Woman With MS Does Bikram Yoga, Day 3

I'm going to keep a little journal of my first 10 days of Bikram yoga. I'm not doing them consecutively, necessarily. But I want to track how it goes.

This was the hardest day so far. I did much more work, in terms of doing more asanas (postures). But, I think I pushed it too far. About 20 minutes from the end of the class, I started feeling MS symptoms starting up from my elbows down to my hands, and from my knees to my feet. It's an unmistakeable tingling, numbing feeling that lets me know there is something going on. I get the same symptom when I eat food I'm sensitive to, too much Splenda, overeat sugar, etc. (I've actually quit the Splenda. I was getting this insane itching on the underside of my forearms a few times a week. I finally started paying attention to what I was doing right before it started. It turned out to be the Splenda in my tea! I had thought maybe I could get away with it, since the other artificial poisons are right out. So I'm back to stevia, honey, agave and the occasional sugar packets.)

At first I panicked. I used my mind to help manage the panic, and I stayed in the room and finished the class. I went back out in the hallway as soon as I could. I poured out my fears to Esak, the instructor. He was very kind, and told me he'd find someone else with MS doing Bikram that I could connect with. He's hooked into the WBN - the Worldwide Bikram Network. I just relaxed at the place for about an hour, and took a cool shower. After the hour, the MS symptoms had subsided. That is the normal thing with MS & heat. Once you cool back down, the symptoms start receding. But if I stay overheated for too long, I find that it takes me 24 hours to get past it. So catching it early is good.

What I did was overheat myself. I'm really going to have to watch that. I can tolerate the heat in the room. It's my body getting overheated from the effort that is the problems. I'd prefer not to have the MS kicking in, even though I know I will recover. I will need to take it a little slower than I want to. I tend to be, inwardly, rather competitive. I so want to be at the front of the class, if you know what I mean.

I also work out at Curves. Like the Bikram yoga, another experiment. With Curves, I can go in there for 35 minutes and I come out feeling fantastic, with more energy. There are fans all over the place. With the yoga, I have a bit of an energy drop, but then get a burst later on. The Curves workout doesn't begin to touch the yoga, in terms of aerobics and heart rate. I'm using it for strength and toning. We'll see how it works out. I am doing two months with them.

So my lesson learned from today - just because I want to be a super-yoga babe for Esak (to be clear, he doesn't know anything about that. It's completely in my head...), doesn't mean I can push myself like all the other little yogaheads. Patience, trrishie. And it may be that after 10 classes, I find that it isn't gonna work for me. (But I want it to!!!).

Something I notice whenever I have any kind of flare-up, however minor, is a huge sense of disappointment. Because, for however long I've gone without one, I've started thinking "maybe it won't come back!", in spite of myself. It always does.