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The Huff and Puff Club training has had significant and lasting effect on the health and well-being of the participants.
Something absolutely fundamental, for this form of training to have such a great effect, is that the participants learn to sense themselves
At first it sounds easy and straightforward, but it has taken years of training to learn.
The explanation is probably largely due to the rehabilitation methods, which polio children were submitted to in the 1950’s:
Children were subjected to a very massive influence, the message being:
If you want to “get up and walk again” you must train hard and long.
Whining, wailing and self-pity were ridiculed. Yet there was praise and encouragement for those who could drown out and ignore the body’s signals of pain and fatigue by hard and lengthy training.
That method gave visible results, and for many patients it became an approach of how to tackle all kinds of issues throughout their lives.
With post-polio syndrome a new dilemma arises:
Hard physical training has the risk of new paralysis spreading and becoming permanent.
That method of intense training, which has throughout life been useful and usable, is no longer applicable.
On top of the new paralysis, fatigue and pain, arises the confrontation of no longer being able to train – to do something yourself – to get better.
This feeling of powerlessness becomes an additional burden.
Breath training on the other hand is based on sensing one’s mental and physical state, thereby promoting the ability to detect the body’s signals.
Then it becomes possible for the person to sense how much they can move without being harmfully overexerted:
The patients define individually their new limits and let go of the feeling of powerlessness.
FEWER PAINS
Pain can have many causes. It can be very difficult for the individual to find out what the causes are in a specific case.
In people with post-polio, pain occurs after many years of years of wear and overload due to physical disabilities that have made the body crooked. They can also be caused by prolonged monotonous wheelchair use, new paralysis, tremors and muscle cramps and anxiety, worries and depression
Pain is traditionally treated with pain medication. The medicine takes the worst pain and makes it possible to do things as usual and continue your lifestyle as before. When the effect of medication ceases, the patient must have more or stronger medication.
With breathing training, the patient learns to feel after, to register, which behavior is causing pain; be it awkward inappropriate movements, incorrect sitting or sleeping position, stress due to pressure from the surroundings or own desire to overcome a lot, or anxiety and depression. However, a heightened sense of the cause of the pain makes it possible to change the behavior that is causing the pain and organize the training to suit the patient’s individual needs.
All participants in the Huff & Puff Club have been able to reduce their pain and reduce or completely stop taking painkillers.
BETTER SLEEP
Sleep problems, like pain, can have many causes. In post-polio patients, it can be due to paralysis of the abdominal muscles, which makes it difficult to breathe, especially during sleep. It can be due to pain, tremors, thoughts and anxiety. Anxiety is typically associated with experiences in early childhood at first polio attack with extensive paralysis, pain, isolation, loneliness and powerlessness and fear of painful treatments and surgeries and grief over lost mobility.
The sleep problems and their causes vary from person to person and for the individual they vary over time.
When training for a long period of time, you learn which exercises are suitable for calming down, so that it becomes easier to fall asleep.
All participants have had a better sleep. It has become easier to sleep in, sleep longer and get a deeper sleep without interruptions.
Some experience that frequently recurring nightmare themes have disappeared.
BETTER DIGESTION /PERISTALSIS
Breathing training activates and strengthens the abdominal muscles, and makes it possible to “massage the intestines”. It has been shown to promote digestion and strengthen peristalsis and has promoted the well-being and health of the participants, who all have reduced mobility or use wheelchairs.
GREATER SERENITY
It has now been scientifically proven that stress over a longer period of time is a great strain on the immune system.
The serenity training enables the participant to achieve, eliminates stress in a broad sense.
The participants report:
“The stress that has accumulated in my body and soul since childhood trauma with grief and loss and pain, with surgeries and long hospitalizations does not go away; but the breathing training that we learn in the Huff & Puff gives strength and relief to both body and soul.”
“I have had CT and MRI scans several times in the past six months. It’s still very scary for me to be locked inside such a giant noisy monster. However, closed eyes and breathing exercises still make me relax and manage the scans without sedatives.”
All participants have had great help from the breathing training to get greater calm and more quality in relaxation and rest. They have learned to lessen, or live with, the traumas of life, and to tackle the pain, worries, and anxieties associated with health deterioration, new illnesses, and major interventions such as scans, surgeries, and chemotherapy.
