Coping with a chronic condition like asthma can really dampen your spirit.
You might feel stuck or think it’s impossible to get better. So you might not even try.
While, some conditions may be irreversible, many conditions can be improved through self-healing solutions. Oftentimes, people are not even aware of all the resources available to help them get better.
We can inspire, educate, and motivate ourselves by reading and sharing success stories.
Healing Asthma
Here is a success story from Suzanne B. Friedman, a licensed acupuncturist and author of the book Heal Yourself with Qigong, Gentle Exercises to Increase Energy, Restore Health, and Relax the Mind.
“I used to suffer from severe allergies and exercise-induced asthma and chronic respiratory infections, so I know what it’s like to be unable to take a good breath. It took me years of effort, but I no longer suffer from asthma, and I am rarely sick. How did I do it? I switched to a healthier diet, began exercising moderately, and practiced Qigong exercises like this one, which helps strengthen the lungs and the immune system. I’m speaking from experience when I say that this exercise is exceptionally beneficial.” Heal Yourself with Qigong, p. 92
Qigong is a gentle movement exercise commonly practiced in China that also employs simple meditation, visualization, and breathing techniques. The exercise that Suzanne refers to is called Lung Qi Massage and its purpose is to improve your respiration and immunity. It’s extraordinary easy to do and enjoyable too.
Suzanne’s book contains more than 60 simple exercises to boost your energy, restore physical vitality, balance your emotions, and calm your spirit. There are specific exercises for a wide range of problems from improving digestive woes to strengthening heart function.
Prior to becoming a licenses acupuncturist and doctor of medical Qigong therapy, Suzanne was a harried attorney, skeptical of all things “woo-woo.” Despite her initial resistance, the universe conspired to introduce her to acupuncture and then Qigong, which transformed her life and her health.
As she says, healing her asthma wasn’t a piece of cake. It took several years of dedicated effort, but good health was her reward. With asthma and allergies and delayed sensitivities on the rise in children and adults, maybe it’s time to explore an alternative approach.
Have you had success with self help approaches for better health?
My friend Tess at The Bold Life has an article on 10 Miraculous Phrases for Joyful Communication that I think you might also like.
If you liked this article, please share the link with others. Thanks so much! Sandra
I’ve always been fascinated by Qigong – the idea of it – but never tried it. Thanks for pointing out Susan’s book, I’ll sure check it out!
Great! Let us know if you give Qigong a try. Stay well.
I’ve had some success with asthma and allergies, but it requires clients to change their lifestyles. The initial seemingly miraculous response on the table is strengthened by a client’s willingness to participate in environmental changes: mindful thinking, diet, and exercise.
Hi Simon,
This is helpful to know. There are many different environmental triggers when it comes to asthma and an all around approach seems wise. Thanks for adding your healing perspective!
I believe the mind > body connection is strong enough to heal almost anything.
Alex
Alex,
I love your confidence! A positive attitude real shifts so much.
Hey Sandra, I love hearing about stories like this where people have used alternate methods and a healthy attitude to heal themselves. If anyone knows how I can apply some of this kind of healing to my chronic tennis elbow let me know!
Hey Amit,
These are my favorite stories too! Here’s the scoop for self treatment of tennis elbow, check it out: http://www.triggerpointbook.com/tennisel.htm
Thanks for coming by! Love seeing your smiling face here.
Qigong—Chinese mind/body exercises–helped me immensely in my successful battles with four bouts of supposedly terminal bone lymphoma cancer in the early nineties. I practiced standing post meditation, one of the most powerful forms of qigong–as an adjunct to chemotherapy, which is how it should always be used.
Qigong kept me strong in many ways: it calmed my mind–taking me out of the fight-or-flight syndrome, which pumps adrenal hormones into the system that could interfere with healing. The deep abdominal breathing pumped my lymphatic system—a vital component of the immune system. In addition, qigong energized and strengthened my body at a time when I couldn’t do Western exercise such as weight-lifting or jogging–the chemo was too fatiguing. And it empowered my will and reinforced it every day with regular practice. In other words, I contributed to the healing process, instead of just depending solely on the chemo and the doctors. Clear 14 years and still practicing!
Bob Ellal
Author, ‘Confronting Cancer with the Qigong Edge’
Hi Bob,
What an inspiring story! Thanks for taking the time to share it with us here. I really appreciate how you detail the medical impact of Qigong on the flight or fight response, the immune system, and the lymphatic system.
I think we all have a different path in this life. Some of us are able to heal fully and others may not, but generally, I find Qigong and its sister systems like Yoga extremely beneficial for sustaining and improving one’s health.
