Dark hours Former snowboard star Tanja Frieden: "I came into the clinic crying and on all fours"

On February 17, 2006, Tanja Frieden becomes Olympic snowboard cross champion and Swiss Sportswoman of the Year at the end of the same year. In the last few weeks, she has reached the other end of the emotional spectrum.

"For months, I was accompanied by back pain that at some point became so unbearable that I just wanted relief," Tanja Frieden wrote on Instagram on 4 December. It was the symptoms of a slipped disc, according to the diagnosis. In an interview withBlick, she describes how it felt like "toothache all over my body". Anyone who has ever suffered from a slipped disc with pain radiating down to the tips of their feet knows that Frieden is by no means exaggerating.

"But I knew - as I always have in my life - that pain is never just a physical problem. They are messages that want to tell us something," Frieden writes to her fans.

At the end of October, Frieden ended up in hospital as an emergency after several sleepless nights. Looking back on the last few weeks, the 48-year-old tells Blick: "That was the darkest time of my life." Still stationed at the Hirslanden Clinic in Zurich, she has a lot on her mind.

Frieden, who tore her Achilles tendon in a serious fall before the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and ended her career as a result, now works as an "Energy & Transformation Coach" at the Friedens Academy, which she founded. She employs around twelve people there and teaches her clients to listen carefully to their bodies. Or to put it in the words that jump out at you when you visit her website: "Swap the inner struggle and tension for lightness and serenity."

Alternative therapy method

Instead of treating the pain with strong medication, Frieden opted for several weeks of treatment in Germany. "I came into the clinic crying and on all fours," she describes her arrival in Blick. She is certain that there is "something deeper" in addition to the structural problem. "Just taking medication and hoping it will get better - that's not me."

The clinic in Germany relies on the healing power of biokinematics. In simple terms, biokinematics mobilizes the spine in the case of back problems, as the dysfunction of the muscles triggers the pain. In a sense, the body is reprogrammed to alleviate the pain and prevent future pain.

"In order to work with the body at the deepest level in this area, you can't take any morphine-based medication," says Frieden in Blick. In fact, after just one week, she had to take much less medication and was able to walk again.

"Even in the deepest valleys, we can grow"

During the first week of her stay at the Biokinematik clinic, she felt lonely and missed her family. But she used the time to look at the signals from her body. She identified three factors that had led to her back pain.

There was her fourteen-year career, which had taken its toll on her body. As a snowboard crosser, she had several serious falls. She has also done very little sport recently and eaten too much. "And then underlying issues came up," says Frieden, explaining that she always expects "top performance" from herself and finds it difficult to hand over responsibility. She worked on this with her coach. Frieden is convinced that someone who accompanies people should also work on themselves. "I was able to learn even more to take a more relaxed view of certain things and leave tasks to others. With every issue I was able to resolve, I made a big leap forward in my healing process."

Frieden still feels pain, especially when she has to sit for long periods of time. But there is no comparison to what she went through in the weeks before. And she can even take something positive out of the whole situation. "Because even in the deepest valleys, we can grow," says Frieden.

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