Taking a Breath

Joan Miró Catalan Peasant with a Guitar (with reflection), Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2015.

A blue Joan Miró painting in a Madrid art museum took my breath away, but not before I had found my breath again on Spanish roads.

James Nestor writes in Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art that people who suffer with asthma and emphysema don’t struggle with getting too little air but with breathing in too much. According to Nestor’s research the perfect breath is 5.5 breaths per minute, 5.5 litres of air, 5.5-second inhales and 5.5-second exhales.

As it turns out, the perfect breath is also the length of a prayer in nearly every spiritual tradition on earth.