Yes, you heard me right. But there is a little bit behind the story of it curing, which I’d like to share with you here. Needless to say, I’m enjoying a life free from asthma! Especially given that I’m currently traveling in some very polluted cities, which used to be a trigger.
What Is Asthma?
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock your whole life and haven’t heard of asthma, here’s a super quick overview of the dis-ease.
Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition characterised by inflammation and narrowing of the airways, leading to difficulty in breathing. Common symptoms include wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and coughing. Asthma triggers can vary from person to person but often include allergens, exercise, cold air, and stress.
People experience different severities of asthma, ranging from mild intermittent symptoms to severe persistent asthma that can significantly impact daily life. Mild asthma may only cause occasional symptoms, while severe asthma can result in frequent and intense symptoms, requiring regular medication and careful management.
Currently, there is no known cure for asthma in the scientific community. Treatments focus on managing symptoms and preventing attacks through medications such as inhalers, lifestyle changes, and avoiding known triggers. Advances in research continue to improve understanding and management of the condition.
My Journey With Asthma
I’d had asthma since I was a child. Under the age of 8 possibly. I never had an asthma attack, but asthma did affect me for a long time in my life when undertaking various activities, or when exposed to environmental triggers such as synthetic scents, smoke, dust, pollution or exercise. I didn’t need to use my inhalers much, depending on the environment I was in, but I used the blue and brown inhalers throughout my life on and off. I was prescribed a reliever inhaler, so used Salbutamol (the blue one), whenever I was wheezing or had symptoms. Sometimes I used this inhaler daily or multiple times a day, but at other times I wouldn’t need it for days or sometimes weeks on end.
When I was in places with high pollution levels or other triggers such as dust or smokers in the house, or if I was going through a period where my asthma was heightened for some other reason unbeknown to me, I would also need to use a steroid preventer inhaler every day, Clenil (the brown one). I quit smoking a few years ago, but when I used to smoke I needed both inhalers daily, and was using the reliever inhaler multiple times per day.
I travelled to India in January 2024, and initially I had to use inhalers every day and even buy extras out there (they’re much cheaper there and can be bought over the counter) because of the crazy pollution in some of the cities I was staying in. I wasn’t expecting to need my inhalers as much as I did, so I hadn’t brought an adequate supply. For the first month in India my asthma was aggravated, so I was using the reliever inhaler a lot (multiple times per day) and using the preventer inhaler every day. That was of course, until my Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training made my need for inhalers redundant at the start of February 2024.
The Journey To Self-Healing: More To The Story
Remaining Open To Healing Occurring
As someone who has been fortunate enough to have already experienced what I would describe as various “miracle healings” unfold in my life, and as a healer, I always remain open to the potential of curing or receiving healing for any form of dis-ease, whether it be physical, mental or emotional. I truly believe there is no limit to the ways in which spirit can move through our lives to provide healing. I also believe that many of the manifestations of illness and dis-ease that we experience in our lives have a root cause: which could be ancestral, an unresolved trauma or traumas, emotional, or of the mind.
Practising Self-Healing: Deconditioning And Bringing Shadow To Light
As a result of these beliefs and experiences, I undertake a lot of “self-healing” work in my spare time, which I have been intentionally doing for around 6 years now. This includes self-healing with energy such as Reiki and light language, meditation, intention setting, working with plant medicines, shamanic practices, receiving 1:1 or group sessions and ceremonies with other healers, affirmations, visualisation (sometimes), journaling, and bringing light to unconscious patterns, beliefs, or behaviours. It is a process of deconditioning, and one that requires patience, trust and self-compassion (sometimes easier said than done!). It involves the slow process of unpicking or meeting with the parts of ourselves that we have kept unconscious or hidden in the shadows – and bringing these shadows to light, loving and accepting them, so that they integrate and no longer remain discarded parts of the whole.
When you tell people that you’re going to India, they love to tell you horror stories before you go (even if they’ve never been!). Many of these horror stories include tales set around the stomach and bowel regions: parasites, dysentery, diarrhoea, vomiting, touch and go bus journeys, and full blown hospital admission/(IV) rehydration/medical repatriation.
Practising Self-Healing: Reiki And Affirmations
Though I was hoping that sickness and diarrhoea wouldn’t get me as bad as it did when I went to India in 2006 (think simultaneously out of both ends in a toilet tent and THE MOST touch and go bumpy bumpy hours-long jeep journey of my entire life 😬), I decided to be extra safe and get the big guns out for my travels there this time round. The preventative measures that I chose to adopt, were daily self-Reiki and affirmations before bed… which feels hilarious to write, because I honestly didn’t ever think I’d become such a woo-person 😅
Affirmation: I Am In Optimal Health
I thought I’d aim high, with the affirmation (& occasional visualisation) ‘I Am In Optimal Health’. I would repeat this affirmation as I administered my daily dose of self-Reiki each night, with particular attention granted to the stomach and bowel regions, eek! At a guess, I was probably giving myself around 20-30 minutes of self-Reiki with affirmations each night throughout January 2024. Sometimes I missed a day or three, but I mostly kept it up and sometimes did longer sessions on myself or self-Reiki’d when out and about during the day.
