Welcome! Meet—
Simon Spire
MA, MSW, LCSWA
Licensed Psychotherapist
Contemplative Teacher
Interdisciplinary Researcher and Writer
Founder of Liberating the Natural Breath
Meet—
Amira Glaser
LAc, MSTOM, M.AmSAT
AmSAT-Certified Alexander Technique Teacher
Certified Teacher of Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing Licensed Acupuncturist and Diplomat of Oriental Medicine
Co-Founder of Liberating the Natural Breath
Together, we’re here to help you reclaim your life and your embodied ease and comfort by getting through Air Hunger and restoring your normal, healthy, Natural Breathing
Simon struggled with severe Air Hunger for four years…
Around the age of 19 (many years ago now!), I started having the experience of not being able to get a full breath.
Breathing began to feel like a struggle—it simply felt like I couldn’t get enough air. The experience seemed to worsen and worsen with time.
I developed a lot of tension in my upper body. I was constantly reaching to get more air…with my upper chest, neck, shoulders, jaw…often chasing after a kind of forced yawn or effortful sigh in an attempt to take in more air. But I rarely ever felt like I could get a satisfying breath.
I tried my best to conceal my struggles, so my condition wasn’t very noticeable to people who knew me. I was still busy going about my life, but this sense of not being able to get a full breath was a constant companion—a troubling and often torturous feeling to live with, because it felt like I was always starved for air.
Have you tried everything, but nothing seems to help? I did, too.
I tried every possible solution I could find: regular doctors, an ENT specialist, physical therapists and breathing specialists and all kinds of breathing exercises and physical activities, alternative doctors, acupuncture—you name it, I tried it. I even had surgery on my sinuses, because I was told that could help (frustratingly, it didn’t).
No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t find any relief, and the problem remained firmly in place. I became quite concerned that I might be stuck in this state for the rest of my life.
*
Eventually, after almost four years, I got one piece of the puzzle from a physical therapist that made a significant difference once I managed to implement it. But I still experienced persistent tension and difficulty for years afterward, which continued until I found the Alexander Technique. And that’s when it all finally made sense.
Now, remember the other person you met at the top of this page—Amira? Well, we’re actually married. She’s an incredibly skilled and experienced Alexander Technique teacher, and she’s been with me on my natural breathing journey since 2008. She’s also certified in a specialty area of the Alexander Technique called Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing, which is a powerful body of work that helped me in crucial ways during my process.
Once I started lessons with Amira, I began to understand that my normal, healthy breathing had gotten disrupted in numerous ways over the years leading up to my experience with air hunger. The sources of this disruption, in my case, were largely physical, but there was also a stress-based or psychological component.
With the help of the principles and tools of the Alexander Technique, I learned to unwind all theat additional interference and effort I had introduced into my breathing. I came to see that my body and breathing had never been “the problem;” all along, the only problem was the ways in which I had inadvertently prevented my body from doing what it naturally knows how to do—breathe with ease.
At last! I had found my way home to comfort and ease in my body and breathing.
Were you afraid you were the only person who had ever experienced this constant hunger for air? Me too!
In fact, when I wrote an essay about this whole experience in 2011 for a book about the Alexander Technique, at the suggestion of an Alexander Technique teacher, titled Discovering the Liberated Breath, and posted it on my blog, I was astounded by the number of people who started contacting me. I was a professional musician at the time, so this was just a random post on a musician’s blog, but I soon discovered that there were countless others out there experiencing what I once had!
For a few years, I kept responding to all the email inquiries about my breathing essay by directing people to in-person practitioners I thought might be able to help them. But it eventually became clear that, in reality, there weren’t actually many good solutions out there. I realized I had gotten lucky by stumbling upon the combination of a deep study of the Alexander Technique, Amira’s specialized knowledge, and the critical support of both in my own patient, trial-and-error process of discovery as I navigated my way through this uncharted territory.
The truth is that Air Hunger is a unique breathing problem, one that’s simply not widely recognized or understood. Air Hunger can seem so stubborn—and the way through it is often so counter-intuitive—that without a practitioner having made the journey themselves or studied it in detail, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to guide an individual out of the bottomless whirlpool of struggling for air.
Amira and I eventually realized that the only way we would have something reliable to refer people to was if we began offering the same tools and principles we had developed for my struggles to others. And Liberating the Natural Breath (LNB) was born.
Drawing on the sophisticated approach of the Alexander Technique, Amira’s more than two decades as a somatic practitioner, my more than ten years working with people in psychological settings, and our combined long experience with studying both disrupted breathing and healthy breathing, we taught our first online Air Hunger and Natural Breathing program in 2018.
In the years since, the LNB community grew, the tools expanded, the structure of the course developed—and here we are in 2025, launching what we are thrilled to say is the most refined, potent, and comprehensive version of LNB yet, now brought to its full potential through the Mighty Networks platform.
We are excited to share with you what we truly believe is the most effective means of getting through air hunger and restoring natural breathing available.
Over the years, what’s kept us going with this labor of love has been the community members who have joined LNB. The insight, inspiration, and courage they’ve brought to their journeys and to the community has encouraged us to continue developing this offering and bringing it to more of the people who desperately need it. We are forever grateful for these stellar community members—and we hope you, too, will come join us for this journey!
Ready to reclaim the inherent ease and comfort of your body and breathing?
