Buteyko course

The Buteyko Breathing method course The initial course is normally structured over five days, preferably consecutive, (usually 10 am, Monday to Friday) or within 10 days. Each session lasts for approximately 90 minutes and will teach you the correct way to breathe using the Buteyko Method. Skype sessions are possible too. You will learn Buteyko breathing exercises:

to clear your nose if blocked or stuffed up
to monitor your breathing
to gently correct your breathing
to quickly tackle panic attacks
initially to control asthma attacks and soon to prevent them

The course will also cover the effects of food, triggers, hyperventilation attacks, colds and flu management, exercise, how to get a good night’s sleep, and much more. The Buteyko programme is tailored to suit each person and the techniques are taught either one-on-one or in small groups. Personalised attention ensures your safety. Buteyko is not about throwing away medication or machines; instead reductions are done safely as symptoms reduce and with consultation with your doctor when necessary. Therefore the Buteyko method is taught as a complementary rather than an alternative therapy. It is a natural remedy that does not require any herbs, drugs or gadgets. Children’s courses are usually separate from adults.

Programme Fees Normally: Adult: £470 Child: £370 Additional family members: • 1st Member pays full price • 2nd member onwards pays £100.

The programme fee covers: Initial course (five sessions), Two follow-up sessions, Three month’s helpline support, Three month’s learning support and on-line breathing log (most clients find this very useful, and it helps me to help you). Support material and course notebooks.

You are recommended to keep in regular contact with your coach to ensure that you are on the right track and attend additional sessions if you need them. There is also a very useful online support group for people learning Buteyko where you can “compare notes”. The courses are run in Furness Vale (on the Manchester to Buxton line- close to the railway station). Or via skype or facetime.

You can sign up to Breathing Remedies newsletter here. Information on posture and breathing and how they affect health.

Or phone me 01663 743055 (Dr Janet Winter)

Hello, I am Janet, a Breathing educator, (Buteyko Breathing Method) and I help people recover from asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches, IBS chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and more, by improving their dysfunctional breathing. Both myself and my (then) teenage son have recovered from ME/CFS, and I want to help more people with these devastating illnesses.

You can contact me here:

What I do

Breathing education gently retrains a disordered breathing pattern and helps people naturally recover from breathing-related health problems.

The Buteyko Method relieves asthma symptoms, and has been listed in the UK Asthma Guideline since 2008.
I am a member of the Buteyko Breathing Educators Association and am fully insured.

I am also a qualified postural alignment specialist (PAS) Egoscue method. Good posture is essential for good breathing and proper function in general.

You can find a great summary of Egoscue here.

My background

I had been involved in healthcare/biomedical research for 30 years although previously in a very different role: before training as a Breathing educator, I spent 20 years in drug discovery looking for new painkillers for a major pharmaceutical company based in a London Institute.
I worked as a neuroscientist and cell biologist, directing a team of bench scientists. (So I am not a medical doctor but I have a PhD in Neuroscience) I authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles and reviews on my research. My professional profile can be seen here on LINKEDIN.

Why I became a breathing educator

If you are reading this because you have CFS/ME, I know what you are going through. I know what it is like to hold onto a job by my fingernails, worried about how we would feed the family if I lost my job, come home and eat and sleep and spend my weekend recovering.
I had no social life. I was lucky to quickly get to a consultant who diagnosed me with candidiasis, and anti-fungals and a yeast and sugar-free diet helped a lot, but not enough.
I felt I had been “written off” and had nothing to offer. I was a mum, partner and employee with massively reduced physical and mental output compared with previously. I suspected my symptoms were “stress related” but they did not ease when I left my stressful job and moved out of London to the countryside.
For me (after trying many different avenues, cranial osteopathy, chiropractic, mercury amalgam filling removal and more – I became a “fat-folder patient”), breathing education worked, it was a big missing piece of my health puzzle, and one I had frankly never considered.

Changing my breathing back to a more normal pattern really helped me. One definition of stress is “anything that makes you breathe more”. And I know now that breathing too much can actually deplete the body of oxygen. And stress can be emotional or physical. Looking back on my history I can clearly see my own physical and emotional stresses accumulating, from a very traumatic bereavement, on-going work and family stresses, then a really bad summer respiratory infection and cough that was not shifted by two different antibiotics (but they probably contributed to unbalancing my gut flora, hence the fungal overgrowth/candidiasis).

A cough seems to be one of the best ways to mess up your breathing pattern, and many of my clients tell me “I was fine until I had that cough/chest infection, and I never really got my health back!!” The breathing centre in the brain gets to think that big volume breathing is normal and unless you know about it, it is sometimes hard to recover. Luckily you CAN retrain your breathing by doing a series of gentle exercises and making some life style changes, and you CAN have hope of better health.
So that is why I do what I do and why I am passionate about it; I found a way to improve my chronic fatigue by better breathing and I trained as a breathing educator so I could help others with this devastating disease. There is so little help out there for them (you?).

Then chronic backache made good breathing impossible, and I discovered postural alignment therapy (Egoscue) to help with that. And I am still amazed at the progress I am making -it’s wonderful to have decreased pain and increased function when I had accepted decline at my age was inevitable. It’s not!

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