Practising Self-Healing: Intention Setting
Some additional context that I thought I should also mention: I jump around intentions and intention setting a lot, so don’t always remember what I’ve set intentions around, but I do distinctly remember having set “cure my asthma please spirit” intentions, as well as asking spirit to fix my lazy eye (yet to unfold!) over the last few years. I believe that all of this work, alongside the additional bits and pieces I’m about to share, may have laid the necessary foundations for asthma to lift.
No Longer Identifying With The Illness, In Order To Heal
One of the trickier aspects of self-healing that I’ve experimented with, is identification, or non-identification, with certain labels or “identities” that we pick up and accumulate throughout our lives. Without even realising it, we can be susceptible to attaching to roles, gender stereotypes, belief systems, limiting beliefs, personality traits we’ve been told we have, thought forms, and of course, medical diagnoses. We can lose sight of who we truly are under the weight of all of these labels, narratives, the expectations that others impose on us, and the expectations we impose upon ourselves. I could write a whole other post on the nuances of a diagnosis or medical label, how they can both help and hinder, medication, self-fulfilled prophecy, the power of suggestion, and finding the right balance when embarking upon the work of looking at, unpicking, and deconditioning what we’ve been taught around health and dis-ease. But, for the purpose of this post, I’m going to gloss over all of that.
Now, I started taking the whole process of “dropping the label” a lot more seriously when I was strongly guided during a breathwork session to “drop” my mental health label a few years ago. It came through as clairaudience if memory serves correct, with my spirit guides telling me that dropping the mental health label would be an important step towards healing my struggles with poor mental health.
I believe in manifestation, the power of suggestion, and that we are all divine creators. I believe that words are magic, and that to an certain extent, we create our own realities. Despite this, I was still identifying with my “asthma label” on a consistent basis. I would still state it on health questionnaires, I had going for my asthma review noted extremely far down in my mental maybe-one-day-soon-so-possibly-in-a-few-years-time to do list, and I tried to remember to carry my blue preventer inhaler with me most of the time. I briefly mentioned finding the right balance when attempting to decondition a health diagnosis, and the decision around whether to carry inhalers with you provides the perfect example.
By carrying and/or using the asthma medication, you are by default identifying with the illness. You are, in some ways, feeding the expectation that you might need to use an inhaler, because you “have” asthma. But at the same time, if you decide not to carry or use your inhalers and you have an asthma attack, you might be fucked. Finding the right balance can be a pickle at times, but to offer a curiosity into the equation, since my asthma healed 6 months ago, I’ve still been carrying my blue inhaler, but the asthma hasn’t come back and I haven’t needed to use it. Power of words digression, is that I nearly added the word “yet” to the end of that last sentence, but decided not to type the “yet” because of the implication that the cured-state might not last forever 😅.
There is a point to all of this sharing around health labels I’ve been doing. When I arrived at my Kundalini Teacher Training in Rishikesh, I decided not to state that I had asthma on the health form. This was the first time in my life that I had decided not to disclose it, and I didn’t disclose my mental health labels either, eek! It felt a bit icky and dishonest. But, tah-dah, perhaps this decision was one of the final puzzle pieces to the healing that I was to receive during the training. I would love to know whether this choice made a difference or not, if only we had an alternative-ending machine to take a peek.
Guided Not To Use Inhaler
Later that day, or possibly the day after, I was about to use my blue inhaler but heard a voice (clairaudience) that told me not to. So I listened, and put it down. I later learned in the yoga philosophy classes that you shouldn’t practice the strong breathwork in kundalini yoga and use an inhaler, which I found curious given the guidance I’d received. And that was the last day that I needed to, or nearly used an inhaler. It was very early on in the training, within the first few days, so at that point I hadn’t been practising a lot of kundalini yoga or done much shatkarma.
What Is Kundalini Yoga?
Kundalini Yoga is a bit different to the yoga most people are familiar with. It incorporates asanas, kriyas, mantra, pranyam and meditation. Many of the kriyas incorporate a strong breath, it’s very close to breathwork. It works more on the spiritual level of the energetic body, and aims to awaken the kundalini/shakti energy located at the base of the spine, for her to rise through the sushumna nadi to meet shiva at the third eye in divine union. This is known as kundalini awakening, and most people haven’t or won’t experience a full kundalini awakening in their lifetime. It can take many lifetimes to achieve. It can also “go wrong” and burn you to death if the kundalini tries to rise through ida (moon) and pingala (sun) nadis and only manages to get through the pingala nadi, eek. People do have partial kundalini awakenings though. And people sometimes have accidental full kundalini awakenings caused by injury or trauma to the base of the spine, like falling off a chair or having a car accidnet. It more often than not turns their lives upside down, and takes them a long time to adjust. It is thought that if the body isn’t “pure” enough when the kundalini energy rises, you may run into problems. And that it’s important to foster discipline before and in case kundalini rises, so that if it does, you’re less likely to lose your marbles, because a bit of that can and does, to a certain extent, happen.
6 Months In Since Yoga Cured My Asthma
That was at the start of February 2024 and it’s not yet the end of July 2024. I haven’t needed, or felt the need to use my inhalers since and have been in some super polluted cities in India since then. I’m still travelling, but when I get home I plan to go to the doctors to see if I can get asthma removed from my medical record. And that’s the story of how kundalini yoga cured my asthma.
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