IMPROVED ABILITY TO CONCENTRATE
Polio and post-polio syndrome affect the brainstem (bulbar polio) including the part of the nervous system that controls the ability to concentrate. Some are having trouble reading: They may have difficulty capturing and retaining what is read, and may often need to start over. Similarly, it can be more difficult for some to formulate and get flow in the writing process.
Breathing training provides calm and allows concentration.
” Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”
– Albert Einstein
Methods
Year by year expenditures of the health services increases. In order to optimize the returns of these expenses, there is a great interest in finding economies, gains and best possible value for money. For that purpose, various evaluation methods have been developed, which fall into two main groups.
Quantitative,
which counts, measures and weighs, and
Qualitative,
which seeks to uncover experienced effects in individuals or groups.
Both methods were used to evaluate the Huff and Puff Club’s first trial run of three months with breath training twice weekly.
The Quantitative analysis (vital capacity, blood pressure, etc.) showed no useful results. This may be related to the few numbers of participants (12) and short period of time.
The Qualitative analysis of in-depth individual interviews gave many and overwhelming positive results.
Recent research now proves that the human physique and psyche are inseparable parts of a whole, where the psyche affects physics and vice versa:
The whole human being.
Perhaps future evaluations and effect measurements should contain both physical and mental elements and illustrate the interplay between them?
The Huff and Puff Club method
This method integrates on-going acquired experiences and evaluations from daily training in the continuous developmental work, as we regularly take stock and select those elements we will practice further on with until a solution is found.
It is called the heuristic method and is – in all simplicity – the way humans have always learned from their experiences.
The model can be illustrated as follows:
And then start all over again.
For a major part of my life – in particular throughout my childhood and youth – my disability caused by polio (which has been relatively mild) carried with it a number of different negative emotions.
Anxiety, as I felt like a failure – in my private as well as professional life – or because I was afraid to fall or be considered a burden.
Inadequacy, as I knew I could not keep up with others and was left behind on my own.
Low self-esteem, as I had to mobilize significant strength to accomplish insignificant tasks – tasks I felt compelled to do to hide my lack of actual physical strength.
Self-loathing, as I despised seeing persons with disabilities – I could not and would not accept to be part of this group, even if I knew that I was.
Loneliness, partly due to my conviction that I would never find a man who could accept me the way I looked. I would date upon until the point where I felt I had to inform them of my disability, after which it was easier to walk away.
It got better over the years. Husband, children and grandchildren have provided a strong family foundation and emotional connection. 41 years on the labour market proved that I could contribute to my family and society, even if it was at times a real challenge.
But it turned out that the real path to living in harmony with my self and my disability came from
within –from me alone – manifesting itself as a magnificent hidden force that just had to be awakened by the right trigger.
Through the control and conscious regulation of my breathing, I now manage to create tranquility and inner strength which has proven to be an effective method to fight the feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, the low self-esteem, the self-loathing and the loneliness.
During the breathing exercises, guided by a calm and competent voice, I am in no need of mental images of meadows or sunrises. The profound sense of calm that presents itself, even after a single exercise, is enough to convince the body of the strength it actually possesses.
The experience is the same when I lie in the warm water pool with my head submerged, floating in the ”big ocean”. In this environment, the muffled sounds from the surroundings further enhance a unique sense of serenity in the body. The prolonged dives where I extend myself to hold my breath for as long as possible provide a sense of strength and endurance as well as bursts of energy.
When I empty my lungs of air, the play of the bubbles underwater reminds of the wonder of breathing. It resembles a carillon made of air, a spectacle that is not observable above water.
Needless to say, after 2.5 hours of such exertion, the exhaustion sets in as a comforting, pleasant
and life-affirming tiredness.
I have participated in yoga breath training since 2016
My experiences can be divided into the following:
Overall well-being
It has had a fantastic effect on my overall well-being when breathing thoroughly, i.e. by filling the lungs up well and getting cleansed afterwards.
Can breathing help increase blood flow to paralyzed limbs? My immediate bid is that it can though I have no substantial evidence.
Fatigue
With post- polio I often have periods when I cannot fall asleep. This means it is difficult to concentrate. In some situations, I have tried to use breathing exercises to oxygenate the blood and thus eliminate the symptoms of fatigue. In addition to being able to relax better other breathing exercises provide a boost.
Sleep
I have had huge problems with falling asleep. Now I can via breathing exercises get my pulse down and get peace in my body. It makes it amazingly easy to fall asleep.