Good luck with your book. I hope it is read by and benefits many.
Thank you for this post about asthma. It is one thing to do these exercises yourself and another to guide an 8 year old through the process. The mind/body connection is so incredibly powerful-but it is hard to convince a young child. I guess his time will come when he is ready. I have tried Quigong and love it.
Hi Lori,
I can appreciate that this is not easy especially on your own. I don’t like to do any exercise myself and have to really push myself to do Qigong and Yoga. So I can understand that your son may have other priorities and interests! I always enjoy the practices once I get started and really feel the benefits so that’s what keeps me going.
Your son is still very young so as you say a time may come when he’s ready. Practicing in a group and the support of a group always helps me. I know lots of young kids like martial arts. It would be wonderful if there were Qigong groups for kid!
Thanks for adding this perspective to the conversation.
Lori,
The most important part of the Eastern energy arts is the abdominal breathing. It’s the core. If your son can just learn to breathe in this fashion it should help not only with breathing patterns but calming the body and mind when the fight-or-flight response kicks in. It’s terrifying not to be able to get enough air in the lungs.
The best way to learn it is to have your son lay on the floor. Place a Kleenex box on his belly. Have him slowly expand his abdomen so he can see the box rising–then he’ll get the proper motion. Breathing by slowly expanding the abdomen fills the lungs from the bottom up–more oxygen into the system.
You can “sell” it to him this way: Tell him this is the type of breathing kung fu masters and samurai use to calm their minds and bodies to stay focused in battle and deliver powerful strikes. This is true. Appeal to the macho in a boy–I have two grown sons. It can work.
Bob
Thanks Sandra. Some sort of martial arts might be good for him. It would be wonderful to have a Quiqong class for children-there must be one out there.
Thanks for the great suggestion Bob. I am going to try to have him work with his breath. He is using a similar technique to work on his allergies-so maybe this piece will be easier to master. I will definitely use the warrior appeal. I really appreciate that you took the time to share your experience.
Hi Lori, It makes me so happy when my readers connect and support one another. I’m deeply concerned with the sharp increase in asthma and allergies in children. I’m sorry your son has to deal with this. He’s lucky to have you as a Mom.
A “nuts-and-bolts” article I wrote about the benefits of “belly breathing:”
Abdominal Breathing: The Core of the Internal Energy Arts
You’re in a convenience store, examining a can of Spam in one of the aisles. Suddenly a hooded man bursts through the door, pulls out a .45, and waves it in the cashier’s face demanding the contents of the cash register. You begin breathing shallowly, from the chest, as fear for you own life pervades you. Thoughts pinball through your mind: Will he shoot the cashier—and then me? Am I to die in a convenience store of all places? Where are the police?
The cashier complies; the robber bolts through the door. Your breathing slows and deepens and the thoughts in your mind slow. You become calm.
This scenario illustrates the connection between breathing and the mind: Breathe shallowly and quickly, and your mind generates a frenzy of thoughts. Breathe deeply, from the abdomen, and the thoughts slow and become manageable.
What has happened when you perceived danger was your body reacted with the fight-or-flight response—it’s kicked in the sympathetic nervous system, one of the two components of the autonomic nervous system. Your body floods with adrenaline from your adrenal glands as you prepare to confront the threat to your life.
As the threat passes you breathe deeply and the parasympathetic nervous system becomes engaged: heart rate slows, blood pressure returns to normal, adrenal glands stop pumping adrenaline into your system. Normality—you are calm and your body can return to normal operations, such as digestion.
The fight-or-flight response is vital for short-term situations—such as when our distant ancestors confronted deadly threats from saber-tooth tigers and immense short-snout bears. But if you are confronting a serious disease or condition, such as cancer or PTSD, your fear will trigger this response continuously, flooding your body with adrenaline and other chemicals such as cortisol. The effect? Your body cannot heal properly, as these substances compromise the immune system.
The solution? Learn to breathe deeply, expanding your abdomen and filling the lungs from the bottom up. You not only kick in the parasympathic nervous system but also provide much more oxygen to the blood, helping your immune system to operate at a high level.
And there’s another tremendous benefit from abdominal breathing: The lymphatic system, which relies on respiration and muscular action to work (it has no pump, such as the heart pumping the blood), will work much more efficiently. The lymphatic system contains vital elements of the immune system, such as the bone marrow—the blood factory—and the thymus gland, which kicks out T-cells, the body’s natural killer cells which destroy cancer and other invaders.
The lymphatic system does many things, such as producing lymphocytes that fight disease and removing toxins from the cells. If you are fighting cancer or another serious condition or disease, abdominal breathing is a crucial element in helping you win your fight.
