The Breathing Cure: Develop New Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life with a Foreword by Laird Hamilton

Patrick McKeown's latest book The Breathing Cure Tips for a Happier, Healthier, Longer Life builds on his previous nonfiction book The Oxygen Advantage, which I reviewed not too long ago. If you haven't read that book or my review, that's okay. You will easily grasp his latest book and why it's unpretentiously called The Breathing Cure. This is a book for literally everybody who can read.I feel like my review of the former book lays a solid foundation for this review, but. I've also learned much more or at least understand his message even more now.It first needs to be understood that nearly all of us are overbeathers. Babies are not, but they soon learn the bad habit of breathing too much and often through their mouths. This happens during times of great stress or when our nostrils are congested. McKeown advises that we keep breathing through our noses and they won't become more congested and inflamed. This is what I do in the very rare times my nose is congested. I am a nose breather at all times. The typical number of breaths per minute is twice as much as necessary or healthful. When breathing so much the breath is usually quite shallow, from the chest, and audible as well as noticeable. Your breath should be light, slow, and deep (lsd).You may wonder why we need breathing re-education. It's so simple, right?Not really.I have to be conscious of my breath much of the time to make sure I'm not overbreathing, a yogic lifestyle that not only helps me to stay calm, think clearly, and process my feelings in a mature way, but it also distributes oxygen to my muscles, fills up my lungs, exercises my breathing muscles so I have more energy, and prevents neck and back pain as it strengthens my core.Nasal breathing, which is what we're designed to do, creates tolerance of carbon dioxide. It is the mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide (CO2) that allows us to function properly. Disordered breathing happens when we are not tolerant to carbon dioxide caused by shallow overbreathing.McKeown starts out this book explaining the science and how he was an overbreather and asthmatic until his early twenties when he discovered the Butekyo method for proper breathing.With breathing exercises clearly explained and shown, he very significantly helps us to improve our CO2 tolerance through the practice of breathholding that simulates high altitude training. Not only will this help other asthmatics, but people with panic attacks, anxiety, nasal congestion, insomnia, diabetes, depression, and even sexual dysfunction. Pregnant women, forced to overbreathe, must use caution, but women with PMS can benefit from the breathholding practice.I still practice breathholding every morning and night. A breathhold on the exhalation after a slow, deep inhalation is best when held for 40 seconds. I'm still not quite there, but I have an incomplete spinal cord injury with poor posture too..I also still lightly tape my mouth at night so my jaw doesn't fall open and I wake up refreshed.Let me end by explaining that strenuous exercise will not exercise your breathing muscles. Usually an athlete breathes through their mouth and this causes muscle fatigue, exhaustion, pain, cramps, and sometimes injury. It is only through temporary oxygen deprivation that our breathing muscles (diaphragm, lungs, scalene) are exercised to become more efficient. McKeown has helped Olympians improve their performances.I hope you'll check out McKeown's books and start changing your life for the better! There's so much more info in the book, such as the importance of nitric oxide created by proper nasal breathing to protect you from viruses like COVID-19.

2 thumbs up

Working with the exercises and have found mistakes and made improvements. Enjoyable book.

Author is highly knowledgeable on the subject and has used many, or all, of the different breath works he recommends to solve his own asthma.I found the text to be readable and easy to understand.1998 was his defining year. You can do the math.🤣He heads has his own practice and helped thousands of people from all walks of life, from children to advance ages. His books, include ‘Oxygen Advantage’.Life changing! And all it requires is to breathe in and out of the nose, if it is possible.

my breathing was terrible bad mouth breather was wrecking my health. never realized how important breathing correctly is. great book to get you on track to breathing right

The contents of this book are life-changing. Amazing that, for something as fundamental as breathing (we take an average of 20-25,000 breaths per day), most of us do it wrong, wreaking havoc on our energy, fitness and overall well-beingBefore investing in expensive supplements and other health protocols, buy this book, give the simple breathing exercises a try, and experience a new level of wellness.

The information in this book should be taught in public schools. Wanna change your life? Change your breathing. This book will show you how.

I learned about this book during a Dave Asprey podcast in which Mr McKeown was a guest. I was impressed by his presentation, and ordered the book. Sadly, it is a "nerdy" book, and very boring to read. I am by no means denying the great CONTENT of this book nor the author's qualifications/training skills, but criticising THE WAY IN WHICH this book was WRITTEN. It gave me flashbacks of the tedious high school physics book with boring graphs and a lot of black ink. Even the illustrations are lame and in black ink, so the eyes don't get a break from seeing black. It would have been much more enjoyable if the author would have listed the exercises first, in a fun and casual way, so after readers got the idea, they could dive depper into the "science" and the boring graphs, if they chose to do so. Great content, expressed in the most boring and painstaking read I can imagine.

Wow the information in the book is not only crazy relevant but also you will learn so many things even if you are in the Health domain.5 starts without a doubt. Highly recommended

Excelente livro

This is a fantastic book and the most detailed expose of the author's methods in retraining breathing. That said, the book also suffers from 2 problems that could have been avoided and are out of place in a serious book. The book does not have an index. That reduces the usefulness of the book. It also does not contain the references cited throughout the book. You have to go to the book's website to download the references. Eventually, the website will disappear but the book will remain and no one will be able to explore the reference material or follow up on areas of interested highlighted by the references. No serious work should suffer from those 2 problems.

I love Patrick McKeown!! His books are informative and very easy to read. They are life changing.

There are much better books out there on breathing, this one has variety of scientific studies but they seem to repeat throughout the book.Try instead"Breath" by James Nestor for interesting read and more accessible techniques to improve your breathTHE SCIENCE OF BREATH: BY YOGI RAMACHARAKA for more depth on breathing and some very powerful breathing techniques for the further study of breath