Exercise
Certain exercises can serve as a substitute for working out, since having paralysis in my legs I do not have the opportunity to walk, which can massage the stomach and increase peristalsis. Being unable to walk the risk of constipation is great. Breathing exercises can help prevent and treat it.
Pain Management
If I have pain somewhere it can help intensely to think about breathing. It also increases oxygenation of the blood and the muscles get a better blood supply. That in itself is a treatment for pain of overburdened muscles.
Unpleasant Situations
The breath can be used, for instance with the fear of submerging one’s head under water. The fear has been greatly reduced by learning how to hold the breath through breathing exercises.
Why is it important to come to yoga classes?
I come every time because I continuously need to be guided. Over a longer period of time self-training doesn’t work.
From 15 to Zero
I got polio at age six in 1952. Both legs, one arm and stomach muscles were paralyzed. After a long period of rehabilitation I could walk using a brace on one leg and two elbow crutches.
I got married, had two children and worked as an official in the central administration. I have been
involved a lot in collaboration with EU and have travelled extensively for many years.
From around the age of 55 my arms and shoulders were very damaged with osteoarthritis.
Prosthetic surgery for my right shoulder and left elbow has been considered but the prostheses are not yet strong enough to provide support for my arms to any reasonable extent. I also have six ruptured disc in my back and neck whereby surgery is considered risky.
These problems have meant that I have been greatly afflicted with pain. In order to be active and function I have to take more and more analgesics. Three pills five times daily. The analgesics reduce the pain for several hours, but the pain always returns. The pills also have an array of side effects. The effect of lethargy is an enormous inconvenience when already being weakened by tiredness due to post- polio syndrome.
Prolonged training with breath used in the Huff and Puff Club has helped such that I no longer use analgesics.
The cause cannot be illustrated by one simple formula. It is the result of interplay of factors.
Working on body-consciousness gives a definite sense of the source of pain, thereby giving an incentive to rest and restructure patterns of movement and to address the cause of pain instead of taking some pills and then just pushing forth as before.
Pain cannot be completely eliminated. By training I have developed the ability and gained energy to focus on just one thing. When I concentrate on something interesting, I “forget” the pain.
Reducing pain and getting rid of medicine is the result of prolonged training using breathing as the starting point. For me this has a direct physical effect and gives mental strength.
In 1952 when I was 7 years old I got polio. The entire right side of my body was paralyzed. For 10 years I wore braces on my right leg and was able to get rid of them after years of training and several surgeries.
My first apprenticeship was as electrical fitter. Later I trained as a potter due to my great interest in working with ceramics. For a few years I worked for Bjorn Wiinblad until I established myself as an independent potter and ceramicist in the early 1970’s.
In 1968 we bought a very old rundown house, a former workers’ dwelling at Alleroed Tile works. I rebuilt it brick by brick. It became a home for our family and a workshop for my ceramics.
The joy of working as a craftsman has always been a great important part of my life.
In 1991 when I was diagnosed with post- polio syndrome, great pains in my muscles and joints, it gave rise to a deep depression. For two years I was almost not part of the game, but I adapted to available opportunities and went into action again.
In 2010 I was in surgery for colon cancer. A year later I went through yet another risky though successful surgery, which meant I was freed of the stoma and could once again live normally.
In 2016 I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Keyhole surgery would be performed. It was delayed one month because my blood pressure was too low. I first had to have a pacemaker after which my body needed time to adjust. During Keyhole surgery the blood supply to my lungs was clamped off by mistake. In order to save me a new open surgery was performed. My whole ribcage was opened up.
Surgery lasted 6 hours. Half of my right lung was removed. That was a huge strain on my body with pains and fear of the outcome and for the future. It was a hard blow for me.
I have been very active in the Huff & Puff Club since it started in 2012. Training has had a very good effect on both my body and my spirits.
I continued training until three days before the lung surgery in 2016. A couple of months after the surgery with stitches removed and incisions healed, I took up training again both in and out of the pool. That quickly helped. Now two years after surgery and with only 1½ lung, I have more or less the same lung capacity as before. This means I can dive for more than three minutes. Doctors are astonished that I have come so far in such a short time. I praise the Huff & Puff Club’s training for this.
Once again, I am cured of cancer. I can continue living the life I love.
Now my right arm is weakened by post-polio, so adjustments must be made. No more any huge heavy vases or pots. I hope that the life-giving training of breathing will continue to keep me going with my life and lifestyle.