The Huff & Puff Club training concept is developed from inspiration and knowledge especially about:
This book was the inspiration to experiment with breathing exercises for post-polio patients and to find a better and more suitable training method than the ones we already knew and used.
Stig Severinsen’s method, which he calls BREATHOLOGY, consists of classic Hata yoga breathing exercises on land followed by modern free-diving in a warm water pool where we activate the yoga exercises and supplement with diving/breathholding.
The book is abundant with examples, exercises and explanations which supplements the training well. Each new reading is different and give rise to new aspects as training progresses and one starts and develops the art “understanding with the body”.
You can download Stig’s book for free here:
FROG BREATHING
This breathing technique resembles the way in which frogs gulp down air. The patient sucks a small amount into his mouth, then forces it through his voice box and into the lungs by a pushing action of the tongue. While the voice box closes to hold the air in the lungs, the patient gulps again, and the process is repeated until he gets a full breath.
The technique was first observed by physicians in the late 1940s in polio patients at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, in Los Angeles, by Dr Clarence W Dail, and first described by Dr. Dail in 1951 in the journal California Medicine.
Frog breathing increases the time which patients can spend outside the iron lung. Before learning the technique, one group of eleven patients at Rancho Los Amigos was able to remain outside their respirators for an average of only 4½ minutes. After mastering it, their average time jumped to 4½ hours. Frog breathing gives patients a big psychological boost, also enables them to cough, ending a small but maddening frustration that besets the paralyzed who feel the throat irritation but cannot relieve it, and it allows them to speak audibly.
This little booklet is inspired by the American tubist and educator Arnold Maurice Jacobs (1915 –1998) has helped many professional winds and singers. The central idea of his method is based on the realization that the breathing function is partly unconscious. Therefore, it is not so much having exact knowledge as it is working directly with a series of exercises, which develop effective breathing.
The booklet is easily read and provides good knowledge about the function of respiration, vital capacity, etc.
New research shows that the human organism literally contains biographical (life history) information. It is well documented how different types of existential stress can lead to disruption of the physiological adaptation systems and vulnerability to illness. Experience of recognition and belonging can conversely help strengthen health.
The authors of this paradigm-breaking article, which originally was published in the ‘Journal of Norwegian Medical Association’, describes why a clinical conversation about the person’s life, experiences and living conditions have ‘strong’ medical relevance – all the way to the cellular level.
Listen to Linn Getz’ mind-blowing conference On Crisis, Hubris and the Future of Medicalization at Oxford University
With this article there is now evidence that if one had a bad, stressed childhood there is a great risk of one’s immune system becoming so strained later in life, that one will be more easily affected by inflammation. This can lead to a wide range of serious illnesses especially cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
There is also much to indicate that inflammation due to weakened immune system may be the cause of developing post-polio syndrome.
Abstract of article:
An article from 1998 in ‘Psykolog Nyt’ (New Psychologist) refers to American research results, which demonstrate that if stress leads to miserable night’s sleep it leads to a weakening of the immune system.
As in previous studies a consistent correlation was found between the degree of grief and stress on the one hand and the degree of weakened immune system on the other.
Yet as something completely new, this connection was also found to be fully explained through a stress-induced sleep disorder.
If one saw the trial subjects who suffered most from stress and grief, it was only they who also had severe disorders at night, who showed a weakened immune state during the day. The trial subjects suffering just as much from stress and grief, yet having no nightly sleep disturbances, had no decline in their immune system.
These results show that the previously proven association between stress and immune weakening is to some extent that stress weakens the sleep process, which in turn weakens the immune system.
Read:
By Erik Jacobsen former Chief Physician and Director of the Rigshospital’s Respiratory Department in Copenhagen, Denmark.
All people affected by post-polio can benefit greatly from the training in the Huff & Puff Club. Some of these patients have been affected by respiratory problems associated with the initial polio attack or as a result of post-polio syndrome. This article is about the breathing difficulties caused by polio and what can be done to remedy it
The article is easy reading, end includes all you need to know.
The article was published in 2002, yet the problems and solutions remain the same.
The only, yet very significant change since then is that respirators used today are much smaller, smarter and almost entirely silent. They are also available battery powered so you can take them with you everywhere.