I learned deep, abdominal breathing as the first step in my practice of qigong (chee-gung, which means energy work—Chinese internal energy exercises). It is also a vital component in other meditative and energy arts such as yoga, tai chi chuan and transcendental meditation.
You can learn abdominal breathing by expanding your abdomen as you breathe, focusing on filling the lungs with air from the bottom up. A good way to test if you’re doing it correctly is to lie on the floor and place a box of Kleenex on your stomach. As you breathe, the box will rise and fall with the motion of your stomach.
If you are fighting cancer, as I have many times years ago, you may be too tired from chemotherapy and/or radiation to do standing or moving qigong, tai chi chuan or yoga. But you can always lie down and breathe deeply, and still stimulate your immune system. It worked for me: four bouts of bone cancer, two bone marrow transplants between 1991 and 1996—and I’ve been clear ever since. Thirteen years of good health. I can’t catch a cold.
Hi Bob,
This is really useful information. I’m wonder how often much time you spent each day on belly breathing while your were healing?
I like success stories (I’m a fan of sharing and scaling success.)
The book sounds good and I like that it has 60 exercises … nothing like turning insight into action.
Interestingly, I heard about belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing from Tony Robbins back in the 80′s. He said it was a distinction that athletes have in terms of health because they pump their lymph nodes as a by-product of their deep breathing while they perform.
What’s really cool is I think he said you can measure your white blood cell count, and after two weeks of diaphragmatic breathing, you should see a dramatic increase.
Hi J. D.
That is very cool about the white blood cell count changing after two weeks of diaphragmatic breathing. Thanks for sharing this snippet from Tony Robbins. That’s consistent with what Bob is saying in his comments about Qigong and its impact on the lymph and immune system.
I agree, success stories rock!
Sandra,
A few weeks ago I sent the same article to a writer buddy of mine whose son’s asthma got so bad one night he turned blue. Fortunately, they got him to a hospital and he’s alright. I have never had asthma but during the nine-month process of my second bone marrow transplant–which was horrific, and pushed me as far as I want to go–my red blood cell count got so low I could barely walk from the recliner to the couch without huffing and puffing and breaking out into a murderous sweat. It was frightening–and I had to focus on my belly breathing as it was all I could do.
Once I started practicing abdominal breathing it soon became the norm–so I breathed like that all the time. Qigong is not magic–no “miracle cure”–but it really helps. The secret is the same secret that applies to anything in life: practice. It’s not flashy, and many people don’t want to hear it. But that’s the way it is!
Regards,
Bob
Hi Bob,
Thanks for telling us more. I know that Qigong isn’t “a miracle cure” and takes consistent effort. I think this is often where we cheat ourselves in healing. Often we don’t give time to our healing. But you certainly did!
Hi Sandra
I love stories like this one, because I know that our bodies are so powerful to heal and prevent disease, but only when we support them properly. Thank you thus, so much for sharing this story. And I think I need to listen to the Universe and look into QiGong as I have been hearing about it from everywhere lately it seems. Maybe I should take a hint
And on another note, yes, I was told I had elevated cholesterol at the age of 25 being healthy and perfect weight. Well that was a shocker, especially that I thought I had a “healthy” diet. It wasn’t until I dissected the food choices we have been “lead” to believe are healthy and which truly are, that I took things into my own hands. In about half a year, I reversed my cholesterol to book-perfect levels, simply by applying a clean, plant-based diet. Today, not only is my cholesterol perfect, but I don’t suffer from any infections and just plain feel great!
The power of our food is immense!!! Hence I am so passionate to teach others about that too!
Hi Evita,
I appreciate your underlining of how powerful food is for impacting our health – for better or for worse. I’m in fully agreement with that. That’s a telling story about your cholesterol. I wish more people knew this! It would be so empowering. I am so glad that you are passionately sharing all you know about health and nutrition with others. Thanks for all you do.
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Hi Sandra, I appreciate your post on this and also Bob’s comments on his experience. I haven’t tried Qi gong but I did like Tai Chi when I did it years ago.
I had great success with acupuncture when I lived in Boston, but I haven’t found anyone that talented locally. I am encouraged by the results I’m getting from yoga, though, and I’m experimenting with foods to rule out sensitivities. I was recently told by a doctor that I didn’t need 3 medications I was on, so I think that will be tremendously helpful as well.
Hi Jennifer,
I’m also finding benefit in yoga. I’m very new to it and sporadic in my practice, but I definitely see positive changes in my body. It helps to hear your experience. Congratulations on getting off some of your meditations. That too helps to reduce the burden on the body.