Yoga and my Chronic Illness

If you had told me as a teen that I would be reliant on the slow, steady quietness of yoga when I was in my early 40s, I wouldn’t have believed it.  Back then, I was fully into heart-pumping, fat-burning forms of exercise such as aerobics and running, so others such as Pilates and yoga just didn’t get a look-in.  Even a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis at age 15 didn’t change me – I used to exercise for one reason and one reason only – to tone up and look better. I was heavily into magazines and seeing all the beautiful models looking back at me from the pages just emphasised to me how important it was for women to look a certain way.  I’m pleased to say that I don’t feel the pressure as much anymore, but I know that it is still there and I do worry about my children and the expectations that they place upon themselves, as I remember it well!

Read More: ‘My Tummy Looks Fat’ – Body Image, my Kids and my Chronic Illness

What Changed?

So, when did I get into ‘slower’ exercises? Well, I initially tried Pilates in my mid-twenties as I heard that it could be good for tummy-toning (there’s that aesthetic reason again), but having children is what really set me on to the path to calmer exercise.  Initially, it was pregnancy yoga, which helped to keep me flexible and, I feel, bond with my baby and then it was post-pregnancy Pilates to deal with my mummy-tummy. A weekly yoga class when my kids were little helped me to have some ‘me-time’ and it was there that I first learned about how meditation and breathing can help you not only get the most from the yoga postures but also give your brain a rest.

The Uh-Oh Moment

It was when my youngest was 2 years old and I wanted to get back into heart-pumping, fat-shredding running that I realised that my chronic illness was starting to get in the way of how I wanted to exercise. I wanted to feel strong and full of energy, able to break a sweat but, suddenly, my legs stopped working.  Prior to that, my MS was the relapsing-remitting form, only affecting my ability to exercise when I was in the midst of a relapse.  This was new – and scary. I went out for my first run since before my daughter was born and my legs were like lead and tripping me up… it was like ‘tripping through treacle’ (hence my blog name!). This happened more and more, with every type of exercise – aerobics, biking, Zumba, walking – and, to cut a long story short, it was the start of my Secondary Progressive MS.

Read More: Secondary Progressive MS – Confirmed

Yoga Saved Me

It’s funny; you don’t realise how important something is to you until you can’t do it anymore.  Yes, when I was younger I predominately used exercise as a way to help stay trim but, looking back in hindsight, it was also a mood-booster that helped me to get over a bad break-up (I remember using a ‘TaeBo’ exercise video to help me ‘punch’ my anger out) and a ‘cardioblast’ class to work out stress when I was at Uni with 9-5 lectures.  Suddenly, I had work, two small children and worsening health and I had little idea on how to manage it when my body couldn’t move like it used to.  Enter yoga; I remembered how good I felt after a class, how the poses were sometimes challenging but made me feel strong and flexible. I knew that it was an exercise that I could still do – not perfectly, but from home and after the kids were in bed or before work in the morning.

Now, I do some yoga most days, alongside ‘The MS Gym‘ to try and keep my body as healthy as it can be and to try and ‘reprogramme’ my MS body into moving better.  It is difficult because my body moves differently now to how it did when I first started doing yoga regularly – my illness is progressing and I often find that I can’t do today what I did last year. However, I find that yoga is easy to adapt to my changing body and, on top of that it provides so many other positives:

Yoga challenges me

It can be easy to get disheartened when I find that my legs or arms won’t hold me in a certain pose anymore but with a little bit of tweaking and adapting, I can often manage a variation of a pose so that it works. Things became a lot easier with a chair to hold on to! However, I continue to challenge myself; I will hold a downward dog or plank for as long as my legs and arms will let me, have a rest as needed (try for no more than 10 seconds) and then get right back up.  I might not have the balance to achieve tree pose anymore, but I can try to shift my weight to one leg. It leaves me feeling proud that I tried to have a go and I could feel my body being challenged.

Yoga calms me

One of my favourite yoga poses is extended child’s pose:

I find that it instantly calms me, stretches out my back and shoulders and lets me concentrate on breathing deeply.  I think because I do it so often, it just leads me straight to a real state of relaxation, so if things are getting to me (as they often do) I try and do this pose.

I know that you can get more ‘energetic’ yoga types (such as Kundalini yoga, with fast-moving and invigorating postures and breath sequences) but I prefer the gentle ‘Hatha’ yoga, with slow-moving postures. Without fail, I feel calmer after a practice.

Yoga helps my spasticity

Spasticity is something that affects me daily – all down my legs and into my feet especially.  I find that stretching is the only thing that tends to help. This means that even if I don’t do a full yoga practice, just using one of the postures helps to relieve pain and tightness – I will often do this in bed before I get up. Using the breathing techniques that yoga encourages helps me to ‘relax’ into the stretch and therefore improves my spasticity even more. As a result, I notice that my legs lift easier right after a session and I feel like my balance improves.

Yoga adds some routine to my day

As anybody with a chronic illness knows, routine can sometimes go out the window when you are sick. Now that my children are a bit older and can get themselves ready in the morning, I have more time for me. Yes, that sometimes means that I go back to bed when they are settled with their school work but, most days, I find that using that time to practice yoga really sets me up for the day. It means that I start the day feeling calm with reduced spasticity. Some days, I just do the easiest, most restorative poses and online classes that I can find (like the one below) and, for someone who has so much uncertainty in her everyday life – about how my body is going to be feeling especially – knowing that there is a practice that I can do that will help me no matter how I am feeling, is something to appreciate.

Yoga helps my meditation practice

Regular readers will know that I try and meditate several times a week and I find that it really helps my mental health. It was difficult to get into at first but doing a little bit every day for a month really helped me to embrace it.  On those days that I am finding it difficult to ‘let go’ in my meditation practice, though, I have found yoga to be so helpful; it allows me to ‘switch off’, so, even if I am not doing formal mediation, I have the opportunity to concentrate on my breath through yoga. Yoga includes breath practices that, although I initially sometimes felt a bit funny about doing them, really helps to clear your head. I do these on their own sometimes, or I will do them as part of a full yoga practice.

Yoga is adaptable

Wheelchair yoga, yoga for chronic illness… whatever my body is feeling that day, you can guarantee that I will be able to find a practice that I can do on YouTube.  I would love it if there were a yoga class near me especially for people with mobility difficulties; but, as long as I don’t push myself too much into impossible (for me) positions, I feel safe doing it at home.

Read More: Yoga for Chronic Fatigue and Chronic Pain, by Kayla Kurin

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Namesté!