Take a deep breath and then let it out. Did you feel your chest rise and fall That is actually your lungs filling with oxygen and then pushing carbon dioxide back out when you exhale. Without your lungs and your entire respiratory system, the rest of your body wouldn't receive the oxygen you need to survive. To give your body the oxygen it needs, you breathe twenty times every minute. You breathe more than twenty thousand times each and every day. Acclaimed science writer Seymour Simon explores the important journey that air takes in and out of your lungs.