Top 40 James Nestor Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.”

— James Nestor

2. “Mouthbreathing, it turns out, changes the physical body and transforms airways, all for the worse. Inhaling air through the mouth decreases pressure, which causes the soft tissues in the back of the mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less space and making breathing more difficult. Mouthbreathing begets more mouthbreathing.”

— James Nestor

3. “The fix is easy: breathe less. But that’s harder than it sounds. We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit.”

— James Nestor

4. “When the nasal cavity gets congested, airflow decreases and bacteria flourish. These bacteria replicate and can lead to infections and colds and more congestion. Congestion begets congestion, which gives us no other option but to habitually breathe from the mouth.”

— James Nestor

5. “In colder climates, our noses would grow narrower and longer to more efficiently heat up air before it entered our lungs; our skin would grow lighter to take in more sunshine for production of vitamin D. In sunny and warm environments, we adapted wider and flatter noses, which were more efficient at inhaling hot and humid air; our skin would grow darker to protect us from the sun. Along the way, the larynx would descend in the throat to accommodate another adaptation: vocal communication.”

— James Nestor

6. “Expression is the opposite of depression! Go for it!”

— James Nestor

7. “50 percent of kids with ADHD were shown to no longer have symptoms after having their adenoids and tonsils removed.”

— James Nestor

8. “Left-nostril breathing shifts blood flow to the opposite side of the prefrontal cortex, the right area that plays a role in creative thought, emotions, formation of mental abstractions, and negative emotions.”

— James Nestor

9. “It turns out that when breathing at a normal rate, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air. The majority of that oxygen is exhaled back out. By taking longer breaths, we allow our lungs to soak up more in fewer breaths.”

— James Nestor

10. “The stretches, called the Five Tibetan Rites, came to the Western world, and to me, by way of writer Peter Kelder, who was known as a lover of “books and libraries, words and poetry.”

— James Nestor

11. “This measurement of highest oxygen consumption, called VO2 max, is the best gauge of cardiorespiratory fitness. Training the body to breathe less actually increases VO2 max, which can not only boost athletic stamina but also help us live longer and healthier lives.”

— James Nestor

12. “If surgeons drill out or remove too much tissue, especially the turbinates, the nose can’t effectively filter, humidify, clean, or even sense inhaled air. For this small and unfortunate group of patients, each breath comes in too quickly, a hideous condition called empty nose syndrome.”

— James Nestor

13. “After much trial and error, I settled on 3M Nexcare Durapore “durable cloth” tape, an all-purpose surgical tape with a gentle adhesive. It was comfortable, had no chemical scent, and didn’t leave residue.”

— James Nestor

14. “A last word on slow breathing. It goes by another name: prayer. When Buddhist monks chant their most popular mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, each spoken phrase lasts six seconds, with six seconds to inhale before the chant starts again. The traditional chant of Om, the “sacred sound of the universe” used in Jainism and other traditions, takes six seconds to sing, with a pause of about six seconds to inhale.”

— James Nestor

15. “The sa ta na ma chant, one of the best-known techniques in Kundalini yoga, also takes six seconds to vocalize, followed by six seconds to inhale.”

— James Nestor

16. “The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu spiritual text written around 2,000 years ago, translated the breathing practice of pranayama to mean “trance induced by stopping all breathing.”

— James Nestor

17. “After several rounds of deep breaths to open my rib cage, Martin asked me to start counting from one to ten over and over with every exhale. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – then keep repeating it,” she said. At the end of the exhale, when I was so out of breath I couldn’t vocalize anymore, I was to keep counting, but to do so silently, letting my voice trail down into a “sub-whisper.”

— James Nestor

18. “Ninety percent of the obstruction in the airway occurs around the tongue, soft palate, and tissues around the mouth. The smaller the mouth is, the more the tongue, uvula, and other tissues can obstruct airflow.”

— James Nestor

19. “Each breath we draw in should take about three seconds, and each breath out should take four. We’ll then continue the same short inhales while lengthening the exhales to a five, six, and seven count as the run progresses.”

— James Nestor

20. “The point of this exercise isn’t to inflict unnecessary pain. It’s to get the body comfortable with higher levels of carbon dioxide, so that we’ll unconsciously breathe less during our resting hours and the next time we work out. So that we’ll release more oxygen, increase our endurance, and better support all the functions in our bodies.”

— James Nestor

21. “This is what I learned at the end of this long and very strange trip through the causes and cures of airway obstruction. That our noses and mouths are not predetermined at birth, childhood, or even in adulthood. We can reverse the clock on much of the damage that’s been done in the past few hundred years by force of will, with nothing more than proper posture, hard chewing, and perhaps some mewing. And with the obstruction out of the way, we can finally get back to breathing.”

