"As though I had been frozen solid for years and was now melting"

In 1999 Carol, an asthma sufferer, wrote the following brief account of her experience with the Feldenkrais Method.

I have always been physically fit except for one ailment, asthma, which began when I was fourteen years old.

During the next twenty six years I had the odd attack for which I was usually prescribed Ephedrine tablets. Then during my early forties I was rushed into intensive care five times following severe attacks. For the past twenty years I have never been without an inhaler which I keep with me at all times, usually using it about four or five times in every twenty four hours. But my aim recently has been to get fit enough to give up the inhaler as I don’t want to be reliant on it all the time.

My homeopath recommended the Feldenkrais Method and I have been nine times so far.

After my first session I felt completely different as I walked down the road – much lighter, more subtle, as though I had been frozen solid for years but was now melting.

I began to learn that I had bones, which could move. My body didn’t have to be rigid. Every part of me was flexible and I could expand and breathe through different parts of me, not just through my hitherto blocked chest area.

I now feel very much more relaxed, happier – even gleeful –, and no longer panicky at the thought of not being able to breathe. I no longer feel restricted but free and alive, ‘allowed’ at last to breathe freely as I wish.

So far the inhaler is still with me but I no longer regard it as something I couldn’t live without. It’s a comforter, a habit that I hope to give up, as there are many times now when I reach for it but then remember I can relax, I can move and expand, and can breathe in and out astonishingly well without it.