Sixteen Years of Learning to Breathe

After life-saving lung surgery at 18, Stephanie Damm was told she might never regain her lung capacity. Today, she helps people living with chronic pain and breathing challenges reconnect with their bodies through myofascial yoga, breathwork and sensation-based movement.

"The problem wasn't effort. It was that I was working on the wrong layer."

A Rare Diagnosis

At 17, Stephanie fell seriously ill almost overnight. For almost two years, doctors told her the pain wasn't real, until she was finally diagnosed with Swyer-James syndrome, a rare lung disorder. In 2010, surgeons removed three segments of her left lung. Her lung volume fell to 40%, and they weren't optimistic she would regain any of it.

Room to Breathe

Stephanie turned to yoga and became a teacher, partly because of her own recovery. For years she tried everything, from pranayama to breathwork protocols, while still quietly struggling herself. Myofascial yoga finally gave her ribs space to move, and her pain became manageable. Still, one piece was missing.

The Missing Piece

This year, Stephanie enrolled in Oxygen Advantage® Level 1 Breathing for Yoga, and everything made sense. She had been a mouth breather her whole life, but within four weeks of taping her mouth at night, she became a nose breather.

"It took me over 30 years and then just four weeks."— Stephanie Damm

Her sleep improved, and her lung capacity has now grown to 69% — a figure her doctors had long considered unlikely.

Her training also changed how she teaches. "I'm never saying again just take a deep breath or focus on your belly breathing," she says. Today, she shares what she's learned with a community of more than 90,000 people.