— James Nestor

22. “Ancient yoga, and its focus on prana, sitting, and breathing, has turned into a form of aerobic exercise.”

— James Nestor

23. “In school, when I was young, teachers walked around the classroom, man, and pop-pop-pop.” He smacks the back of his own head for emphasis. “You’re breathing from your mouth, you get pop,” he says. Mouthbreathing leads to sickness and is disrespectful, he told me, which is why he and everyone else he grew up with in Puebla, Mexico, learned to breathe through the nose.”

— James Nestor

24. “In a world of seven billion people, where every inch of land has been mapped, much of it developed, and too much of it destroyed, the sea remains the final unseen, untouched, and undiscovered wilderness, the planet’s last great frontier.”

— James Nestor

25. “After a few months, mewers have claimed their mouths expanded, jaws became more defined, sleep apnea symptoms lessened, and breathing became easier. Mike’s own instructional video on mewing has been viewed a million times.”

— James Nestor

26. “For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. This is a fact that most doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically gotten wrong. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body.”

— James Nestor

27. “Human blood has a chemical composition startlingly similar to seawater. An infant will reflexively breaststroke when placed underwater and can comfortably hold his breath for about forty seconds, longer than many adults. We lose this ability only when we learn how to walk.”

— James Nestor

28. “People “play dead,” too, because we share the same mechanisms in the primitive part of our brain stem. We call it fainting. Our tendency to faint is controlled by the vagal system, specifically how sensitive we are to perceived danger. Some people are so anxious and oversensitive that their vagus nerves will cause them to faint at the smallest things, like seeing a spider, hearing bad news, or looking at blood.”

— James Nestor

29. “Underwater I hear the water coming to my body, I hear the sunlight penetrating the water.”

— James Nestor

30. “But the changes triggered by the rapid industrialization of farmed foods were severely damaging. Within just a few generations of eating this stuff, modern humans became the worst breathers in Homo history, the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.”

— James Nestor

31. “Onward and inward, another wiggle and another yank, and I was in the thick of it.”

— James Nestor

32. “Some cultures ate nothing but meat, while others were mostly vegetarian. Some relied primarily on homemade cheese; others consumed no dairy at all. Their teeth were almost always perfect; their mouths were exceptionally wide, nasal apertures broad. They suffered few, if any, cavities and little dental disease.”

— James Nestor

33. “Packman explained that overbreathing can have other, deeper effects on the body beyond just lung function and constricted airways. When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a blood pH of 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acid.”

— James Nestor

34. “Over his career, Buteyko would be censured by medical critics; he’d be physically attacked and, at one point, have his laboratory torn up. But he pressed on. By the 1980s, he had published more than 50 scientific papers and the Soviet Ministry of Health had.”

— James Nestor

35. “And they all likely benefited from the same calming effect.”

— James Nestor

36. “Breathing just 20 percent, or even 10 percent more than the body’s needs could overwork our systems. Eventually, they’d weaken and falter. Was breathing too much making people sick, and keeping them that way?”

— James Nestor

37. “The nose tends to work in the same way. Sprays, rinses, and allergy medications can help quickly clear minor congestion, but for more serious chronic obstruction, we’ll need a surgeon to plumb the path. I heard this analogy a lot.”

— James Nestor

38. “The takeaway is that hypoventilation works. It helps train the body to do more with less. But that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.”

— James Nestor

39. “Breathe normally through the nose and hum, any song or sound. Practice for at least five minutes a day, more if possible.”

— James Nestor

40. “Prayer heals, especially when it’s practiced at 5.5 breaths a minute.”

— James Nestor

41. “What if overbreathing wasn’t the result of hypertension and headaches but the cause? Buteyko wondered.”

— James Nestor

42. “Hypoventilation training.”

— James Nestor

43. “All of them claimed to have gained a boost in performance and blunted the symptoms of respiratory problems, simply by decreasing the volume of air in their lungs and increasing the carbon dioxide in their bodies.”

— James Nestor

44. “The missing pillar in health is breath. It all starts there.”

— James Nestor

45. “In a single breath, more molecules of air will pass through your nose than all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches – trillions and trillions of them. These little bits of air come from a few feet or several yards away. As they make their way toward you, they’ll twist and spool like the stars in a van Gogh sky, and they’ll keep twisting and spooling and scrolling as they pass into you, traveling at a clip of about five miles per hour.”

— James Nestor

46. “The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less.”

— James Nestor

47. “Smell is life’s oldest sense. Standing here alone, nostrils flaring, it occurs to me that breathing is so much more than just getting air into our bodies. It’s the most intimate connection to our surroundings.”

— James Nestor

48. “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air. You can practice this perfect breathing for a few minutes, or a few hours. There is no such thing as having too much peak efficiency in your body.”

— James Nestor