Asthma Free in 21 Days
The breakthrough mindbody healing program by Kathryn Shafer, Ph.D.
Asthma knows no geographical, gender, age and economic boundaries. It effects 15 million Americans across all demographic groups, including children, as well as millions of others around the world.
Asthma is the leading cause of visits to doctors’ offices. It accounts for more absences from work and school than any other chronic disease and is the sixth most common reason for hospitalization.
For children, it is the No.1 cause of emergency room visits and hospital admission. More than $1 billion is spent annually on its treatment. Those treatments have been limited to drugs and pulmonary devices that temporarily suppress or relieve the disease’s symptoms, but offer no real solution.
That is about to change. Kathryn Shafer, Ph.D., a social scientist and asthma sufferer, has documented what can only be termed a revolutionary approach to the cause and ultimately the healing of asthma in “Asthma Free in 21 Days: The Breakthrough Mind-Body Healing Program” (HarperSanFransisco; April 2000). Such a concept might seem a pipe dream to asthma sufferers whose disease has left them gasping for breath, often times since childhood. But Dr. Shafer, who is healing herself as well as many others of the disease, view asthma as a complex psycho-physiological disorder with emotional, social, spiritual as well as physical dimensions.
Her therapeutic approach is a mind-body program that empowers asthma sufferers to take charge of their healing. She has dubbed this innovative and proven-successful system, the Fun™ program:
- Focus on the asthma in a new way
- Undo old patterns of thought and behavior
- Now act so as to transform those life situations that suppress and suffocate.
- The Fun™ acronym is no accident. Challenging self-talk are essential to the program as are the techniques of mental imagery.
- With Fun™, asthmatics learn to recognize the emotional meaning and belief systems at the root of their symptoms and eventually make sense of the suffering that seemed random.
“Asthma Free in 21 Days,” chronicles Shafer’s own healing process using the Fun™ program as well as the clients she helps cope with asthma at her Limitless Potentials therapeutic center in Jupiter, Florida and in workshops across the country.
The book clearly explains Shafer’s step by step 21 day Fun™ program. It also presents research on childhood asthma and suggestions on how kids can use the Fun™ program. The Fun™ program is flexible and adaptive and aimed at making asthma sufferers their own primary care providers.
In its holistic view of disease and its cure, “Asthma Free in 21 Days” offers principles and techniques that can apply to many disorders. For asthmatics, the book charts a path to lessening and eliminating dependence on drugs and outside devices. Asthmatics can live not only symptom free, but asthma-free.