infinity). Bush recently re-did the track as 'Flower of the Moon' only including text directly from Joyce but I still prefer the vocal take of the original. I wonder if this was an inspiration for Bjork's incredible ecstatic sensual 'Cocoon'? (The most romantic track I know).

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I recently was hipped to J Airplane's 'Rejoyce' which does directly allude to Bloom, Stepen, Molly, and her lover Blazes Boylan while also cleverly commenting on the state of corporation USA ('Sell your mother for a Hershey bar / Grow up looking like a car').

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I dove into Ulysses on our 2019 tours (w/ the aid of an audio) and wrote lyric fragments in the style of the Proteus ('Thrown') and Nestor ('Top Hat No Rabbit') Stephen chapters in our van. I was also re-reading Shakespeare and Aristotle (Stephen's obsessions) which made the Proteus chapter in particular feel thrillingly alive -> it is still my favorite part of the book and takes me far inside each time I revisit. In 2020 I revised the 'Thrown' text in an attempt at self-portrait (similar to Mike Watt) adding more allusions but keeping Prince Hamlet and Dedalus.

I think Joyce (and Godard) are often taught (or thought) incorrectly, as if their reference-based works are merely academic exercises in meta-textuality. I think of their dense signifying styles as diaristic expressways to the skull --> to paint a portrait of a cultural consumer you must include that which is consumed.

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--> 'I find in the world without actuality'.

#Youtube

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eublcome · 1 year

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Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

EPUB & PDF Ebook Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD

by James Nestor.

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Ebook PDF Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD Hello Book lovers, If you want to download free Ebook, you are in the right place to download Ebook. Ebook Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD in English is available for free here, Click on the download LINK below to download Ebook Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art 2020 PDF Download in English by James Nestor (Author).

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No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly.There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being 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 travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of S?o Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can

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irenehardacre · 2 years

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(PDF Download) Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

Download Or Read PDF Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

[*] Download PDF Here => Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

[*] Read PDF Here => Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly.There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and

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hannahmabook · 2 years

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(Download PDF/Epub) Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

Download Or Read PDF Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

[*] Download PDF Visit Here => https://forsharedpdf.site/54239869

[*] Read PDF Visit Here => https://forsharedpdf.site/54239869

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appliances123 · 2 years

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penelopebook · 2 years

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[Download PDF/Epub] Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

Download Or Read PDF Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

[*] Download PDF Visit Here => https://forsharedpdf.site/48890486

[*] Read PDF Visit Here => https://forsharedpdf.site/48890486

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly.There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and

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bodyalive · 3 years

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From James Nestor’s book on Breathing

A short story about scoliosis and breathing; how one woman bucked the system to find a cure for an incurable condition.

#breath #scoliosis #James Nestor #Breathing #exercise #Body Alive #Structural integration Atlanta

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goldkirk · 3 years

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Most efficient breathing pattern for calming your body from stress or panic

I can't believe I forgot to ever share this stuff when I found it a few months ago. ** **

Here's the most balanced, efficient breathing rate to use when you want to force your calm-down nervous system to ramp up and overtake panic or tension, as tested by a lot of scientists and supported by human cultures in multiple parts of the globe, to everyone's pleasant surprise.

The science behind this specific breathing pattern:

Breathing at a rate of 5.5 breaths per minute with equal inhalation-to-exhalation ratio increases heart rate variability (Pubmed, 2017)

The Impact of Resonance Frequency Breathing on Measures of Heart Rate Variability, Blood Pressure, and Mood (Frontiers in Public Health 2017)

Breathing at a rate of 5.5 breaths per minute with equal inhalation-to-exhalation ratio increases heart rate variability (ResearchGate, 2013)

The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human (ERS Journals, 2017)

A Practical Guide to Resonance Frequency Assessment for Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback (Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2020)

Videos that guide you in the breathing and don't sound stupid or obnoxious:

Pretty and elegant: HRV Breathing Night Mode (Resonant Coherent Breathing) This one has nice rain sounds with it: 2 HRV Breathing - 6 Seconds Inhale, 6 Seconds Exhale (Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercise) Animated sun that has light ray expansion and shrinking to tell you to breathe in and out: Calm Sunrise Breathing Animation - HRV (Resonant, Coherent) Breathing In this one all you have to do is listen to the music notes go up and down and match your breathing to them, nice and easy: Paced Breathing: 5.5 breaths per minute

A really interesting book that talks about this in part of it:

Breath, by James Nestor

A FINAL NOTE

There is some evidence that the resonance frequency doesn't always stay exactly the same person to person, so if you've done this and you do find that your body naturally wants to slide into a more relaxed state when you're breathing on a four second count, or seven second count, or whatever, and that works for you, then feel free to do that and take a guess that yours is a little different. No worries!

