Hello Anders! I want to share my journey towards better breathing and what it has meant to me, as well as the background regarding why I had stopped breathing correctly. This is to help your research. I was born prematurely weighing only 2 kg and my weight dropped down to 1800 grams. I got pneumonia for the first time when I was three weeks old. By the time I was 18, I had taken about 100 rounds of penicillin and had had pneumonia about 50 times. Add to that a large number of ear infections, tonsillitis and bronchitis...

However, it didn't stop with me always being ill. I had a mother who said, time and time again, that I had destroyed her life. When I was 11 years old, my mother gave birth to my little sister and developed postpartum depression. My mother never became healthy because of her attitude that she could not get well. After that, both Mom and Dad made several suicide attempts throughout my childhood.

Crashed in the fall 2015

In 1999, my mother managed to kill herself after having been mentally ill for 18 years. That morning I woke up feeling something was wrong and felt an anxiety I can't describe with words. That day I can account for all my hours awake-what I did, what I ate and how the weather was. I was beside myself with worry, which later proved to be justified.

On top of all this I've encountered some jealous men, one of whom did everything to totally break me. I lived with a protected identity for five years, of which the first year was spent living like a hunted animal.

2014 was a real crap year with lots of difficult things happening. With 45 years of hell in the past, the last drop caused the cup to flow over. I crashed in the fall of 2015. I was in such an incredibly bad condition that my doctor did not even dare prescribe antidepressants.

If you are in a condition where the doctor does not want to prescribe antidepressants, you have two choices-take your own life or clutch at straws. I chose the latter, mostly because I grew up around many suicide attempts and feel that suicide is a terribly selfish act without any consideration for others. I have more than once wondered how you can feel there's so little in your life that it's worth taking your own life.

I am no longer frozen

I have always felt very cold and remember that, as a child, I pulled open the oven door on the woodstove and sat there with my feet in the oven every morning because I was so badly chilled! And I froze more and more every year. During the winter 2014 I sat indoors with a t-shirt, long sleeved sweater and knitted sweater. I had tights and thermal pants, cotton socks, woolen socks and slippers, scarf and blanket, and I still froze... INSIDE! Since that winter, I have not needed scarf, gloves or long underwear. I have not felt frozen at all. Not even outdoors.

When I was at my worst, an acquaintance took me to a therapist that helped me improve my breathing. All of my previous bouts of pneumonia have caused made me to hyperventilate throughout my life. On the first visit, the temperature of my fingers measured 21 degrees Celsius (69.8°F). After the fourth visit, 34 degrees Celsius (93.2°F) was measured in my fingers.

The day my blood circulation started properly in my hands, it was really scary. I had done my breathing exercises and sat at the kitchen table drinking tea when I suddenly saw how the blood vessels grew on the back of my hand. My fingers began to sting the same as when a body part falls asleep and starts to wake up.

My back straightened out and I got five centimeter taller

When I was 12 years old, the doctor said my right lung was like a raisin. PEF measurements showed that my lung capacity was like a 90-year-old's. All the pneumonia caused my right side to be deformed. If I wore a dress it would turn to the left. My back looked like an "S." But, at the age of 45, just because I learned to breathe correctly, I grew five centimeters in nine months.

I noticed at work that my job shirt had gotten too short and that I had to push back the driver's seat on the cars I inspected. It has been fantastic. I have also been helped with physical therapy, which has made my back even straighter. The right deformed side is normal, and today I'm straighter in my back than when I was eight years old. Although it has been painful while my back has become straightened, it has definitely been worth it.

Now I know why it's important to breathe correctly

Thank you for an extremely good book (Conscious Breathing), and an incredibly inspiring Instructor Course! Your course was wonderful!! During the course, however, I became completely pissed off. Not with you but with all doctors. If only someone could have mentioned breathing, I would have escaped so much suffering as well as not having to take all that penicillin and Mycomust.

I wish someone like you had crossed my path significantly earlier in my life. Then I could have felt a lot better much earlier. But better late than never!

I am extremely grateful that breathing is something that has now gotten more attention. To attend your Instructor Course is amazing because it teaches the importance of what happens in the body when breathing correctly and how the body reacts when breathing incorrectly.

With your course, I have learned personally what happens in the body with improved breathing. As a course leader you have been very good! Calm, sensible and incredibly informative! This course has been GREAT and instructive!

I'm sure I will never ever get pneumonia now that I have learned to breathe correctly. And the Relaxator is absolutely amazing.

I sleep better, am no longer constipated, and dare to stand up for myself
And I sleep better and feel better. I have barely had a cold for two years. I, who have been chronically constipated since childhood, now poop every day instead of every fourteen days. Another thing I notice is I dare to stand up for myself in a completely different way than before. And I'm quicker at making decisions. All just by learning to breathe correctly!

In the summer of 2018 I broke my ankle in 3 places. I had surgery on a Saturday and was sent home with a cast on Monday. At the orthopedic department, they were constantly nagging me about taking pain relievers. But thanks to good breathing I was not in pain and did not need to take any tablets at all.

I want to share my journey only because there was a long, troubled road before I ended up where I was. However, today, I know it was not permanent and the change that has happened in my body over the last nine months feels like night and day. And nine months is really not a lot of time. If anyone had told me I would grow five centimeters and get a straight back in a few months I would have laughed in their face. But it happened and it seems like other people do not believe when I share that the only thing I did was to learn to breathe correctly, instead of the hyperventilating I'd been doing for my whole life.

Everyone can make the same journey I have done. Breathe well and live well!