I’ve been meaning to write you this letter for a long time—now I’m finally doing it.

I’m so happy that you’ve found a way to breathe properly! I still remember very well what it used to be like: trial and error—with a lot, a lot of error.

You believed and followed every piece of nonsense. Whether you read it in a magazine, were told by a therapist, or heard it through the grapevine—you were like a sponge. Always searching. Searching too long in the outside world.

You took a deep breath into your belly. Often, your shoulders would hunch forward and up as you did so. Your back began to ache. Your asthma got worse and worse, occurring more and more frequently for no apparent reason. Every winter, a cough would come over you. You felt dizzy from all the coughing and wheezing.

Climb a flight of stairs quickly? Impossible. I get a stitch in my side and pain in my chest.

Your reaction to that? “I need to breathe even deeper.” I tried to nudge you, to wake you up: “Hey, you’re breathing yourself sick—listen to me, I’ll show you how it’s done. You’ll only find the truth through me.” Sometimes—very rarely, I think, only ever in the spring—you came very close to my truth: when you stuck your nose into a lilac bush and gently inhaled the scent of lilacs.

You’d also nestled your nose into the magnolia blossoms. In the summer, the rose blossoms drew you in. Sometimes, after a summer rain, you’d sniff the tree bark in the forest and breathe it in deeply. In moments like those, my heart would beat a little faster with happiness, always hoping: Now she feels it! Now she gets it! I don’t want to be overwhelmed, I don’t want to drag you down, I don’t want to make you feel small!

I don’t want to be part of this misconception, this imposition of the mind over the body.

You searched and practiced—yet another breathing technique, yet another voice training exercise, yet another speech class—and everything just kept getting worse. You felt smaller, and your scoliosis unleashed its full potential for pain …

Interjection: You were an old woman even when you were very young. How wonderful that today it’s the other way around: You’re young in your old age! And I’ve played a big part in that.

The breathing troubles took their course—until one day you got the idea to listen to me. I’ll never forget the moment I heard you say, “This isn’t going to work. I give up. Dear diaphragm, show me how to breathe. Show me what you want, how you work!” I seem to recall that a “damn it” was tacked on at the end, and I reveled in my triumph. But only for a moment—the length of half a breath. Your despair was great; I had to set you free.

That’s what I told you: “Stretch yourself out, live up to your full potential. Be the person you were meant to be.”

Now breathe in through your nose, hold it for a long time, and hold it even longer. That’s all you need to do so I can expand upward. I expand, pulling your abdominal and back muscles upward with my trunk muscles. I expand to the sides, wonderfully supported by the ribs, which stretch sideways to their full width, equipped with cartilage and six joints per pair of ribs.

Hold your breath as long as you can, and position your tongue upright in your mouth as a wonderful source of additional support. Let your breath flow back out into the world through your mouth, slowly and mindfully. Stay long, wide, and open. Enjoy the emptiness that arises when you have exhaled completely. Feel how I relax as I do this. Breathe in slowly again—the lilac-scented breath.”

You listened to me. You took your time; I remember that you felt dizzy and lay down on the floor so you could continue experiencing the Neuatem.

I like that quality in you—that impatience to immediately internalize the change and make it part of your memory. That’s a good kind of impatience. You celebrated this new way of breathing, practiced it every day, and whenever you felt the old shortness of breath trying to take over in a challenging situation, you paused, opened yourself up—and opened me up—and together we found our way back to calm. You call this calm “oceanic calm”—I really like that.

You haven’t caused me to have an asthma attack since that day. You’ve explored what the ribs do when breathing properly and which muscles are involved. You’ve explored how important body posture and head position are so that I can expand effortlessly and without limits.

You’ve realized that I can do so much more than just breathe with you. Together, we’ve reshaped your chest, straightened your spine, and corrected your scoliosis. We’ve set your heart free. It beats steadily and calmly within your broad chest. It sways to our rhythm.

You have created exercises that allow everyone to learn how to breathe with dignity, so that every diaphragm in the world can breathe happily alongside its human.

I am very pleased with your eagerness to pass on the wisdom I taught you. I am happy to be your diaphragm.

With love, your diaphragm