#trauma #coping skills #ptsd #anxiety #mental health #when you need a little help #reference #science #katie explains things

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mark-whitwell111 · 3 years

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Yoga Breathing Techniques in the time of Covid-19 | Mark Whitwell

One of the silver linings of the corona virus pandemic is that the world has become more attuned to how we breathe. And as Covid continues to spread, affecting the respiratory systems of millions of people around the world, research is growing into how breathing-techniques can help support our health before, during and after an infection.

Early studies in the U.S. and India have shown that the quality of a person’s breath plays a significant role in their response to the virus, alongside existing healthcare.¹

“One of the first things that happens with Covid is that you get short of breath and your oxygen saturation begins to fall,” Californian pulmonologist Raymond Casciari observes. “The better condition your lungs are in, the better off you will be.”

Indeed, the lungs have been described as the “battleground” of Covid. Now more than ever before, it is a good time now to discover the power of whole-body breathing for yourself.

To those of us who are familiar with the spiritual and medical traditions of India, China and Tibet, the link between a person’s health and their breath is nothing new. The thousands-year-old cultures of Hinduism, Taoism, Tantra, and Buddhism, all placed utmost importance on right breathing. As James Nestor, author of the best-selling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, writes:

“The nose is the silent warrior: the gatekeeper of our bodies, pharmacist to our minds, and weather vane to our emotions…The missing pillar in [western] health is breath. It all starts there.”

Over millennia, our ancestors developed simple breathing techniques that any person can do. In the Ayurvedic tradition, breath-centred Yoga was given as the very means by which any person who engage the nurturing flow of life — the prana (life-force) that spirals from the hrid (heart).

These practices help us to breathe primarily through our noses rather than our mouths (nose-breathing releases nitric-oxide which plays a key role in immune function); daily asana and pranayama exercises the lungs, keeping them flexible and expanding our lung capacity; and deep, rhythmic breathing coordinated with precise movement powerfully clarifies the mind and stabilises our emotions — which we can all benefit from as social conditions continue to change.

In the early 1970s, I travelled to India from New Zealand in search of Yoga. After a few years of exploration, I was told by a friend during a visit to Tirumalavai to go to Chennai and seek out Professor T. Krishnamacharya; a man who was famous in India for his knowledge of Yoga; and most of all, for his incredible aptitude in matters of the breath.

Krishnamacharya was an inheritor of the great tantric tradition of whole-body devotional breathing. In the 1920s, after studying with his teacher Ramamohan Brahmachari in the Himalayas for seven and a half years, he began his life’s mission of communicating these powerful practices to the world. At the time, actual Yoga had fallen out of popular consciousness in India. Aware of the treasure that he held, Krishnamacharya travelled all over India drawing attention to Yoga by performing miraculous feats of breath-control. Most incredibly, he was able to stop his heartbeat at will — an event documented by American and French scientists in the mid-1930s and previously thought to be impossible by western science.

The point of this exhibition was to show the world the degree of influence that the breath has on person’s physiology. But far from encouraging people to replicate such an event, Krishnamacharya used the publicity to spread a set of simple, accessible breath-practices. He made available to every kind of person their own daily vinyasa. A perfectly tailored sequence of breathing and moving that was to be done in the ordinary life at home in a non-dramatic, non-obsessive way.

“My father taught us more ways to approach a person in yoga than I have found anywhere else,” Krishnamacharya’s son TKV Desikachar writes in The Heart of Yoga. “Who should teach whom? When? And what? These are the important questions to be asked in beginning a practice. But underlying all these is the most important question of all: How can the power of the breath be utilized? That is something quite exceptional; nowhere else is the breath given so much importance, and our work has proven that the breath is a wonder drug, if I may use this term.”

