**Title: The Breathing Cure: Develop New Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life**
**Author: Patrick McKeown**
**Genre: Health, Self-Help**

**Review:**

"The Breathing Cure: Develop New Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life" by Patrick McKeown is a comprehensive guide that delves into the transformative power of proper breathing techniques. McKeown, a leading authority on breathing and the author of several influential works on the subject, builds on his extensive expertise to offer readers a clear and practical roadmap to improving their health through optimal breathing.

The book is meticulously structured, beginning with an accessible explanation of the science behind breathing. McKeown explains how proper breathing can impact various aspects of health, including sleep quality, athletic performance, mental clarity, and overall well-being. He draws on a blend of modern research and traditional practices, particularly the Buteyko Method, to underpin his arguments, making the information both credible and compelling.

One of the book's key strengths is its practical approach. McKeown doesn't just present the theory; he offers a wealth of exercises and techniques designed to help readers integrate better breathing habits into their daily lives. These exercises are well-explained and accompanied by step-by-step instructions, making them easy to follow regardless of prior knowledge or experience. From simple breath holds to more advanced breathing patterns, the book provides a comprehensive toolkit that readers can adapt to their individual needs and goals.

McKeown's writing is engaging and clear, making complex physiological concepts accessible to a general audience. He employs a reassuring and motivational tone, which helps to demystify the process of retraining one's breathing. The inclusion of case studies and testimonials adds a personal touch, illustrating the profound impact that proper breathing can have on diverse aspects of life.

The book also addresses common breathing-related issues such as asthma, anxiety, sleep apnea, and snoring. McKeown offers targeted advice for managing these conditions through improved breathing techniques, providing hope and practical solutions for those who struggle with such problems. His holistic approach ensures that the book is relevant to a wide audience, from athletes seeking performance enhancement to individuals looking to improve their overall health and well-being.

However, some readers might find the emphasis on the Buteyko Method somewhat limiting. While McKeown does reference other breathing techniques and traditions, his primary focus remains on this particular method. Additionally, the book's depth of detail, while beneficial for those seeking a thorough understanding, might be overwhelming for readers looking for a more straightforward guide.

In conclusion, "The Breathing Cure" by Patrick McKeown is an insightful and practical resource for anyone interested in harnessing the power of proper breathing to enhance their health and well-being. McKeown's expertise and clear guidance make this book a valuable addition to the self-help and health literature. Whether you are new to the concept of breathing exercises or looking to deepen your practice, this book offers a wealth of knowledge and practical advice to help you breathe your way to a healthier life.

Really informative and I have put some of the recommendations into practice and have already seen the benefits.

"The Breathing Cure" by Patrick McKeown is a comprehensive guide that offers a practical and effective approach to breathing for improved health and well-being. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the importance of proper breathing techniques and how they can be used to alleviate a wide range of health issues.

The book begins with an overview of the science of breathing and the connection between proper breathing and overall health. McKeown goes on to discuss common breathing problems, such as asthma, allergies, snoring, and sleep apnea, and offers practical solutions for each condition.

One of the most helpful aspects of the book is the range of practical exercises and techniques provided. McKeown offers a wide range of exercises and techniques that are suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels. The exercises are easy to follow and can be incorporated into daily life to help improve breathing and overall health.

Overall, "The Breathing Cure" is an excellent resource for anyone looking to improve their breathing and overall health. McKeown's clear and concise writing style, combined with his wealth of knowledge and expertise, make this book an essential guide for anyone looking to improve their breathing and overall well-being. Highly recommended!

As someone who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, I found this book and the breathing techniques very helpful.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. very helpful with some great tips. and very easy to read. I recommend this book to anyone as a reference

Patrick McKeown's "The Breathing Cure" is a captivating book that offers a plethora of breathing techniques and insightful information about the significance of deep breathing and its benefits. The book suggests that proper breathing practices can help address health problems, including high blood pressure and diabetes. Personally, reading this book has made me more mindful of my own breathing, and it has even helped me manage my anxiety.

However, the abundance of information presented in the book can make it somewhat challenging to digest. As a result, I believe I will need to read it again to fully understand and retain all of the valuable knowledge it offers.

The Breathing Cure by Patrick McKeown is an interesting read. It shares a lot of breathing techniques, helpful insights on the importance of deep breathing and the benefits of doing it. It claims that proper breathing can help address health issues such as high blood pressure and diabetes. I have become more mindful of my breathing because of this book and it did help me handle my anxiety. The only thing that makes it difficult for me in digesting this book is there's too much information. I think I need to reread it.

