James Nestor (@MrJamesNestor) is a science journalist and the author of the international bestseller Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, with more than three million copies sold in 44 languages. Breath was named the Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for Science Book of the Year at the Royal Society.
He is also the author of Deep: Free Diving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves and Get High Now (Without Drugs).
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James Nestor — Breathing Protocols to Reboot Your Health, Fix Your Sleep, and Boost Performance
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TIMESTAMPS
- [00:00:00] Start.
- [00:01:37] Why I waited years to interview James about Breath.
- [00:02:35] Maurice Daubard: The mysterious 90-year-old who preceded Wim Hof.
- [00:05:01] Tummo breathing: Ancient Bon Buddhist heat generation.
- [00:08:13] James’ personal breathwork practice and the Wim Hof method (with warnings).
- [00:09:25] How breathwork cured James’ chronic respiratory issues.
- [00:11:46] Sudarshan Kriya: The weekend workshop that changed everything.
- [00:16:56] My nine-minute breath hold experiment (hyperbaric chamber edition).
- [00:18:57] Post-book revelations and angry doctors’ offices.
- [00:20:41] The ADHD-breathing connection: A controversial Venn diagram.
- [00:22:00] DIY breathing assessments for kids.
- [00:25:55] Mouth tape: From hostage situations to sleep optimization.
- [00:28:48] James’ seven-year mouth taping commitment.
- [00:31:14] CO2 levels: Your LEED-certified hotel is suffocating you.
- [00:36:50] Monitoring CO2 with the Aranet4 and building a CO2 database.
- [00:39:51] James’ travel kit: Red lights, granny packs, and a Soviet-era PEMF device.
- [00:51:59] In Weirdville, eyes sing The Body Electric.
- [00:52:58] The supplements included in David’s granny packs.
- [00:54:16] Natto vs. nattokinase.
- [00:56:18] Athletes and breathing: The BOLT score explained.
- [01:03:25] LeBron James’ alternate nostril breathing and diaphragmatic dysfunction.
- [01:04:47] Inspiratory muscle training and the back soreness warning.
- [01:08:47] The Relaxator: An adult breathing pacifier for focus.
- [01:12:54] San Francisco Writers Grotto and the trustafarian invasion.
- [01:16:10] Writer’s block: A convenient excuse for hobbyists.
- [01:19:04] Cutting the corporate cord: James’ visceral “I quit” moment.
- [01:23:25] The freediving story that launched a book deal.
- [01:25:41] Deep‘s disappointing launch and publisher betrayal.
- [01:28:10] Breath: From 290,000 words to 85,000 in a house in the woods.
- [01:31:51] Finding the skeleton: The Stanford experiment as through-line.
- [01:35:44] Prayer and coherent breathing: The 5.5-second secret.
- [01:38:44] James’ critique of breathwork culture and barriers to entry.
- [01:41:07] Sleep optimization: SnoreLab, side sleeping, and incline bed therapy.
- [01:44:56] Parting thoughts and where to find James and free breathing protocols.
JAMES NESTOR QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“I think one of the biggest things that I found … is the [number] of kids [who] have sleep disorder breathing, this can be snoring or sleep apnea or some sort of dysfunction in their breathing at night. And then if you take that population of kids who have these breathing problems at night, and if you take the population of kids who have ADHD, those two diagrams almost completely intersect. What many researchers are saying is that ADHD does not exist. What you’re looking at are sleep-deprived kids. And the most shocking thing to me is that a kid [who] presents with ADHD, they’re never assessed for their breathing. They’re never assessed for their sleep. They’re given drugs and put on their way, and I think it’s criminal.”
— James Nestor
“What I’ve found is in the hotels that have the big plaques outside that say LEED-certified, Green-certified, that are the most expensive, have by far the worst quality air. I’ve recorded 2,800 parts per million waking up in one of these hotels.”
— James Nestor
“I think the concept of writer’s block is a convenient out for people who want an excuse to not work and complain or get attention by talking about writer’s block. Every professional writer I know that writes for a living, that is, writing is the only source of income for these people, has never experienced writer’s block.”
— James Nestor
“If you can hear [kids] breathing, they are struggling to breathe. If they’re breathing through the mouth, they are struggling to breathe. If they are snoring or have sleep apnea, they are inhibiting their … physical growth. They’re causing neurological damage to their brains. They’re increasing their chances of having diabetes later on in life.”
— James Nestor
“[Maurice Daubard] was extremely sick as a child, had various lung infections, various respiratory disorders, and he was slated for surgery. They were going to remove a large part of his lungs. And at that time, a missionary came in to see him and said, ‘Hey, I was just in the far East and I heard about this thing called yoga.’ And he said, ‘Well, what’s yoga?’ He said, ‘Let me tell you about it.’ And he showed him some breathing techniques. So Daubard said, ‘I don’t want to do the surgery yet. Give me a few weeks to try to rehabilitate myself.’ And everyone thought he was crazy. And not only did he rehabilitate himself, he gained this almost superhuman strength by adopting these breathing practices. And that was in the 1950s.”
— James Nestor
“They looked at what happened to the bodies of all of these subjects and they looked at how heart rate variability went through the roof, how blood pressure decreased, how oxygen increased in the brain, and all of these different systems of the body entered the state of coherence. And they called this breathing pattern coherent breathing after that. You don’t need to pray to breathe this way. All you have to do is inhale five to six seconds and exhale five to six seconds.”
— James Nestor
“I remember sitting in this guy’s office and looking at him and looking at the office, and I had the most sickening feeling at the bottom of my stomach. And I did not plan to do this, but it’s like it came from another realm in mid-sentence as he’s talking about this, I just said, ‘You know what? I quit. I can’t do this anymore.’”
— James Nestor
“What they’ve found is the vast majority of athletes, you would think that they would have their breath completely focused, that they would be the best breathers in the world, but they absolutely are not. They’re as dysfunctional as everyone else. They’ve learned how to push through the pain to win the game, but that doesn’t mean they’re breathing properly.”
— James Nestor
“[Breath] was 290,000 words. That had to come down to 85,000. The key is where I was gaining real clarity is I did something completely cliched … I got a house in the woods where there was absolutely nothing around. No Starbucks to go to, no store to go to. And I just did that thing. I thought, ‘Huh, if I have no distractions around, what will happen?’ And it turns out that boredom is the most wonderful muse of all.”
— James Nestor
“What I think that [breathwork] culture is doing is a bit of a disservice to everybody else in that it’s complicating and creating a barrier around something that already belongs to everybody. This is what my book was mostly about. It wasn’t breathwork. It was about this biological function of breathing. And if you look at 90 percent of people on the planet right now, [they] suffer from some form of breathing dysfunction. The most helpful thing you can do for yourself is just to be a normal breather.”
— James Nestor
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