Breathe Your Way to Health and Happiness

Breathe Smart - The Secret to Happiness, Health and Long Life
By Aaron Hoopes
Zen Yoga Press, 80ps
$9.95
Self-Help/Fitness

Breathing is something that is second nature to all of us, and yet, as Aaron Hoopes points out, few of us do it correctly. That is to say, in a way that will give us optimum health benefits, reduce negative stress levels and increase our longevity. This handy little pocket book is all about how we can change out breathing habits in order to reach our full health potential.

This is the second and revised edition of the original, which now includes a new chapter on stress, weight loss and breathing. Other chapters cover topics such as how breathing works and how we can benefit from paying more attention to our breathing.

Hoopes advocates using smart breathing- which involves deep, nasal breathing - to fill the lungs to maximum capacity, rather than subsistence breathing-which only fills the upper third of the lungs. He draws on the sage advice of Indian Yogis and Thai Chi masters to present a series of exercises in nasal breathing and breathing postures suitable for pragmatic Westerners of any age. Hoopes has created a useful handbook that offers easy exercises that enervate the mind, spirit and body and can be done simply by paying attention to something as close to use as our own breath.

Hoopes is the founder of Zen Yoga. He has spent much of his life deep in the study of martial arts, Eastern philosophy, Yoga, Thai Chi, Qigong and alternative medicine in the United States, Australia and Japan.

For more information visit www.artofzenyoga.com

Review by Corinna Underwood