Thank you, Patrick McKeown, Humanix Books, and NetGalley for the ARC. I understand that I am to give my honest feedback.

This is definitely a scientific read that is for a niche audience. I picked it up because recently my asthma has gotten worse to where now I need a daily inhaler instead of a rescue inhaler. I appreciate the exercises being so close to the front of the book because it can be hard to get by the reasoning when all you want it the technique. I'll be certain to keep reading the explanations, but slowly.

I got a free ebook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I found The Breathing Cure by Patrick McKeown interesting. The topic of breath work seems to be very popular at the moment. The author describes various types of breathing and the associated benefits. I’m not sure I’ll put much of this into practice, but I did enjoy reading how breathing can affect things like stress and our overall health.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy of this book.

This is such a great book about the power of breath work. As part of taking care of our health we can establish breathing routines to help us with stress, anxiety, depression, and all kinds of things. There are different types of breathing and the author explains all the kinds of breath work. A great book that I will definitely continue to reference and ensure I focus on my breathing. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC.

Thanks to the author, publishers Humanix Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I did not finish this book, although I don’t regard it as a typical DNF. My interactions with this book were to use it more as a work of reference material, rather than a book that I would read from cover to cover.

The nasal breathing COVID-19 related content was topical, while as an avid runner I was looking for tips that I might be able to glean that might make my aerobic engine work more efficiently. The chapter describing how to breathe properly was very interesting, while the different breathing exercises given to help you physically, mentally, and emotionally in different areas of life were very useful.

Other areas of the book that went a bit deeper into topics such as how breathing can affect you physiologically and can impact on your blood pressure and hormones were not relevant for me so I did not read them, however I have no doubt that the author deals with those topics with the same level of detail and care that went into those that I did read, and that other readers would find them equally as useful.

A reasonable approach to breathing. However, as a healthcare professional trained in physiology, I question many of the over generalities regarding breathing physiology. I couldn't get past these.

This book is good for health and relaxation. Studies show that we are not breathing correctly which doesn’t help handle stress in our lives. This book helps you take steps on breathing better.

I have been doing breathwork for the last two years. I discovered it early in the pandemic and learned all the Wim Hof, Soma Breath, DMT breathing, you name it, I've probably tried it. I love breathwork as what can honestly be better for you than breathing.
The Breathing Cure does a great job of breaking down the science behind breathwork, the methods to test your lungs, and how to use different breathing techniques to achieve different results. I personally love a written guide to breathwork because I also enjoy knowing the science behind what I'm doing. When you feel it working but then have science to back it up, it reinforces the practice and the process.

The terms can seem complex but the techniques are easy to execute especially for the new users. But if you are advanced or don't care about the science behind why breathwork works, then this isn't the book for you. This isn't a pure instruction manual, there are heavy explanations throughout which could be cumbersome for some readers. But regardless, you should give it a chance. The science behind breathwork helps to highlight why it may be a practice to cement in your life. There are sections for breathwork with children (safely obviously) which is great because my kids love breathwork. So this was exciting to share with them.

The author is a well respected expert and he did his job in convincing me how important it is to breathe correctly and not to mouth breathe (even when exercising, sick or sleeping). I appreciate the exercises and he gives you all the info you need and more. He gives you the exercises in the front of the book because he says most people want to skip to them right away anyway and they are so important, but the result of this was after reading them and the first 100 or so pages about why it was so important to follow his advice, I wondered why I needed to keep reading and reading. It's such a deep dive and the basic advice can truly be summed up with breathe through your nose, practice air hunger a lot, breathe slower and fix breathing issues you have while you sleep. Breathing right will make all the difference in a huge variety of health issues including how easily you catch illnesses since the nose is designed to be the first line of your defense system.

I have adapted breathing through my nose since reading this and have lectured my family members on it (hubby just argued and ignored it completely), but I don't know if I can really keep up with the rest of the exercises for life as I dislike some of them so much. I really dislike being air hungry and the idea of having to do those exercises daily for life just makes me a bit stabby if I'm being honest. I still highly recommend the book, or at least the first half or so, and do plan to continue to try to keep up with at least some of the exercises.

I read a digital ARC of this book for review.

Even if you’ve read the author’s previous book which I highly recommend, there is still a lot to learn in this book. Who would have thought that over breathing and breathing from one’s mouth could be so damaging for someone? The author even prescribes specific breathing exercises for specific things which go above and beyond anxiety which nearly everyone knows from the research how effective this can be. This book even offers ample citations to clearly delineate the research presented which makes this book beyond informative!

