Not just the gut.
Not just the mind.

Introduction

Book excerpt

I had been thinking about writing something like this for a long time.

I’ve been living with Crohn’s disease for 17 years. I was diagnosed during the summer, between middle school and high school. A new school, a flare-up, extreme weight loss, and trying to find my place in a new reality as an almost grown-up boy weighing 48 kilograms.

Then came university, over a dozen different jobs, and my own business. And alongside that: dozens of doctor visits, hundreds of blood tests, colonoscopies, gastroscopies, exams, results, hopes, and disappointments.

Diarrhea, vomiting, blood, no appetite. Trying to gain weight, only to lose it again. And constant struggle. Constantly thinking about what else could be done to make things better.

Over those years I tried many things. Different diets, training, meditation, breathing techniques, working with my own mind, and sometimes even something I would call self-therapy.

Not because I saw them as magical solutions, but because when you live with a disease like this, you start looking for answers more broadly.

I’m not going to tell you in this book how to “beat” Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, IBS, or other gut-related illnesses. I’m also not going to tell you to stop seeing doctors or to come off medication.

This is not that kind of book.

I want to tell you about my 17 years of living with this disease and about the conclusions I’ve come to along the way. About what helped me, what didn’t work, where I got things wrong, and why over time I started paying much more attention to the mind, chronic stress, tension, relationships, and life situations.

I also want to talk about the gut–brain connection and how I look at it today. In my view, it’s still an underestimated topic, even though for many people it may be one of the most important parts of the whole picture.

But this book is not just about the mind.

Over the years, also thanks to my own interests and my background in sport, I learned a lot about training, nutrition, supplementation, meditation, and breathing techniques.

You could say that some of these interests didn’t come from passion, but from desperation and the need to finally feel at least a little better.

And that is also what this book is about — not as a collection of miracle methods, but as tools that can genuinely support a person living with a chronic disease.

This book is not a promise of a cure, even though in my case remission has lasted a very long time alongside the habits I’m going to show you.

This is my story, my conclusions, and my way of looking at it. Maybe you’ll find something in it that helps you understand yourself better and move through your own path a little more clearly.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. The Gut–Brain Axis
3. Stress with No Way Out
4. What Is Actually Happening in the Background
5. Emotional Suppression and Lack of Boundaries
6. Introduction to Practice
7. Movement and Training
8. The Simplest Starting Version (If You’re Starting from Zero)
9. Breathing
10. Diaphragmatic Breathing vs. “Belly Breathing”
11. Learning Diaphragmatic Breathing
12. How Does Breathing Affect the Gut?
13. Breathing and Crohn’s Disease — What We Actually Know
14. Combining Breathing and Training
15. Closing the Topic of Movement
16. Meditation
17. Zen and Vipassana — Two Paths, the Same Direction
18. My Practice
19. At the End of This Part
20. Mindfulness and the Gut
21. Breathing Techniques
22. Why Even Bother with This?
23. Wim Hof and Hormesis
24. “Hormesis Breathing”
25. The Other Extreme: Breathe Less
26. What This Means for Crohn’s
27. Example Practice Guide
28. A Quick Comparison of Breathing Approaches
29. How to Start Anything at All
30. Day 1 — Breath Awareness
31. Day 2 — Full Breathing
32. Day 3 — Long Exhale
33. Day 4 — Putting It All Together
34. Day 5 — Feeling the Body
35. Day 6 — Quick Reset (“Physiological Sigh”)
36. Day 7 — Main Technique (Breathing + Control)
37. Summary — “The Secret”
38. Other Techniques
39. Diet and Supplements
40. Food Fear
41. What the Evidence Says About Fear of Food
42. How to Approach It in Practice
43. Safety and Contraindications
44. What I Eat (My Example)
45. Food + Mind
46. Spices and Supplements
47. Recipe
48. Purpose, Belief
49. Learning to Let Go
50. Conclusion