"Breathe Smart" by Aaron Hoopes

This is a neat little book that explains some easy breathing exercises and, most importantly, what they do. It’s a pretty widespread rumour that consciously altering one’s breathing brings about almost magical results with regard to one’s well-being or fitness or harnessing the world’s energy for our own gain or whatnot. This practical little guide explains the how and why.
The point of the story is that our body becomes habituated to taking in oxygen in a certain way (what the author calls subsistence breathing). By consciously altering our breathing, we can increase lung capacity and increase oxygen intake as well as how our body uses that oxygen, increasing energy and reducing high levels of cortisol (which the author attributes to high stress levels, and which he also states prevents weight loss). Also, conscious breathing involves exercising the abdominal muscles, and is supposed to massage inner organs (which is apparently a good thing). The author explains specific breathing exercises (simple breathe in, breathe out kind of stuff) and what they do. If you ever wanted to know why athletes yell while exerting themselves, this book explains why.
My criticisms all relate to its format. There were a couple of punctuation mistakes in the introduction, which led me to expect more throughout the book (this expectation was disappointed, however). The book totals 80 pages, but it’s about a 20-minute read. I’d suggest adding some diagrams. The type is double-spaced, such that each page actually holds about 15 lines of text. The fonts don’t work well together, and there are page numbers on pages that shouldn’t have page numbers (the title pages and cataloguing data, plus the chapter title pages). The graphics on these pages are pixelated⎯probably clip art. So, if you’re out there, Aaron Hoopes, and you want some help with this, email me.