MIAMI, FLA.—The Global Wellness Summit (GWS), the foremost gathering of international leaders in the $4.5 trillion global wellness economy, announced that James Nestor, author of the new book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, will keynote at its conference being held November 8 to 11, 2020, at The Breakers Palm Beach.
Nestor’s book has instantly become a New York Times best seller and is the result of his decade-long investigation into thousands of years of medical texts and new studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry and human physiology. Breath turns our long-held beliefs about our most basic biological function on their head and reveals how even slight adjustments in the way we breathe can transform our health. Challenging Western medicine’s philosophy of breathing, narrowly focused on lung pathologies, his research uncovers the paths to optimal breathing and how that can positively impact our weight, sleep, immune system, circulation, mood and ability to focus—while addressing the modern maladies of asthma, allergies, snoring and autoimmune disease. It’s receiving rave reviews: Library Journal called it an “eye-opening…highly recommended work…full of fascinating information,” USA Today named it a “not to miss book,” while Kirkus Reviews dubbed it a “welcome, invigorating user’s manual for the respiratory system.” It will be translated into more than 15 languages in 2021.
“After several years researching this subject, I’m now convinced that no matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly,” said Nestor. “For thousands of years, breathing was considered a medicine in Eastern cultures—more recently, modern science is proving what our ancestors accepted as common knowledge. Breathing is an absolute pillar of health, and our attention to it is long overdue.”
An Overlooked Approach
“As a person in wellness, I’m familiar with breathwork, but it honestly never grabbed me. Nestor’s brilliant, well-researched book has utterly shaken up my thinking about how the simple act of changing our breath—and boosting our lung capacity and our oxygen-CO2 exchange—is the most overlooked approach for improving our health and extending our longevity,” noted Susie Ellis, GWS chairman and CEO. “His work interweaving the latest science with lost approaches for optimal breathing needs to become a cornerstone in preventative wellness. And what a simple and accessible concept: Every one of us breathes; every one of us can change our breathing.”
The theme of the 2020 GWS is “Resetting the World with Wellness,” and Nestor will be one of a host of experts that explore how innovative and more democratic wellness concepts could transform human life post-COVID-19.
More about Nestor and Breath
Nestor is a journalist covering science who has written for Scientific American, Outside, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more. He has appeared on dozens of television shows, including ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s Morning News and NPR. His book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves was a finalist for the 2015 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and an Amazon Best Science Book of 2014.
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art represents his quest to find out where human breathing went wrong and how to fix it—an answer he couldn’t find in any medical textbook. How, over the past 300,000—and especially the last 500 years—did our shifting diets and lifestyles shrink our mouths, flatten our faces, plug our noses, and collapse our airways? Why are humans the only species that snores, has crooked teeth, and suffers from respiratory maladies like asthma and allergies? Why are these problems increasing every year?
The answer: We’ve lost the ability to breathe correctly, and it’s making our blood pressure, weight, sleep and immune system increasingly compromised. Nestor spent years working with researchers at Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and other institutions that are developing ways to reverse this damage, but his journey also took him everywhere from ancient burial sites to secret Soviet facilities to track down the people exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya and Tummo. His investigation into the latest science and lost ancient approaches is the first evidence-based roadmap to how we could actually start breathing correctly again.
To learn more about the Summit or to register, click here.
