There’s that sound again in my chest. It’s the middle of the night, my five-month old is finally sleeping in her own bed and my husband is asleep. I’m in the bathroom of our tiny apartment with the shower running hot to make steam, trying to quiet the rattling sound coming from my body. I have just a few precious hours before going off to my job in a building where the windows no longer open and almost everyone has some kind of respiratory illness that just won’t quit. I can’t seem to shake what seems like just a very bad cold, but the hardest part is that my lungs have been ferociously contracting at odd times, bringing me to my knees with no breath.
This was my frightening predicament in 1988 at the age of thirty-two. Having returned to work after maternity leave, I could not find a way to health and breath. I would awaken in the middle of the night gasping, and during the day was barely able to do the minimum. All the docs said the same thing: You have asthma, chronic sinusitis and aspirin allergy, and you’ll have it for the rest of your life. If you want to continue to breathe, the only solution is to take pills—antihistamines, bronchodilators, steroids—and use inhalers.
But the pills made me jittery and nervous, inhalers made my heart race, and I’d lost my sense of smell, so I resolved to build back my health without the daily use of medications or restrictions on my activities. I had long-term acupuncture; experimented with limiting diets, including macrobiotics, raw, juice-only, and gluten-, legume- and dairy-free; tried hypnotherapy, past-life regression, emotional therapy, cranial-sacral therapy and chiropractic (including Net); did tons of cardio—running, biking, hiking and swimming; eliminated alcohol; and had nasal polyps surgically removed.
By 1997 I was able to run the Big Sur Marathon from Big Sur to Carmel. I also biked and hiked long distances, including three trips into the Grand Canyon. I now own a yoga studio where I help others with asthma and respiratory disease find their way to health through a yogic approach.
The yogic approach begins with intention, defining the vision. For example, I woke up each day with the intention of buoyant, vigorous health. Then I followed a “Nine Mode” program developed from years of experience and intensive study.
Nine Mode Overview
1. Measure your lung capacity. Twice daily, monitor and record your lung capacity. A peak-flow meter is inexpensive and available without prescription.
2. Yoga breath. Begin with simple three-part breathing—dirgha pranayama—which fills the three chambers of the lungs. At the end of the exhale work on retention, which is a natural bronchodilator.
3. Asanas. Practice poses that open the body and build strength, flexibility, balance and lung capacity. A heart opener (ustrasana, or camel) helps build lung capacity when feeling fine, but might be detrimental during an intense attack. During an asthma challenge a seated and/or standing forward fold (paschimottanasana or uttanasana) with breath retention on exhale would be best. Inversions generally are very good for asthma, so simple headstands (sirsasana), handstands (urdva vrikrasana), shoulder stands (salamba sarvangasana) and even legs up the wall.
4. Chanting. Simple English or Sanskrit chants are a useful technique to stave off panic during a decrease in breathing capacity.
5. Meditation. Meditation techniques can help to calm the mind when the inevitable fear arises during an asthma attack, and also to create a witness experience of distance from the body, so that we remember we are more than our disease.
6. Nutrition. Experiment with eliminating or lessening foods that may contribute to asthma, such as gluten and dairy. What works best for me is almost gluten-free, no alcohol, little caffeine, lean protein, and lots of fruits and vegetables.
7. Professional support. Maintain a regular check-up schedule so your healthcare provider can evaluate your progress and help you with any concerns.
8. Environmental analysis. Eliminate or minimize indoor and outdoor pollutants that may be contributing to your asthma.
9. Work it out. To quote Olympic athelete and asthma sufferer Jackie Joyner-Kersee, “Think of the lungs as a muscle, and use them.”
With the help of these practices I am now living a life that was unimaginable to me twenty years ago. These days if I wake early, it’s by choice, usually to get up and chant, meditate or work out to an intense routine. And I’m once again preparing for a hike to the Grand Canyon. Asthma hasn’t stopped me from creating a life of health and vigor, and it doesn’t have to stop you, either. Take a breath, open your heart and mind, and take charge of your life and your lungs.
—Meta Chaya Hirschl (yoganow.org) owns YogaNow in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is the author of Vital Yoga: A Sourcebook for Students and Teachers.
1 Comment
A relevant but strangely ignored or not generally known fact about asthma and breathing troubles is that the change between weak (asthmatic) and strong (healthy) breathing is dependent on abdominal muscle tension. Slackening the muscles here causes abysmally weak and asthmatic breathing. Instead of describing an asthma attack as being like breathing through a straw, attempting to breathe vigorously with relaxed abdominal muscles provides a a more genuine illustrative example. Training the muscles, for example by “abdominal hollowing” (see Web articles) produces an antiasthmatic effect. Abdominal muscle tension plays a prominent part in Asian martial arts.
I tend to breathe asthmatically after an evening meal or in pollen-laden air.
So it is fair to assume that there is a natural breathing spectrum with an asthmatic tendency at one end and Ku Fu or Karate breathing at the other end. Breathing powerfully into my lower abdomen with tensed muscles provides an effective cure for me. But then I’ve always been sceptical about medical wisdom on asthma: such a paradoxical and doctor-baffling increase in the last 40 years with modern, merely symptomatic inhalers. Respectfully, Richard Friedel