Why Yoga?

I’ve practiced yoga on and off for years. When I’m on, I feel my best. Mentally. Physically. Flexibly. My hips cause me a lot of grief, but the pain melts away when I’m on my yoga game.

There are lots of obvious health benefits to yoga, but there are two glorious reasons in particular why yoga is key.

First, yoga connects you to your body. Lyme patients sometimes try to disconnect from their bodies and all the pain that comes along with them, but this isn’t always a good thing. In my own experience, living in my head and avoiding my body with painkillers has caused damage that I could have avoided, How? Instead of seeing a relapse coming, I don’t know it’s there until it’s too late.

Yoga is this awesome experience where you hold poses that require some physical effort and a lot of mental effort. But effort to let go and observe your body. Effort to relax into yourself. I find that when I do yoga on the reg, my judgment of where I’m at on the spectrum of remission and relapse is clearer, and even if I do experience pain, it’s easier to carry.

I recently went to a yoga retreat in Portugal. Ah, yes, thinking about it now brings fond memories. I spent 4 hours a day there practicing yoga and meditation. I had never been so well postured, agile, zen! This was my first trip away in 6 years. I had developed a phobia of traveling after getting sick. As you may know, being sick can create a sort of codependency of your medicine cabinet, not to mention a fear of things getting worse instead of better.

Well, I am happy to say that my first trip away from home since I had gotten since was a success. The daily yoga, which made me focus on body posture and alignment, relax tension in my head, and practice gratitude-filled awareness for the moment really set a great foundation for the rest of my vacation. For another two months, I backpacked through Europe like a dirty, filthy hobo, the way I like to travel. I drank Guinness every day for two weeks in Ireland, hiked, and strayed from my food restrictions. I honestly think that the day days of my life that revolved around yoga strengthened my constitution enough to allow for the trip that followed without any relapsed or colds. The pure excitement and adrenaline surely helped, too.

Have you tried yoga?

Now that I am home, it’s been hard to keep up with yoga classes in my city. I was eager to copy the experience I had at the retreat but found that yoga classes in the city were more intensive and fat-burning-based than I like them.

My At-Home Yoga Solution

I found this online yoga platform while searching for something I can do from home. It’s $18/month (compared to the $150/month I paid to take classes in the city) and gives me unlimited access to 1600+ yoga videos. Downloads are free, too, so I don’t need wifi to watch and follow along 🙂

And the mobile app is just another layer of ease of access that makes Yoga Download the best yoga platform I’ve found.

PRICE UPDATE: Use CODE: YDL-50ME and get 50% OFF with this affiliate link. At $9/month this price is a steal! I honestly can’t believe the money I spent on city-priced exercise classes pre-covid.

Newbies, this is a really good intro to yoga. Lymies, this is a really good intro to increasing your immunity and long-lost strength.

Yoga Download is made for you if:

• You want to explore a more gentle style of yoga
• You are recovering from an illness
• You would love to have a down to earth yoga instructor that doesn’t take herself too seriously
• You are ready to take this next step toward your health and happiness

Alternatives

Yoga is my way of staying in shape, mentally and physically, and for me, it’s a way that accommodates my handicaps. The most important thing I hope readers take away, however, is to move and chill out. Don’t be afraid of the sensations in your body and pay attention to them – they could be telling you something. Stretch, calm your mind and test your muscles – gently. Yoga incorporates ALL of this, and that’s why it’s the ideal workout for people living with Lyme Disease. If you have the discipline to, by all means, invent your own program! Do some lunges in the kitchen, stretch in the shower, meditate in bed, do what you’ve gotta do. If you want to get all of that in one nice session, yoga!