Learn more about our 10-week course and community—including live weekly Zoom group coaching calls—and join today!
Or get started with our Breathing Reset and Alignment sequence, one of our introductory breathing practices. Access the streaming video and PDF download now.
More About Simon
Simon Spire is a licensed psychotherapist, contemplative teacher, interdisciplinary researcher and writer, and founder of Liberating the Natural Breath. He has been on an intentional journey with his breathing since 2000 and an avid student of natural breathing and the Alexander Technique since 2008. Through the bodies of work he has founded and developed—Emergent Inquiry, the Emergent Quest, Soulcentric Psychotherapy, and Liberating the Natural Breath—he accompanies individuals and groups in their processes of healing, unfolding, and apprenticing to their authentic journey. His work is informed by 20 years of contemplative inquiry; a corresponding commitment to academic and intellectual inquiry; 10 years of counseling and facilitation experience with individuals and groups; several years serving in leadership positions for organizations active in economic and societal innovation, international social entrepreneurship, and mental health; and his long experience with artistry and the creative process. Raised in New Zealand, his career as a songwriter and recording artist led him to the shores of Los Angeles and New York before transitioning to his current life in North Carolina. Simon holds degrees from the University of Auckland, Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has completed in-depth studies in Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing-Oriented Therapy, eco-depth psychology, and with Thomas Hübl and his Academy of Inner Science. His music and writing have been featured on major radio and TV networks in New Zealand and the US, in major songwriting competitions, and in outlets such as MTV, AOL, Voice of America, the Ecozoic Journal, and Kosmos Journal. He currently lives near Chapel Hill, NC, where he appreciates the rivers, misses the ocean, and enjoys writing about himself in the third person. (Click here for Simon’s website.)
More About Amira
Amira Glaser is an AmSAT-certified Alexander Technique teacher who holds additional certification in Jessica Wolf's Art of Breathing and has taught the technique within university programs in New York and North Carolina. She is also a North Carolina-Licensed Acupuncturist and a Diplomat of Oriental Medicine (Acupuncture & Herbology) with the NCCAOM.
Amira is an holistic health practitioner whose practice serves those on a journey of healing and self-discovery. She creates her practice from a deep respect and love for human nature and our innate ease and capacity for healing. In her own journey with artistic expression, back & neck pain, auto-immune dis-ease, and a love for nature and organic self-expression, Amira found her way to becoming first a teacher of the Alexander Technique, then an Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine practitioner. She bridges these Eastern & Western understandings of health, balance, and the power of non-doing, and draws on their transformative teachings for each individual’s unique needs. (Click here for Amira’s website.)
What is the Alexander Technique?
Amira teaching a 1:1 Alexander lesson
The Alexander Technique (AT) is a powerful method of restoring the natural ease, efficiency, and effectiveness of the body’s state and movement that was developed by F. M. Alexander (1869–1955). Rather than being a “therapy” in which a practitioner tries on some level to treat or fix the client, the AT instead empowers the student to see and sense the ways they interfere in their body’s naturally easeful and efficient state. By recognizing the ways they are unnecessarily creating tension and interference, the student can then shift their habits and support their system’s return to natural alignment.
In many ways, it’s a unique method that gets to the root of the cause, which is why it has drawn the acclaim of some notable philosophers and scientists over the decades. For example, have a read of this excerpt from Nikolaas Tinbergen’s Nobel lecture in 1973 after he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Tinbergen described the development of the Alexander Technique this way: “…one of the true epics of medical research and practice…based on exceptionally sophisticated observation…the importance of the treatment has been stressed by many prominent people, for instance John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, and—perhaps more convincing to us—by scientists of renown, such as Coghill, Raymond Dart, and the great neurophysiologist Sherrington.”
Amira teaching Simon in an Alexander lesson (back in the early days!)
The Alexander Technique has long been recognized especially for its sophisticated understanding of breathing (Alexander himself was dubbed “the breathing man” in his day), and a specific body of natural breathing work has been developed that draws largely on the Alexander Technique—Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing. Amira began her journey with the Alexander Technique in 1995 and has been teaching professionally since 2005; she is also certified in Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing. Simon has studied and practiced the Alexander Technique as a student for over 15 years.
LNB is not an Alexander Technique course; rather, it is a natural breathing program specifically for those with Air Hunger and Chronic Breathing Tension. However, LNB is founded upon many of the principles, insights, and practices that have been developed within the AT over the past century. This is how LNB is able to support you on your path of restoring your natural breathing.
For more on the AT, you can watch Simon’s introduction of it in the first half of Video #3 on the breathing resources page.)
Tinbergen quote citation: Tinbergen, N. (1973). Ethology and stress diseases. In J. Lindsten (Ed.), Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971–1980 (pp. 113–130). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.
“I would like to deeply thank Simon and Amira for creating the LNB program. This website has been the starting point of my healing journey.
After a long journey of work on myself and my anxiety, I can now say that I witnessed significant improvements. This would not have happened if I did not find LNB.”
— Adrien H., PhD Student in Astronomy, Ontario, Canada
Ready to reclaim the inherent ease and comfort of your body and breathing?
Learn more about our 10-week course and community—including live weekly Zoom group coaching calls—and join today!
Or get started with our Breathing Reset and Alignment sequence, one of our introductory breathing practices. Access the streaming video and PDF download now.