If you want a greater quality of life then this book is a solid choice. Thank you to Humanix Books and NetGalley for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to read this book to learn more breathing techniques, exercises to use for various health issues. I am familiar with Buteyko breathing method from other books and The Breathing Cure included interpretations of the technique as well as few exercises that were new to me. Overall I found this book a good resource for health care professionals, however when I tried using it to help manage breathing issues caused by COVID, it wasn't as helpful as I hoped it would be. I will be using some of the techniques I learned from this book and will recommend it as needed for clients with respiratory issues.

just about every question you might have about the ancient Greeks and Romans is answered in this fact-filled book. The writing is good as is the scholarship. You'll find yourself compelled to keep reading because you are learning so much!

I've known about Buteyko breathing techniques for a while thanks to my husband who has successfully used them to mean that he now no longer needs any inhalers for his asthma. I've tried to use the methods before but never been able to sustain the exercises for the long term.
This book is very comprehensive (at over 500 pages!) although being in ebook format is probably not the easiest way to access all the information. It is good that the main exercises come early on in the book and that the more in-depth scientific explanations come after. This is helpful if you want to get going quickly and not wade through all the detail at the outset. I will probably buy a hard copy of this book as it's easier to refer to this way and look up the bits that I need. I have bookmarked the exercises and written them down and plan to start using them soon. They seem a lot easier than the ones I've read about before so I'm hoping that I'm able to stick to them and experience more success this way.

I'm nowhere near finishing this book, in part because I have been taking copious notes; since I requested it weeks ago, it seems unfair to not leave at least some review at this point in the calendar. As a yoga teacher, I will be using some of the material in this book as a preliminary to teaching pranayama. (After all, how can one practice refining the breath if that breath is dysfunctional? In the Travis Illness-Wellness continuum, the reverse breathing/chest breathing that is the default of many modern people is on the left, while the majority of pranayama practice assumes you are starting from the neutral point.) There are several points where Mr. McKeown's language is more precise or more clear than the language I have been using to explain basic concepts about the biomechanics of breath and how breath and emotional state create a feedback loop.

I particularly like the organization of the book, though I do find it ballsy for a July 2021 release to include a chapter on SARS-COV-2 (aka COVID 19), especially when the chapter largely says "we can't say nose breathing prevents COVID, but it stands to reason..." The beginning, like in most books, sells you on the premise of the book: there is a way to breathe that is optimal for the human body, with consequences for not using it, and most of us are not using it. (It doesn't make the mistake of constantly citing to his past work, either.) After introductory material that alternates between making broad claims without supporting notes and then using notes for hyper-specific study citations, the second chapter (pages 27 to 113) covers all of the main breathing exercises. The remainder of the book explores specific topics in detail, such as breathing and the vagus nerve, and disordered breath during sleep. I've ordered a hard copy because I want to write in the book, which isn't something I do well in the protected pdf format offered for review.

Prior to reading this book, I had no idea Mr. McKeown has published several other books about the breath and breathing, and I had never heard of the Buteyko method. This is probably a good thing, as the Amazon page for The Oxygen Advantage (one of his past books) is peppered with blurbs from highly untrustworthy "celebrity" sources (e.g. Dr. Oz who is a cardiologist-turned-expert-at-everything and regularly hands out poor medical advice that is not evidence-based; Ben Greenfield the "biohacker"/tech-bro, etc.) and I can only assume these are cover blurbs; had I run across that book in a bookstore, I would never have opened one of Mr. McKeown's books had I seen that first. I'm very curious as to whether there just weren't any appropriate experts available to blurb the book--like how about a pulmonologist, or a bioscience professor, or someone who has actual knowledge by which to judge the content of the book?--or if the publisher targeted celebrities in the hopes of appealing to the average Joe.

I'm conflicted about the personal anecdotes in the book. I suppose it is helpful to know why Mr. McKeown chose to delve into this topic. Yet since we all know anecdotes are not data, it seems odd to include personal notes about individual people, rather than relying on something sturdier like epidemiologic data. I'm guessing these were included to try to make readers feel more connected to the book, or to make the techniques seem like the are universally accessible, but they give them impression that "hey, this worked for Bob/Jane, so it will work for you."

Now I'm eagerly awaiting my hard copy. I do hope the bizarre switches from a highly readable serif font to a seemingly larger sans serif font were corrected before the book went to press.