BY KAREN BOSSICK

The author of “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” will be among the featured speakers at the 2021 Sun Valley Wellness Festival and Conference.

The festival is slated for June 2021.

Its speakers will include James Nestor, whose New York Times bestseller chronicles his 10-year investigation of breathing in comedic and riveting fashion.

Breath isn’t often something people think about, even though we take 25,000 of them a day. But the COVID-19 pandemic has put a new spotlight on the breaths we often take for granted.

Nestor traveled the world to figure out why humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly. And he found the answers not in pulmonology labs but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo.

What he learned was that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can improve athletic performance, rejuvenate internal organs and straighten scoliotic spines.

Next year’s festival is scheduled for June 25-28, 2021. Organizers are optimistic that they will be able to hold both a physical and virtual program, as they had planned in 2020, at the Argyros Performing Arts Center, the Limelight Hotel and Ketchum’s Forest Service Park.