The Art Of Not Breathing

Since her twin brother, Eddie, drowned five years ago, sixteen-year-old Elsie Main has tried to remember what really happened that fateful day on the beach. One minute Eddie was there, and the next he was gone. Seventeen-year-old Tay McKenzie is a cute and mysterious boy that Elsie meets in her favorite boathouse hangout. When Tay introduces Elsie to the world of freediving, she vows to find the answers she seeks at the bottom of the sea.

Publisher’s Note: This title is now available under a new edition, The Art of Breathing ISBN 9781642970425. This edition will include a new afterword by Mark Williams, author of Mindfulness. International bestselling author Dr. Danny Penman provides a concise guide to letting go, finding peace, and practicing mindfulness in a messy world, simply by taking the time to breathe. With these simple exercises he teaches you how to dissolve anxiety, stress, and unhappiness, enhance your mind, and unleash your creativity. You will start to smile more, worry less, and with each little moment of mindfulness, discover a happier, calmer you. It really is as easy as breathing. All you need is a chair, a body, some air, and your mind. That's it!

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “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.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love 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 São 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 jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

A leading yoga guru and meditation teacher offers step-by-step breathing exercises, revealing how breathwork can enhance your mental and physical well-being Breathing is the most fundamental of our body’s physical processes and our most intimate companion—yet most of us give it little to no thought. However, once fully acknowledged and harnessed, the power of the breath is unlimited. It can ease stress and anxiety, boost energy and stamina, enhance self-confidence, sharpen the ability to focus, strengthen the quality of voice, and even relieve pain. With The Power of Breath, renowned yoga teacher Swami Saradananda aims to give gentle yet powerful guidance on the art of breathing, from the basic practices to its myriad effects on the mind and body. She explores the five types of breath—vitalizing (prana), nourishing (samana), expansive (vyana), cleansing (apana) and expressive (udana)—and provides breathing exercises for each one. She also offers mini programs for targeting specific common ailments and issues such as asthma, skin disorders, depression, lethargy and phobias—plus ways to harness your breath to enhance vocal, dramatic, or sports performance. With evocative artwork, inspiring photography, and easy-to-follow guidance, this book will enhance and affirm your daily life through the power of breathwork.

"Most of us breathe inefficiently. Life is often lived in the fast lane, and especially when we are stressed, we tend to use only the upper part of our lungs. We forget to breathe deep down into the stomach and thereby lose out on a lot of energy. Only when you become aware of your breathing and how to train it, you will be able to learn to breathe properly. Your body will immedi¬ately absorb more oxygen and after a short time you will have more energy and gain greater mental calmness. Advantages of efficient breathing: Gain more energy in your daily life Become better at managing stress Optimize your work and sport performances Avoid illnesses and get well faster Minimize chronic or transient pain Become happier and more positive Live a healthier and longer life."--Publisher description.

If yoga and doodling had a baby, this book would be it Explore your breath mindfully through a series of simple, relaxing and creative drawing exercises in this meditative and gorgeously illustrated book. You don't need to be good at drawing; you don't need to be a yogi, or an expert at meditation; you don't need anything but a pencil, and your breath. Combining the hot-trend topics of health, mindfulness and yoga along with adult creativity and coloring books, this is the perfect book to help you make breathtaking art.

A Black teacher searches for himself across the United States in this “emotive, brave” (Daily Mail, London) story for all of us who have fantasized about escaping our daily lives and starting over. Michael Kabongo is a British Congolese teacher living in London and living the dream: he’s beloved by his students, popular with his coworkers, and adored by his proud mother who emigrated from the Congo to the UK in search of a better life. But when he suffers a devastating loss, his life is thrown into a tailspin. As he struggles to find a way forward, memories of his fathers’ violent death, the weight of refugeehood, and an increasing sense of dread threaten everything he’s worked so hard to achieve. Longing to start over, Michael decides to spontaneously pack up and go to America, the mythical “land of the free,” where he imagines everything will be better and easier. On this transformative journey, Michael travels everywhere from New York City to San Francisco, partying with new friends, sparking fleeting romances, and splurging on big adventures, with the intention of living the life of his dreams until the money in his bank account runs out. “Narrated with haunting lyricism, The Selfless Act of Breathing is an intimate journey through the darkest of human impulses to the gleaming flickers of love and radical hope” (Susan Abulhawa, author of Against the Loveless World).

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.