Empowering Yoga

Good morning! It's a peaceful 5am on a Saturday morning here. I found a new muscle yesterday and it's complaining rather loudly about being found so I decided to get up and get moving around a bit.  I realize I have not been in here to update in too long. Somehow my life has gotten rather busy. We are getting ready for some renovations to start next week so I have some rooms in my house to clear out. Furniture and fixtures for sale if anyone is interested.

 So yesterday I got my steps goal met before I even went to yoga class. And I am not sure if this muscle was found during the clearing out of my front room or if I found it in yoga class. Either way it is not a happy camper.

Before I begin my update, a little housekeeping. I changed my settings (I think) so that anyone can comment. I thought why not let a good discussion get started if its going to? Maybe my readers can also encourage each other. So don't be shy. I do have a delete button for any comments that are inappropriate but I am hopeful that I won't need to use it.

If you recall, last week I talked a bit about the detoxification process. Well, definitely my body has been pulling out toxins. And I have a lot of them. After Christmas my whole family spent the month of January sick with a stupid virus that seemed to pick our individual "weak spots" to settle into. My husband got it in his chest, my son got it in his sinuses, and I got it in both, but not at the same time. We would get better and then relapse, all month long. Jesse has a kick butt immune system that Kevin and I don't have (how nice to be so young) and so his only lasted a day or two each time. When he got a sore throat that lasted more than two days I trucked him into the doctor and sure enough it was strep. By the time he started the antibiotics for it, though, he was feeling better. Go figure. Fortunately Kevin and I did not get it.  I was a good little mom though and kept him from school until he had been on the antibiotics for 48 hours. In case you did not know, strep is contagious until the person has been on antibiotics for 24 - 48 hours. Untreated, strep can cause rheumatic fever and/or kidney failure. So through the month of February I continued with my coughing and some congestion here and there, with the congestion sometimes hitting my ears. Now I can handle most pain but even just a little discomfort in my ears drives me batty.  So when Angi at Alt Med had to cancel my appointment in Feb (she is only there one week a month anymore) I booked in to see Randy. My cold had gone bacterial in January and I needed to make sure it was cleared up. Unlike Jesse who has full medical coverage through the state, I have none so since I pay anyway, I choose to do everything with the help of the Alt Med staff, as naturally as possible. (a couple times in my suffering I made the poor choice of trying nyquil, but the nyquil hangover the next day rendered me useless-- even at half a dose so I think I am cured of trying anything like that again).  Randy used to be the go to guy for me, but I switched to Angi because she was able to do the bloodwork to keep track of my blood levels and also the body composition testing to keep track of my water retention and fat and muscle percentages.  But Randy is wonderful and I have seen Corey (the head honcho) as well over my time with Alt Med.

Tuesday was my appointment with Randy. The first thing I did was step on their scale. They have one there that will weigh me. I almost keeled over in shock. I GAINED 14 lbs. I weighed on Dec 21 and then on Jan 21 where I gained 9 lbs. I rationalized that away with Christmas and New Year celebrations and the candy and stuff left over from there all month. Also I wasn't taking any iodine supplements because we forgot to add them to the plate in December. I had once asked Corey why I gain weight when I get sick when most people lose weight. He said the immune system uses iodine too, as well as the thyroid. When I get sick I burn through all my iodine stores including that meant for my thyroid, and a thyroid with no iodine is a slow one, hence, weight gain. So in January I started back on iodine supplements so that really surprised me that I had such a large weight gain in February. Well, when Randy got testing me with the electrodermal screening they use, and listening to my cough, he determined that my body is definitely detoxing, but not eliminating the toxins or the gunk that my colds have created in my body. He said he wouldn't be surprised if I had about 12 lbs of gunk and mucous and such in my system. So I came out of there with herbs and nutritionals to help my body eliminate all this gunk.  I shared this with Kris in our class and she gave me another suggestion which I also use. She had read somewhere that 1 Tbsp of honey and 1 tsp. of cinnamon mixed in with hot water in the mornings, half an hour before you eat will aid in the elimination process. Well, I have to say, I love it. It does taste like those red hots candies. It seems to satisfy the sweet tooth I have for the day, too. And between that, the increased water I am drinking and what Randy has me on, I have become close personal friends with my hallway bathroom. But I can feel my water retention going away. Yesterday when I was driving into town I realized my shoes didn't feel as tight as usual right off the bat. Yay!! I can't wait until my next appointment at Alt Med in two weeks. I will step on that scale again and see if I can see the results there.

Wednesday night I felt pretty lousy. I was congested and headachey again. So that was when I tried the nyquil at half a dose.  Bad idea. Thursday I was out of commission. Honestly, when I did all the partying and drinking I did in college, I never had such bad hangovers!!  Despite the nyquil hangover, I did my yoga practice and got my steps in on Thursday even though it meant at bedtime I was doing laps half asleep to get them in. NO EXCUSES  is my new motto.  Then Thursday evening my ears started fluttering... you know that sound and feeling you get when you are swimming and get water in your ear? OMG it drove me crazy!!  I was congested in my sinuses, my entire head had ached all day and then this.  So I went looking online to see what to do about the ears and I found a you tube video which shows self massage for lymph drainage from the ears. Yes!!  Lymph drainage massage was something Rochelle used to do for me at Alt Med. She has since left to be with her ailing mother on the other side of the state so I haven't been doing it. I thought this is awesome. And so I followed the video and I did it on myself... and it drained my ears, my sinuses, the sinus headache went away and whatever congestion was causing the back and crown of my head to ache went away. I was able to sleep!!

That brings us to yesterday. In the morning I went to work hard clearing out the china cabinets and shelves in the front room and dining room while the apprentice from Kevin and JR's company helped me haul things upstairs or downstairs to store and took down the paintings and such. (He was out on a call and she was here and he had to have her do something.. and I appreciated the help). Then I went to yoga class, and... the exciting part..  I had convinced a friend to give it a try with me. :) She came and she loved it. My friend has the same problem with the knees and getting up and down off the floor that I do. She hasn't gained as much weight as I have, though she has gained some since she retired from the Air Force, so I knew she would be able to do some of the yoga without the modifications, but I figured that if she had to use modifications for some of it she might be more comfortable doing it with me. She was a natural. Her poses and shapes were beautiful!!  And she loved it!! She will be joining us every Friday. I am so excited!!  Now, I am an attention hog when I have it (trained in the theatre, I loved being on stage) , I LOVED the one on one attention I was getting from Kris, but I also know that I don't have to always have center stage and unlike my son and his siblings, I can share the attention. It was great. Extra energy in the room. And I know that my friend is as unjudgemental as I try to be. And in yoga you really need to focus on yourself and what you are doing anyway, so I felt totally safe having my friend there with us. And it added so much to the class!!   I even could go a little farther in the triangle pose than I had been before. Balance was off yesterday, but then, as I said, I had already put in my steps goal before going, so my feet and legs were very tired. But I felt stronger in the poses. It was easier to do the warrior 2 pose. My arms didn't feel so heavy to hold. It was a great day at Yoga.
My friend made a comment that I have to share. She said, "It felt good to feel strong again."  Yes!! That's it exactly!! Yoga is very empowering! It helps you feel strong. And its beautiful, too. As you learn the poses and can fluidly move from one to the other, its like an absolutely beautiful dance and it makes you feel graceful. That's something I never thought I could ever feel at 400+ lbs. Empowering is the word to use. If I had to describe yoga in one word, that's what it would be. Empowering.

On that note, I am going to get on with my day now. My honey and cinnamon drink await me. I apologize for the novel today. I will make time more often through the week to update my blog so it isn't such a long read each time.

Namaste