Tag Archives: Yoga

Ruminations (Rheuminations?) on Chronic Pain, Yoga, and Raw Foodism

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The last week has been more than a little challenging physically, and it has me thinking about the ways in which chronic pain, being a yogi, and attempting a raw food diet interact.  As with most thing (oh, that middle path), there are challenges and benefits to yoga and raw foodism for individuals with chronic pain.  In this post, I consider my own experiences and link to some research and information about these connections.

Being an individual with a chronic pain condition makes yoga more of a challenge, in some ways, but also provides immense opportunities for benefit.  When I do yoga on  a regular basis, I find that my pain levels are lower.  I believe this is due to multiple factors.  First, having stretched and warmed my body regularly, it seems like I am not fighting with my muscles along with other things (i.e. my hamstrings tend to get ridiculously tight in an effort to manage the surrounding joint issues).  Second, when we exercise in ways that release endorphins, it causes a reduction in pain.  Finally, yoga makes me feel more peaceful, overall.  When I’m peaceful, I am better able to just notice pain instead of becoming totally enmeshed in it.  That makes it much easier to cope with.  Though I do see these benefits for my pain level, and research supports them, I do find that sometimes it is hard to maintain my practice in the face of chronic pain.  For me, morning and late day are the worst times for pain.  Coincidentally, they are also the times I am most likely to be able to attend a yoga class or practice at home.  This means that sometimes I don’t go, because I hurt and I simply cannot make it.  Pain also prevents me from going as deeply into poses as I want.  I have previously admitted that I do have a competitive nature, even though I understand that I should not in yoga, and feeling that I’m “doing it poorly” can be enough to suck away some of my joy in the practice if I’m not careful.  Finally, when I am already in pain, I can’t always tell where my edge is.  If I’m not hurting much, I know exactly when to stop moving into a pose because of the level of discomfort.  But, in a flare, as this week, everything hurts and every position hurts.  So, it’s difficult to tell when it’s “too much” pain and I have sometimes overextended and then paid for it later.

The raw food diet, for me, similarly presents opportunities and challenges in relation to chronic pain issues.  I started this eating plan with the hopes that it would make a large difference in my inflammatory response and thus would significantly improve my health.  That has not yet happened (though my digestion is certainly better), but I’m still hoping that it will.  So, I’m “planning” on that benefit.  A second positive of the raw food diet for pain is that some foods are believed to reduce pain/inflammation (like leafy greens, pineapple, some spices) while others are thought to encourage it (like artificial sweeteners, nitrates).  While these benefits are not to be dismissed, I have also found it a challenge to manage pain and raw foodism.  When I’m having a difficult time, I have found that it has an impact on my metabolism, blood sugar, energy level, etc.  And, I tend to not want to eat large quantities.  With cooked food, it is relatively easy to increase or maintain adequate intake even when eating a lower quantity.  With raw food, I have found this more difficult.  Consequently, I am not only experiencing the weakness of the medical issue, but also feeling weak simply because I haven’t taken in sufficient calories to support my body.  I continue to hope that, as I become more accustomed to eating raw, this will decrease.

So, what is the upshot for me?  I know that I will continue to do yoga, and I think that I will continue with a high raw diet.  But, while doing so, I think I need to pay better attention to the pain that my body is experiencing, and not overwhelm the body with the plans of the mind, nor expect that a pain free life is the ultimate goal.  I think that both yoga and a mindful raw diet might help me do this, if I practice.  As B.K.S. Iyengar has said: Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.

For more reading about these issues, see:

http://www.aolhealth.com/condition-center/chronic-pain/foods-inflammation

http://pain.about.com/od/exercisehealthylifestyl/a/pain_and_diet.htm

http://nutrition.about.com/od/dietsformedicaldisorders/a/antiinflamfood.htm

http://www.yogasite.com/chronicpain.htm

http://www.yogajournal.com/for_teachers/2551

http://www.yogajournal.com/for_teachers/2561

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070514/NEWS/705140355/1012 Continue reading →

It’s Viral… and I Don’t Mean Media

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Last Wednesday evening, I went to bed with a stomach ache.  After tossing and turning for several hours, the fun got started around 2 a.m.  From that point on, I proceeded to be violently ill throughout all of Thursday.  I couldn’t keep any food down, very little liquid, and my head pounded furiously.  It was ugly.  There was even some toddler like crying (and that was just the DH trying to deal with me…).  Friday, I felt somewhat better, but still wasn’t really up to eating and I did a lot of napping throughout the day.  Saturday and today, I’ve added some crackers/toast to the diet and a little fruit.  I finally got up the energy today to manage about 1/2 hour of yoga without getting very ill.   Tomorrow should be better yet, but all of this has me thinking about health and yoga and raw foodism.

