Yoga has helped me recondition my nervous system, and, over the course of a year, rebuild my physical stamina and fitness. The most gentle form worked without moving my body.
"Have you tried baking soda?" Why, yes, I have. Your electrician might unknowingly have been up to something.
My neuroathletics coach suggested I try baking soda. It is used by performance athletes to alleviate problems with lactic acid formation after strong training. I asked my doctor and he backed this up in the ME context. Basically, baking soda in water is an alkaline solution, meaning it helps against acidosis, which is typical with chronic inflammation. It is also known that ME patients have higher lactic acid concentration than healthy people and also for some reason too low levels of CO2 in the blood. So baking soda might help with this.
My coach recommended 3 tsp a day, one with each meal. It's important to start slowly, because it can make you very bloaty. I'm at 2tsp/day right now. Can I say if it's helping me? It's hard to say, because I'm doing so many things at the same time, like so many of us. But I can say that in the past weeks, I haven't had hardly any muscle pain even though I've been increasing my exercise, and I've felt more energetic.
So... baking soda... crazy, huh?
Thanks for including the neuroathletics link. I hope it'll be as helpful for other people as it was for me! (With those exercises, I am positive they made the difference). I'll post on yoga a bit later, just wanted to get my baking soda experience out there :lol:
I’m a yoga and dance teacher who has been severe for four years with Long Covid, ME, MCAS and FND. I just started to be able to stand and walk a little again more recently and have been thinking about yoga a lot. I have a committed meditation and breathwork practice and I’m ready to add more. I’ve also always had a strong interest in yoga therapy and the book you mentioned looks amazing! Thank you so much for sharing, def going to check it out!
I'm glad to hear (and sorry for the late response!!). Sorry to hear you're dealing with all of this, too... And congrats re being able to stand and walk a little more - that is huge! Did you end up getting the book? Hope you found something useful from it, and wishing you all the best!
I loved your approach in this post, Nicole! It comes from having real knowledge and experience in yoga instruction, which is a great complement to my yoga post. Aligning the types of yoga with the energy percentage folks have is a great idea. And thanks for including some of my words; I missed the notification that you had mentioned me here, so it was a fun surprise to be catching up on my TBR posts and stumble upon the mention 🤭.
Haha surprise! They were great words, thanks for writing them :) it was also a good reminder that how I think about things now is not how I thought about them back then. Loved to read about your evolution, too :)
Great post, covering all angles. 6 years in, 100’s of blogs, posts and even a few books in first draft processing all of this on top of all the research I’ve done….I feel that looking to cure, fix, manage and control our way out of anything are some of the biggest barriers to recovery that we face. And that includes looking at yoga as a cure. Or as anything other than a tool to help us heal, reconnect with ourselves and as practice to start tuning into and listening to our bodies. I started with only one pose - my legs up against a wall as I lie down connecting to my breath. It built to one class a week with the goal of training to become a yoga teacher myself (I needed a big goal to help drag me there!). Belly breathing on my bed was my mainstay back in those early years (still is tbh), meditation too which of course, is all yoga. Fast forward a few years and my whole life and day to day practice is one yogic experience. The true essence of it blended in to my ordinary day, day in day out. I’m similar with chanting - funny isn’t it using our voice in that way? I sporadically chant in the car when driving as a practice I can do behind the wheel. But I don’t do it anywhere near daily. It’s the healing vibrations I do it for.
Thanks for sharing! Very similar to my path… starting extremely low and then very slowly increasing. Excited for you to become a yoga teacher too! What are your plans for that?
And re “looking to cure, fix, manage and control our way out of anything are some of the biggest barriers to recovery that we face” - so, so true. Ah, if only it were easy to _not_ do that :)
Oh I did it! Did my training online over lock down. The yoga alliance allowed it to be done that way to help others and I’m so glad I did. I had a massive relapse alongside it and could never have done it in person for those days/hours. (This was over a 2 month period). I don’t teach a great deal but I found it to be one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.
