James Nestor

There’s a secret to solving workplace stress and burn out. It’s surprisingly simple: breathe. According to science journalist JAMES NESTOR, breathing is the key to transforming our lives—more than diet, sleep, or exercise. Drawing on his instant New York Times bestseller Breath—which spent 18 weeks on the bestseller list in its first year and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide—James turns the conventional wisdom about our most basic biological function on its head. He teaches us that even slight adjustments to our breathing can profoundly improve workplace efficiency, athletic performance, anxiety, and sleep. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, calls James’s work “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.”

When we consider our health and well-being, we scrutinize the foods we eat or the amount of stress we’re under. Rarely, if ever, do we consider the ways we breathe—yet acclaimed science journalist James Nestor says that poor breathing habits are linked to a laundry list of chronic health problems and roadblocks to success: lost focus and concentration, anxiety, sleep issues, and even cavities and crooked teeth. James shows how we’ve lost the art of breathing properly and teaches us how to get it back again.

In his landmark book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James seeks out what went wrong and shows us how to fix it with a mix of science, humor, history, and simple, constructive takeaways. You’ll never breathe the same again. Brilliantly researched and utterly fascinating, Breath has earned praise from New York Times bestselling author Joshua Foer, who calls it a “transformative book that changes how you think about your body and mind.” Breath became an instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and London Sunday Times bestseller, and has been translated into over 35 languages. It was awarded the Best General Nonfiction Book of the Year by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for the Royal Society’s Best Science Book of the Year.

James has spoken about the importance of proper breathing at the Stanford Medical School, the United Nations, and Global Classroom (World Health Organization+UNICEF), as well as more than 60 radio and television shows, including Fresh Air with Terry Gross, ABC’s Nightline, CBS Morning News, and dozens of NPR programs. To date, he has written for publications such as Scientific American, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name a few.

In his earlier book, DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What The Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves, James follows extreme athletes, adventurers, and scientists as they explore the ocean, uncovering weird and wondrous discoveries that redefine our understanding of both the ocean and ourselves. The book was a Finalist for the PEN American Center Best Sports Book of the Year, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a BBC Book of the Week, and an Amazon Best Science Book of the year.

James has also teamed up with National Geographic Explorer and marine scientist David Gruber to create Project CETI—an ambitious undertaking to help us connect with and better understand the animals we share the planet with. Using technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, Project CETI hopes to one day crack interspecies communication, and was accepted as a TED Audacious Project.