For those of you at home who want to test out what Krishnamacharya brought forth, I invite you to try a little moving and breathing right now.

Firstly, stand up straight and find your ujjayi breath (ocean breath). Ujjayi breath is found by closing the mouth, breathing in and out exclusively through the nose, but controlling the breath at the base of the throat. It is as if you are breathing directly into your upper chest. You should hear a soft rushing sound like the ocean on both the inhale and the exhale. You may notice immediately the how much deeper a breath you can take compared to sniffing air through the nose or mouth. The body knows this breath because it is how we breathe when we sleep.

Secondly, place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your lower belly. Continue with the same practice of ujjayi breath. On the inhale, bring the breath down the body from above. Receive the breath into the upper chest and expand the ribcage in all directions. Let the belly come out of its own accord. On the exhale, draw the belly in and up towards the spine and send the breath up from below. Take several breaths establishing this polarity of inhale-from-above and exhale-from-below.

Thirdly, combine these first two principles with a simple arm movement. On the inhale, arms moves in a circle around the body, bringing the hands together, and gently arching the back. Pause as the breath turns around just like the waves on the beach. On the exhale, arms move return to the side of the body. Repeat this movement six or seven times. Consciously link the body movement to the breath movement so it is felt as a single activity.

Finally, in order to be a fully fledged Yoga practitioner, one more principle needs to be added: the breath should envelop the movement. That is, the body movement is completely encapsulated within a bubble of the breath. Begin to inhale and then a moment later start to move your arms around the body in a circle. Begin your exhale and then lower your arms to your sides. When your hands come together at the top of the inhale make sure you are still breathing for a moment longer. When your hands finish at the bottom of the exhale, ensure that you are still exhaling.

Just be with your breath, that’s all.

As the pandemic continues and as lockdown-pressure bites in many countries, try being with your breath in these simple ways every day.

Many people come to Yoga and other breathing practices with the assumption that they need to practice for a long-time each day. There is an idea that it will take years of disciplined effort before we are really practicing. This is simply not true. All you need is seven minutes a day of asana to enjoy the benefits. So long as your practice is perfectly suited to your unique needs — body type, age, health, and culture — then you’ll experience a state of natural meditation, in other words, a sense of intimate connection to Reality in your very first practice.

We do have to get away from the idea of Yoga as a form of physical gymnastics. Krishnamacharya emphatically taught asana as moving pranayama; moving breath-work; moving meditation. There is no physical goal in Yoga, but pleasurable participation in breath only. Sadly, Yoga has been popularised so badly in the west. It has been turned into what Desikachar called “mediocre gymanstics” — a privileged lifestyle activity for an obsessive minority.

It is time now, for the sake of the world, to put the breath principles back into all the brands and styles that derived from Krishnamacharya: Iyengar Yoga, Astanga Vinayasa, etcetera. When the breath principles are in place then these otherwise dangerous practices become powerful, efficient and safe. Your practice becomes truly your own and will support your life in every way.

So many factors come into play when it comes to our health: our state of mind, our posture, our attitudes, self-image, and our emotions. A discord in any of these areas can have the effect of lowering our immune system and burdening the whole body. They affect neurotransmitters which play a significant role in health and well-being. There is no better thing we can do to bring light to each of these areas than to be with our breath.

Every person on Mother Earth deserves to be healthy and enjoy their wonder-full life. As we move through these difficult times, may every person be given access to the physical wisdom practices of Yoga — the easy and for-everyone science of healthy breathing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world for many decades, after first meeting his teachers Tirumali Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar in Chennai in 1973. Mark Whitwell is one of the few yoga teachers who has refused to commercialise the practice, never turning away anyone who cannot afford a training. The editor of and contributor to Desikachar’s classic book “The Heart of Yoga,” Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, which has sponsored yoga education for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to access it. A hippy at heart, Mark Whitwell successfully uses a Robin Hood “pay what you can” model for his online teachings, and is interested in making sure each individual is able to get their own personal practice of yoga as intimacy with life, in the way that is right for them, making the teacher redundant. Mark Whitwell has been an outspoken voice against the commercialisation of yoga in the west, and the loss of the richness of the Indian tradition, yet gentle and humorously encouraging western practitioners to look into the full depth and spectrum of yoga, before medicalising it and trying to improve on a practice that has not yet been grasped. And yet Mark Whitwell is also a critic of right-wing Indian movements that would seek to claim yoga as a purely hindu nationalist practice and the intolerant mythistories produced by such movements. After encircling the globe for decades, teaching in scores of countries, Mark Whitwell lives in remote rural Fiji with his partner, where Mark Whitwell can be found playing the sitar, eating papaya, and chatting with the global heart of yoga sangha online. Anyone is welcome to come and learn the basic principles of yoga with Mark Whitwell.

