Accept Love: The Wake-Up Call

I went to bed feeling satisfied after a good workout. Around 10 PM, I woke to the sharp pain of a pinched nerve and full-body spasm. My respect for the power of love and my openness to receive help allowed me to embrace what this new level of breathing could offer. In my bed, unable to move without serious pain, I had to accept that I needed something beyond my own willpower.

When the Teacher Becomes the Student

A pinched nerve had reduced me to helplessness. But in that moment, my inner wisdom spoke clearly: settle down and breathe. Determined to get back to sleep, I remembered a conversation at the gym with someone doing heavy squats. When I asked about the weight he was lifting, his answer caught me off guard: "I have a pinched nerve, and this is how I treat it."

Then another memory surfaced—a conversation with Kahea Hart, a coach I deeply admire. His words: "When it comes to pinched nerves, you have to make the muscles involved do the work."

Being open to this experience, accepting it as a contribution to my healing rather than fighting against it, allowed me to discover something I'd been teaching for years without fully understanding it myself. This acceptance became the foundation for a profound shift in my overall health.

Awareness: The Body's Instinctive Response

When the pain hit hardest, my body did something instinctive: I held my breath and braced. And surprisingly, it worked. The pain eased just enough for me to think clearly. What was happening?

Discovering the Pattern

I corrected my posture, laid flat, took a deep breath, held it while focusing on the affected area, and breathed through the pain. After a few moments, the pain eased and my recovery began. I decided to repeat the process. Lay still. Inhale. Tighten my core. Hold my breath. The pain became manageable. The more I focused on my breath and holding a tight core, the better I felt.

Acceptance: Working With Pain, Not Against It

I had to accept the pain itself—not fight it, but work with it. When you engage your core muscles, you're creating an internal support system, essentially a natural back brace from within. When you tighten your abdominal and core muscles, they create tension and rigidity in your torso. This engaged core forms a stable cylinder that can bear load. Instead of your spine carrying all the weight and stress (which aggravates a pinched nerve), your core muscles take on much of that burden. With less pressure on the spine, there's less compression on the nerve, and the pain reduces.

Understanding the Mechanics

In my experience, holding my breath while bracing actually seemed to help initially. The held breath created additional internal pressure that reinforced the core engagement, giving even more support to take pressure off the spine. This technique creates intra-abdominal pressure that acts like a natural weight belt from the inside, stabilizing your spine and trunk. I accepted that this was my reality—and that acceptance opened the door to hope.

Actions: Matching Intensity With Intention

Here's what I did: wherever I was, whatever position I was in when the pain hit, I would hold my breath, find the position that felt best, and when the pain intensified, I got good at matching its intensity with my core engagement and breath control. The process became intuitive.

My Valsalva Technique

I take a deep nasal inhale and hold it momentarily. Then I tighten my core and make a "tsss" sound—like saying "tight"—while releasing just a small amount of air. I engage the muscles surrounding my spine and hold that tension for several moments before exhaling and breathing through the pain.

From Quick Fix to Sustainable Solution

But here's what I learned over the following days and weeks: while that initial breath-hold gave me relief in acute moments, sustainable pain management required something more sophisticated. I needed to learn how to maintain that core support while breathing naturally—to keep the scaffolding strong while staying oxygenated and calm.

Breathing Into Discomfort

This is where the real work began. Proper breathing while maintaining core engagement allowed me to keep the supportive tension without adding the stress and oxygen deprivation that comes from holding my breath. I could maintain the decompression of the spine while staying relaxed enough to heal. The biggest learning had to do with settling down and breathing into the pain and discomfort—not away from it.

A week after that first night, still days away from seeing Coach Jo (Dr. Josuke Tanaka, my chiropractor), I continue the practice, refining it daily.

Accountability: Beyond Performance to Survival

Over my years working with athletes, I've seen countless examples of how breath connects to performance. But this experience taught me something deeper: breath isn't just about performance—it's about survival, recovery, and the body's remarkable ability to support itself when we learn to work with it rather than against it.

Proving It to Myself

I held myself accountable to this practice. I always knew breathing could be part of the solution, but now I had proof in my own body. Each time the pain returned, I returned to the breath. I measured my progress not just in pain reduction, but in my growing confidence that I could manage whatever came.

Adaptability: The Scaffolding Principle

Your core muscles can act as scaffolding around your spine, taking weight off the structure that's been compromised. But that scaffolding only works when you can sustain it—and sustainability requires breath.

Meeting Each Moment Differently

The real challenge came with adapting this technique to different situations—especially finding a way to sleep. I learned to modify the intensity, the duration, the position. Some moments required full engagement; others needed just enough support to maintain stability while allowing rest. This adaptability became essential to my recovery.

Why This Technique Works

Increases Strength and Power: The Valsalva maneuver creates intra-abdominal pressure that gives you a solid foundation to push or pull against, maximizing your strength output.

Improves Safety: It protects your spine by creating rigidity in your torso, preventing dangerous spinal flexion or extension under load and maintaining proper posture throughout movement. This structural stability significantly reduces your risk of injury during heavy or explosive lifts.

Helps Manage Pain During Movement: The core bracing provides structural support that can reduce discomfort during challenging exercises. The controlled breathing and focus help you push through difficult portions while preventing compensatory movements that might cause pain or injury.

Best Applications: This technique is especially important for compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses—any time you're moving heavy loads or performing maximal effort movements where spinal stability and power generation are critical.

Alignment: The Tools Were Always There

The pain that brought me to the floor that night eventually subsided. But the lesson stayed with me: sometimes our most powerful tools are the ones we've had all along. We just need the right circumstances to truly understand them.

Trust Your Body's Wisdom

Throughout this experience, my emotions were essentially positive. I knew there was hope. I knew my body had wisdom I could trust. And that's what I want you to know too: trust that your body knows how to heal itself. Give it the conditions it needs—acceptance, awareness, proper breathing—and it will show you the way.

Summary of Inspiration

Sometimes our greatest teachers arrive wrapped in pain. This story reveals how a moment of physical crisis became a profound lesson in self-trust and healing. When conventional willpower failed, inner wisdom emerged—teaching that the body already knows what it needs. Through breath, core engagement, and the courage to work with pain rather than against it, we discover that healing isn't about fighting ourselves; it's about listening, adapting, and trusting the intelligence already within us. The tools we seek are often already in our hands—we just need to pause, breathe, and remember.

Notes

Coach Jo is Dr. Josuke Tanaka. He was born and raised in Switzerland and is a former Swiss national champion in judo. He holds a black belt in judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He also healed my neck, and he is a great guy and a wonderful friend.

Kahea Hart is the man behind Hawaii Surf and Performance. He is a premiere coach who got me back on track, breathing properly during workouts with the Valsalva Technique for every rep. He is in great shape and lives his truth.