According to staunch raw food (natural hygeine) proponents, there is 1 illness and 1 cure.  The illness is toxicity caused by the food and other environmental toxins we encounter in our standard American lives.  They argue that all diseases, of whatever name or characteristic, are simply manifestations of this toxicity, which can be greatly reduced and virtually eliminated by a strict natural hygeine lifestyle, including a raw food diet.  So, if an individual develops an illness while eating raw, the recommended solution is to either water or juice fast, but certainly to continue the raw diet.

While I don’t actually buy into the 1 illness and 1 cure idea, I understand why it might be beneficial to water/juice fast through an illness, but this particular virus made it clear to me that it was not going to work out sometimes.  There are times when the body refuses to digest particular types of food, and many raw items are challenging on the digestion – unless one owns a juicer and utilizes that path.  This suggests that there may be points where raw food is not the best option in recovery.

Drawing from understandings in the path of yoga, the body must be taken care of for the mind to function well.  This means resting when you need to rest, and not pushing the body to exhaustion.  When ill, I assume this to mean that one should wait until the body returns to a state of positive energy before undertaking any vigorous asanas, and that return to practice should be gradual and measured.

The catch here is that when one doesn’t practice, sometimes the muscles and joints become stiff or clinched, making a return to practice more difficult and frustrating and increasing feelings of exhaustion.  Not practicing while I was trying to feel better makes sense from one perspective, but from another, it only makes things worse.

What is the “take away” message from all of this?  I think it may be that even our most “healthy” habits need to be continually reassessed in the face of the realities of the body and mind.  We need to combine concern with long term physical and mental health with attention to the short term.  Sometimes those two points of focus will require different actions, and choices have to be made about what is best.

Be in the body; be in the moment.  What does it require?

A Glimpse of the Possible…

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Today started in a typical Wednesday way with a yoga class.  I was a little apprehensive about it, because the usual instructor is on maternity leave and a yogi that I had been in classes with was taking over.  I knew he was very strong and flexible from observing him in class (yep, when I’m supposed to be paying attention only to me), so I wasn’t sure that I would be able to catch up.  I’ve also been a little off lately physically, with a buggered up knee/foot and some extra fatigue.  But, I pushed aside my excuses (barely) and headed for class.

I’m not going to tell you that it was my best class ever; it wasn’t.  I was pretty stiff and not very agile and finding it not always easy to keep up with the rapid pace and still have any sense of form at all.  And yet, right in the middle of class, upside down with my hands on the floor and my feet on the wall (picture a wobbly upside down L), I found myself grinning like some sort of loon, happy as could be about what my body could do – even in the face of what it couldn’t.  I wasn’t completing any pose perfectly, and some were far from the goal, but I was there and breathing and trying and it felt good.

Wouldn’t it be great to always be in that place – to just live in the body and enjoy what it can do and be instead of critiquing what it is not?  It’s a possible that seems truly wonderful to me.  And, having read a recent article that indicated that exercise probably isn’t good for weight loss (and may even cause some gain), perhaps this is part of the true value of finding some sort of physical activity that speaks to you.  When we engage in a physical effort that we enjoy – much like children skipping or playing hopscotch – we appreciate our bodies for what they are and can do, instead of depreciating them for what they are not and can’t.  In a culture where the female (and to larger and larger degrees, the male) body is primarily viewed from an external stance as an object of viewing pleasure, anything that pulls us out of that framework and pushes us to love our bodies, each unique and wonderful and valuable and accomplished, has to be a good thing.

My body-happy moment is yoga.  What is yours?