Dear Michael:

I was not surprised to read your article linking depression to breathing.

I have been suffering very deep depression over the past 11 months, and recently have discovered myself that throwing my shoulders back and taking few long deep breaths has the amazing effect of overcoming what I would consider to be extremely severe depression. I came about this discovery by chance a few weeks ago and it has proved so successful that today I performed a search on the internet to see if there were any medical studies linking depression to breathing.

I naturally tend to hunch my shoulders over, and it was under my chiropractor's advice that I started doing exercises to open my chest cavity and correct my posture.

With these exercises, I naturally tended to take a few deep breaths, and usually I noticed an instantaneous lifting of my mood. It was a short jump in logic that lead me to try the breathing alone when I felt my mood slip.

I am quite amazed by the effects of this simple treatment - even 3 or 4 deep breaths in the morning can mean the difference between a good and a bad day.

I should expect that you have heard many such stories - but decided to write to you anyway to re-enforce your theory with my piece of annecdotal evidence.

-Alexander.

 Long story short approximately 10 years ago described these symptoms to my doctor, adrenal surges, not being about to catch my breath, waking up at night  many times gasping for air and feeling like I am suffocating was put on Zoloft or  Paxil off and on for about 10 years. I would tell the doctors, that I didn't feel depressed and really had no idea why these physical symptoms would happen   to me and be so debilitating, but they just treat symptoms with meds. People  would tell me, well just take a deep breath. OK I'll do that I would say but I could n  not seem to get a handle on being able to get a real breath when I'm suffering  t h is panic and anxiety.

One fine day last October it finally dawned on me, I do not know really HOW to breathe! With all of the Yoga, meditation, bodywork, no one has been able to really teach me "HOW TO BREATHE". So I got on the WWW and said help!!! Punched in "breathing" and Wa La came "breathing.com" and Michael. Got Michael's tapes in his Breathing Kit

Breathing Exercise Tape #1 was such a shock for me, what I mean is I had no idea there was a reflex action at the bottom of the exhale breath that actually "breathed your body". The shallow breathing that I was in the habit of doing had never allowed the development of that reflex action. So naturally I'm waking up at night breath holding, panic stricken and clueless why this is happening. My body has been oxygen starved and getting worse as I get older. EVEN THOUGH ALL OF THE CHILDHOOD ISSUES ARE WORKED OUT, GONE, DONE WITH, the old breathing habits had remained, I was not aware of something better.

Breathing Exercise #2 was even more fantastic! The exercise uses what you have learned in video tape #176 and gives you the tremendous tools and power over the physical disablement of  being oxygen starved and emotionally stressed.

Very soon after starting the tapes, I visited Michael for 6 days in North Carolina to get private instruction. I can only tell you all that it was the best thing I could have ever done for myself. I am now of course still practicing proper breathing (50 years of bad habits), off meds, and have not awaked at night even once since starting the tapes and getting private instruction from Michael.