Highly recommend! Was just saying to my boyf last night that even if you don’t necessarily go on to teach much, it’s the journey it takes you on and the transformation you experience on the back of it that is life changing (and deeply healing) 💜
Wow, this post is filled with valuable information and resources! <3
I believe yoga has been one of the key practices in my recovery so far. It's quite remarkable to have a practice that trains the body and helps you feel safe and calm at the same time, while being accessible to so many different fitness levels.
I started doing single supported asanas while I was bedbound and almost at 0% (legs up the wall and supported butterfly). I would get help in positioning cushions and sometimes even moving in and out of the asanas. But I believe this gave my body the signal that movement was safe. After some months, I was able to include some more supine poses, then seated poses. After a few months, I was moving through 15 different asanas during the day, always in small doses. So by the time I could leave the bed, I felt very flexible and supple.
It was exciting once I could sit down on the floor and come up without a crash. That's when I started doing guided restorative yoga, first just 5-10 minutes at a time, then moving up from there. I love this teacher who offers fatigue friendly yoga, having LC herself (in German): https://www.youtube.com/@Bloom_Holistic_Yoga
I started noticing that the day after doing yoga, I had more energy. So I started doing it daily. After a short while, I could do Suzy Bolt's yoga for deep sleep class and signed up for her program. I was super proud when I took my first Level 2 class a few days ago.
Regarding Nidra, my doctor told me to do this as part of my recovery protocol. So I started doing it daily and man, did I notice a difference, especially on all the dysautonomia symptoms. Here is a link to the German Nidra practices I did in the beginning; most of the tracks are without background music, which could be important for some people: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Y1VItQKzHgpP2pcJMTtXV
By the way, one of the things I'm learning in the Rest Repair Recover program is to adapt movement as is fit to my body in that specific moment. That has brought my practice to a new level, where I don't just do what the teacher says (I'm a good girl like that), but I listen to my body closely and make smart decisions for myself. An important learning point with this illness... ;-)
"Have you tried baking soda?" Why, yes, I have. Your electrician might unknowingly have been up to something.
My neuroathletics coach suggested I try baking soda. It is used by performance athletes to alleviate problems with lactic acid formation after strong training. I asked my doctor and he backed this up in the ME context. Basically, baking soda in water is an alkaline solution, meaning it helps against acidosis, which is typical with chronic inflammation. It is also known that ME patients have higher lactic acid concentration than healthy people and also for some reason too low levels of CO2 in the blood. So baking soda might help with this.
My coach recommended 3 tsp a day, one with each meal. It's important to start slowly, because it can make you very bloaty. I'm at 2tsp/day right now. Can I say if it's helping me? It's hard to say, because I'm doing so many things at the same time, like so many of us. But I can say that in the past weeks, I haven't had hardly any muscle pain even though I've been increasing my exercise, and I've felt more energetic.
So... baking soda... crazy, huh?
Thanks for including the neuroathletics link. I hope it'll be as helpful for other people as it was for me! (With those exercises, I am positive they made the difference). I'll post on yoga a bit later, just wanted to get my baking soda experience out there :lol:
Ha!!! Who knew!!! Thx for sharing. I was wondering what the context was there, TIL :)
I’m a yoga and dance teacher who has been severe for four years with Long Covid, ME, MCAS and FND. I just started to be able to stand and walk a little again more recently and have been thinking about yoga a lot. I have a committed meditation and breathwork practice and I’m ready to add more. I’ve also always had a strong interest in yoga therapy and the book you mentioned looks amazing! Thank you so much for sharing, def going to check it out!
I'm glad to hear (and sorry for the late response!!). Sorry to hear you're dealing with all of this, too... And congrats re being able to stand and walk a little more - that is huge! Did you end up getting the book? Hope you found something useful from it, and wishing you all the best!
I loved your approach in this post, Nicole! It comes from having real knowledge and experience in yoga instruction, which is a great complement to my yoga post. Aligning the types of yoga with the energy percentage folks have is a great idea. And thanks for including some of my words; I missed the notification that you had mentioned me here, so it was a fun surprise to be catching up on my TBR posts and stumble upon the mention 🤭.