#Mark Whitwell

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corkcitylibraries · 3 years

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Book Review: James Nestor’s Breath - The New Science of a Lost Art.

by Ed Cashman

“But why do I need to learn to breathe? I’ve been breathing my whole life.”

James Nestor

The fruit of a decade’s travelling, research and self-experimentation, Nestor’s travelogue through breathwork practices, both ancient and modern, is accessible and provocative. He opens his account with an epiphany. Attending a breathwork session to alleviate chronic stress, he experiences an intense physical and mental shake-up. This transformative event ignites his interest in the mechanics and chemistry of breath, its therapeutic potential and inspires him to investigate a range of practitioners operating at the vanguard of this increasingly popular field. His engagement with these “pulmonauts”, as he

terms them, constitute the spine of the book. Nestor adventures through yogic and esoteric hinterlands, all the way to the rigours of research labs in a quest to understand, experientially and scientifically, the art of breathing. For the most part, he succeeds.

His success doesn’t come without sacrifice, however. Alongside Anders Olsson, a Swedish breathwork practitioner, Nestor blocks his nose with silicone plugs to force himself to mouth breathe for 10 days. Supervised by the chief of rhinology research at Stanford, it’s rapidly obvious that this is not a good idea for both of them. Most of their health metrics plummet and they feel simply awful.

So lesson No.1 in the breathwork world? Breathe through your nose. It turns out nasal breathing has many positives. It filters and warms the air via nasal turbines and increases oxygen uptake in our cells by 18% compared to mouth breathing (via a mechanism known as the Bohr effect that counter-intuitively requires an optimal amount of CO₂ in our system). It also enhances production of nitric oxide that facilitates lung health. Breathing nasally, it turns out, has a modest and occasionally spectacular potential to ameliorate chronic respiratory issues, ease mental health conditions and, indeed, raise the game of high-performance Olympians.

So far, this is conventional wisdom in the world of breathwork. However, the book takes an intriguing and informative turn to what can be described as an example of dysevolution. Simply put, our facial structures have collapsed precipitously, especially in the last 300 years. Here’s the theory: from an evolutionary standpoint, a trade-off occurred – as a result of developing cooking skills - between increased brain-size and the shrinking of our mouths and narrowing of our nasal apertures. Sadly, this deterioration led to a tightening of our airways and instigated the positive feedback loop of mouth breathing.

In addition, this state of affairs was amplified after the Industrial Revolution by the advent of processed foods, too soft for the chewing that signals stem cells to grow bone, and thereby weakening our facial structure. Consequently, of the more than 5,400 mammals on the planet, humans are the only ones that routinely show misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, crooked and crowding teeth. Hence, our current state of less than optimal breathing.

Nestor spends quite a bit of time on this topic and assuages my incredulity somewhat by citing both anecdotal and more rigorous evidence to back up these claims, conducting interviews with experts in anthropology, skull collections, and dentistry. He even takes a macabre trip to an off-limits catacomb in Paris with some local guides known as “catophiles” to confirm this theory and, one might add, spice up his narrative.

So lesson No. 2? Chew more and, for a start, consider the benefits of a proper oral posture - lips closed, teeth lightly touching and tongue to the roof of the mouth while you inhale through the nose. From a developmental point of view, it’s wise to encourage our children to breathe more nasally.

