Asthma and the Alexander Technique: quick relief or lasting solution?

Asthma is essentially a breathing problem.

No, I lie: asthma is not a breathing problem.

Asthma is an inappropriate reaction to feeling unable to breathe. This somewhat revolutionary statement (revolutionary to people who don’t know about the Alexander Technique) has important consequences for the treatment of asthma.

Before I can consider those, however, I need to demonstrate an important truth. The symptoms of asthma result from a very usual, but inappropriate, reaction to feeling unable to breathe.

Let’s look at two major symptoms that of an asthma attack

1. The airways are constricted, making it difficult for the air to flow though them.
2. The victim of the asthma attack is constantly straining to breathe more air in, even though it’s readily apparent to the outside observer that they need to let out air to make room for a fresh lungful.

Looking at the second symptom first …

you can see what I mean straight away.

The sufferer, feeling short of air, reacts by straining to take in more air. Even though the lungs are already at full stretch.

This totally inappropriate reaction to feeling short of air then ensures that there truly is a shortage.

Let’s return to the first symptom:

The airways are constricted and feel blocked.

How does the asthmatic react? By trying to force air past the blockages: by forcibly sucking air in and blowing it out again. This is the same heavy, chesty breathing you see whenever someone is out of breath.

Such laboured breathing triggers a reflex tightening of the muscles in the air-passage walls, constricting them further.

This reflex can be seen in normal operation whenever one coughs, sneezes or blows one’s nose.

The narrowing of the passage, combined with the forcible expulsions of air causes the air to move much faster. It’s an attempt to flush out the blockage with a jet of very fast-moving air.

While it can be very effective when there’s a blockage to flush out, it only adds to the problem when there isn’t.

This habitual reaction is just about the worst possible.

If instead they had reacted to the feeling of breathlessness by refraining from making any effort to breathe, the problem would have automatically sorted itself out.

Their air passages would have relaxed and dilated and they would have allowed their respiratory muscles to release and let the stale air out. This would have left room for a new supply of fresh air.

Without the Alexander Technique, this isn’t easily done, though.

To help you really understand the problem, I need to make it personal.

The thing you feel you have to do to breathe is the very thing that is interfering with your breathing.

To stop interfering with your breathing you have to stop trying to breathe
… even though when you stop trying to breathe it feels as though your breathing has come to a standstill
… even though it feels like, if you don’t do something quickly, you won’t be around much longer!

Allowing for a difference in severity, this is the same problem we all have whenever we experience any difficulty at all in breathing. It makes no odds whether the problem is asthma brought on by hay fever or a stuffed-up nose due to a cold.

Here, then, is a serious problem you didn’t know you had

… an utterly unreliable sense of your own breathing.

Actually, it’s more than that: it’s an utterly unreliable sense of movement. Technically, this unreliable sense of movement and breathing is known as debauched kinaesthesia.

To sum up, asthma is an inappropriate reaction to feeling unable to breathe. The Alexander Technique helps the sufferer recognise and overcome their unreliable sense of their breathing.

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