Haha surprise! They were great words, thanks for writing them :) it was also a good reminder that how I think about things now is not how I thought about them back then. Loved to read about your evolution, too :)
So very true ☺️
Great post, covering all angles. 6 years in, 100’s of blogs, posts and even a few books in first draft processing all of this on top of all the research I’ve done….I feel that looking to cure, fix, manage and control our way out of anything are some of the biggest barriers to recovery that we face. And that includes looking at yoga as a cure. Or as anything other than a tool to help us heal, reconnect with ourselves and as practice to start tuning into and listening to our bodies. I started with only one pose - my legs up against a wall as I lie down connecting to my breath. It built to one class a week with the goal of training to become a yoga teacher myself (I needed a big goal to help drag me there!). Belly breathing on my bed was my mainstay back in those early years (still is tbh), meditation too which of course, is all yoga. Fast forward a few years and my whole life and day to day practice is one yogic experience. The true essence of it blended in to my ordinary day, day in day out. I’m similar with chanting - funny isn’t it using our voice in that way? I sporadically chant in the car when driving as a practice I can do behind the wheel. But I don’t do it anywhere near daily. It’s the healing vibrations I do it for.
Thanks for sharing! Very similar to my path… starting extremely low and then very slowly increasing. Excited for you to become a yoga teacher too! What are your plans for that?
And re “looking to cure, fix, manage and control our way out of anything are some of the biggest barriers to recovery that we face” - so, so true. Ah, if only it were easy to _not_ do that :)
Oh I did it! Did my training online over lock down. The yoga alliance allowed it to be done that way to help others and I’m so glad I did. I had a massive relapse alongside it and could never have done it in person for those days/hours. (This was over a 2 month period). I don’t teach a great deal but I found it to be one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.
Ah gotcha!! Yes same here. Hugely helpful, even if I don’t teach a lot.
You two are making a good case for doing teacher training :D
Highly recommend! Was just saying to my boyf last night that even if you don’t necessarily go on to teach much, it’s the journey it takes you on and the transformation you experience on the back of it that is life changing (and deeply healing) 💜
Wow, this post is filled with valuable information and resources! <3
I believe yoga has been one of the key practices in my recovery so far. It's quite remarkable to have a practice that trains the body and helps you feel safe and calm at the same time, while being accessible to so many different fitness levels.
I started doing single supported asanas while I was bedbound and almost at 0% (legs up the wall and supported butterfly). I would get help in positioning cushions and sometimes even moving in and out of the asanas. But I believe this gave my body the signal that movement was safe. After some months, I was able to include some more supine poses, then seated poses. After a few months, I was moving through 15 different asanas during the day, always in small doses. So by the time I could leave the bed, I felt very flexible and supple.
It was exciting once I could sit down on the floor and come up without a crash. That's when I started doing guided restorative yoga, first just 5-10 minutes at a time, then moving up from there. I love this teacher who offers fatigue friendly yoga, having LC herself (in German): https://www.youtube.com/@Bloom_Holistic_Yoga
I started noticing that the day after doing yoga, I had more energy. So I started doing it daily. After a short while, I could do Suzy Bolt's yoga for deep sleep class and signed up for her program. I was super proud when I took my first Level 2 class a few days ago.
Regarding Nidra, my doctor told me to do this as part of my recovery protocol. So I started doing it daily and man, did I notice a difference, especially on all the dysautonomia symptoms. Here is a link to the German Nidra practices I did in the beginning; most of the tracks are without background music, which could be important for some people: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Y1VItQKzHgpP2pcJMTtXV
By the way, one of the things I'm learning in the Rest Repair Recover program is to adapt movement as is fit to my body in that specific moment. That has brought my practice to a new level, where I don't just do what the teacher says (I'm a good girl like that), but I listen to my body closely and make smart decisions for myself. An important learning point with this illness... ;-)