The tagline of the book, “The New Science of a Lost Art”, points to the truth of a curious collective amnesia that sometimes accompanies advances in human potential. For most of the techniques outlined here, there are historical precedents, often neglected and forgotten till a pioneer re-discovers and updates them, becoming popular when the wider culture sits up and takes notice. Nestor relates a fascinating homology between the performance of traditional prayers and chants from disparate religious traditions and the paced breathing practices of contemporary techniques. (The extending of the exhale is relevant here.) Both approaches share a calming and restorative effect because of how the breath is engaged in similar ways.

So lesson No.3? Take time out to practice extending the exhale in a 1:2 ratio (4 seconds in, 8 seconds out, for example). Purse your lips on the outbreath to slow the exhale. This exercise stimulates the parasympathetic system, the mode that puts your body in a state of rest and digest.

There’s a plethora of unusual characters in these pages, outliers and pioneers of the breath. We learn about Alexandra David-Neal, a Belgian – French anarchist who travelled to Tibet in the early 1900’s, absorbed the ancient practice of Tummo, an advanced technique that activates and warms the body. This enabled her to achieve feats of endurance as she hiked the Himalayas on her own in freezing temperatures at elevations above 18,000 feet and, we are told, for up to 19 hours a day with little in the way of food and water!

Tummo is also an influence on Wim Hof, a.k.a. the Iceman, the Dutch extreme athlete, currently the most well-known pulmonaut on the planet. An excitable and charismatic figure, his techniques exert control over the autonomic nervous system and have been validated in the lab. Hof, a holder of numerous Guinness World Records, can control his body temperature in ice through conscious breathing and can also repel the effects of an injected endotoxin, a feat thought impossible by medical authorities. The experiment was replicated with a group of people tutored by Hof, proving his “powers” are available to anyone.

Lesson No. 4? Practice, with due care, superventilation techniques that consciously put you in a controlled state of stress for short periods of time only. This places you in the driving seat of your sympathetic (fight or flight) system, increasing resilience and endurance. However, these exercises are not advisable for people with heart conditions or high blood pressure.

Less well-known in the breathwork domain are the achievements of a choir conductor who developed techniques to alleviate emphysema. Carl Stough, operating in mid-twentieth century America, was extremely private and somewhat eccentric. Nestor does well to shed light on this obscure figure. There’s a fascinating account of how the Russian, Konstantin Buteyko, came to formulate his own technique and how it continues to have success in relieving asthma. Ireland’s Patrick McKeown, a Buteyko practitioner since the late nineties, also features. Then there’s Emil Zatopek, who won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres in the 1952 Olympics. His hypoventilation technique maintained high carbon dioxide tolerance in his system, off-loading more oxygen to his muscles. Stanislav Grof and his Holotropic method, an offshoot of 1960s psychedelic research, is also examined.

Nestor is to be commended for his deep dive and, although it’s not exhaustive (notables in the field such as Stig Severinsen and Belissa Vranich among others are absent), it’s at the very least a worthwhile endeavour to promote awareness and discussion around breathing in a time when the world’s lungs are under attack by a novel virus.

I waited for a note of caution, a caveat to this “missing pillar of health” and thankfully it came towards the end. Nestor relates a tale of a fellow airline passenger requesting him to recommend a breathing technique for cancer. There are limitations. Breathwork won’t help acute events like an embolism, he tells us, but it can alleviate milder, longer-term, chronic conditions and enhance the wellbeing of the healthy or mentally stressed. It’s a prophylactic worth striving for and certainly worth more extensive research.

There’s a useful compendium of practices in the appendix of this intriguing read, ranging from yogic pranayama to box breathing. The latter technique is reputedly practiced by Navy Seals. But it’s not just elite performers that can benefit; anyone can, and this book will make a significant contribution in communicating the profound importance of how we breathe.

And so to the author’s final lesson. If one were to distil, for simplicity’s sake, these sometimes contradictory practices into the perfect breath, try this: breathe slowly and lightly in through the nose for a count of roughly 5.5 seconds, expanding the diaphragm and breathe slowly out through the mouth or nose for 5.5 seconds. This averages 5 or 6 breaths per minute. Do this exercise for 5 minutes at least 3 times a day. That’s it. Easypeasy, you might say but the trick, like the practice of any art, is consistency. Nestor’s wager, and that of his cast of pulmonauts, is that you will be richly rewarded.

Available on BorrowBox

#LoveReading #CorkCityLibraries

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