Free Your Breath, Free Your Life: How Conscious Breathing Can Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and Help You LiveMore Fully

by Dennis Lewis

This book will show you how being aware of your breathing can have a profound impact on your physical and emotional health in a most positive way. Whether you are interested in stress reduction, easing a chronic breathing problem, or exploring the more spiritual aspects of breathing practice, this illustrated guide will provide you with practical, simple exercises to calm, energize, and generally enhance your sense of well-being. The author, Dennis Lewis, also shows how becoming more conscious of your breathing can reveal a lot about your self-image and help you deal more effectively with difficult emotions and situations.

Genres: Health, Self Help, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2004

Reviews

[Anne]

I think this would work better if owned. That way there's more time to practice the techniques instead of only having 3 weeks to get the hang of it before returning it to the library. It'd be a reference book more than something to push through.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The claims sound overblown to me, but I do think I hold a lot of tension that affects breathing, and I got a few good tips out of this book. The most helpful was the exercise where you s-l-o-w-l-y exhale and let all the air out of your lungs. If you really get all the air out, taking a deep breath in will be automatic (usually after a pause of a second or two, which feels weird but is completely normal according to the author). I can't say this is a "great" book but I'm glad I read it just for the two or three small helpful bits of advice I found in it.

[Robert B · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How Conscious Breathing Can Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and Help You Live More Fully.” A very good, practical guide to breathing practice. Bears re-reading and doing the exercises.

[Phil Calandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Free Your Breath Free Your Life" is an overview of the various breathing techniques that can have a profound impact on our lives. The author covers several techniques that are deemed safe and those that have the potential of creating injury and possible permanent damage. For the latter, one would require the knowledge, experience and guidance of someone who could determine the individual suitability of such exercises. In addition to the foregoing, the author provides a set of practices that can be beneficial to various parts of the body and gives the reader a foundation to pursue and choose more long term meditative practices.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it's not perfect its the best breathing book I could find out of the 10 or so breathing books I read. It has a great deal of down to earth exercises (including streches/massages to open you up for breathing). The only thing it could use more of is mechanism/science. I wish some of these books would talk substantially about neurotransmitters, CO2, etc. and how they relate to the breath.