Amy Champion´s Story
"I Thought I Knew Breathing. Until My Life Changed."
Amy Champion — RN & OA Instructor
Two brain surgeries. Six months of recovery. One nasal 5K completed at 7,400 feet with her mouth closed. Amy Champion's story is about what happens when breathing becomes the one thing you can always come back to.
Amy Champion has spent her career teaching people to breathe. As an Intensive Care nurse and, later, a Nurse Coach, it was second nature — until two years ago, when she first came across the word "breathwork" and found herself unconvinced. It felt too soft, too slow, too far from the evidence-based world she'd built her career on.
Then, last September, everything changed. Amy learned she had a brain tumor that needed to come out — soon.
On the morning of what was supposed to be her only surgery, in the hospital parking lot, the right side of her face went suddenly and completely still. Paralyzed. "Unimaginable stress gripped me as my befuddled brain was trying to grasp what was happening," she says. She tried to box breathe. Within moments, she was too frightened to manage even that.
The surgeons operated to relieve the pressure in her skull, braced for long-term paralysis. Amy woke with full facial function restored — a result her medical team called a miracle. Three days later, a second surgery removed the tumor entirely, at the cost of her hearing and balance on one side.
"The physical pain and stress of the unknown was intense, and I used a lot of box breathing."
Recovery was brutal before it was hopeful. Amy came down with the flu the day she got home. She had an allergic reaction to medication. She was in constant pain, physically restricted, and — for the first time in her career — on the other side of the hospital bed.
It was James Nestor's Breath that changed the shape of her recovery. "It was like a lightbulb went off," she says. "I didn't need to spend 45–60 minutes a day trying to have an experience — I needed to learn to breathe properly." Nestor's book led her to Oxygen Advantage, and from there, to the Functional Breathing Instructor program.
She practiced every exercise on herself first. Nasal breathing, day and night. Mouth taping while she slept. Simple things — dressing, climbing stairs, short walks — became small daily tests of a mouth kept closed.
Then came the Nasal 5K Challenge email. Amy is a trail runner. Her last run had been two days before her first surgery. She lives at 7,400 feet. Even walking was still hard. She signed up anyway.
"It took me nearly six weeks to get through Week 1. The surgery and recovery had taken that much out of me."
By late May, the tide had turned. Amy could walk without her head pounding. She was nasal breathing most of the time. The anxiety that used to sit constantly in her chest was easing with every LSD breathing session. The exercise-induced "asthma" that medication had never touched — the wheezing on nearly every run — simply stopped happening.
She went on to complete the Buteyko Instructor training alongside her OA certification, drawn to its fit with the clinical, non-athlete population she coaches. On July 6th and 10th, she hiked to over 10,300 feet — nearly nasal-only — to mark six months since each surgery. Then, on July 22nd, three days shy of her 50th birthday, she ran 3.22 miles on a trail with her mouth closed the entire way.
"For a moment, I was comparing myself to where I was last summer, and disappointment set in. Then I reframed it. This wasn't a disappointment — this was a major achievement."
Amy is now rebuilding her coaching practice around functional breathing and the Buteyko Method. Her ten-year-old daughter has picked up nasal breathing too — and has started explaining it to her own friends.
"To anyone who is struggling: wherever you are right now, you are awesome. One hour, one breath at a time if you need to. You've got this — and we're all cheering for you."
