Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life: Discover the Power of Your Breath
About this book
George Catlin was born in Pennsylvania in 1796 and started his career as a lawyer, a job he was not particularly fond of. His dream was to paint. Catlin loved people, and their faces, and painted faces expressing feelings. His life was changed forever when he met a delegation of about fifteen Native Americans from several tribes who passed through Philadelphia on their way to Washington D.C.Catlin was fascinated by the Indians and their looks and culture. Within a few days, he decided to make it his life's mission to paint and document the Indians and their culture and history. Between 1830 and 1860, Catlin visited more than 150 Native American tribes in North, Central, and South America. In total, these tribes had more than two million members.Catlin was very productive and made hundreds of paintings of landscapes, animals, adults, and children. His paintings were shown in several cities in the USA, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, and in London. What Catlin has left behind is nothing less than a unique insight into how the Native Americans lived. His testimony also carries the fundamental key to what true health is based upon.Catlin noted that those Indian tribes not influenced by the Western lifestyle had zero infant mortality. Moreover, there were no deformities in their children and no child deaths from diseases. Records of mortality in Europe during the 1850s show that around one in four children died at birth, and only one in four survived beyond 25 years of age.The main difference behind these extreme health differences? According to Catlin, it could be tracked down to their breathing. The Indians were predominately nasal breathers, while the people living in the civilized communities were predominately breathing through their mouths.