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Bikram Yoga

Messages
24
Location
San Rafael, CA
I started Bikram Yoga 1 1/2 years ago when I started to get better and had enough energy to exercise. I thought it would be stretching in a heated room (my Dr. encouraged me to take saunas) but found it very taxing. It's a 90 minute active form of meditation and concentration to reconnect your mind/body, combined with a series of 27 breathing, standing, sitting, kneeling, lying down poses separated by sit ups and rests. The room is kept around 105 degrees F/40% humidity to promote deep stretching of muscles, but also causes you to sweat and detoxify. I lose about 2 pounds of sweat each class, but get it back by drinking water. The various poses are meant to tone muscles and strengthen the immune system among many other benefits.

At first the hardest part was breathing correctly, like I was suffocating for oxygen. Maybe this is cytopathic hypoxia linked to ATP? (http://www.mitochondrial.net/showabstract.php?pmid=9248546) After going at least 3 times a week, it has gotten easier and I even have days were I am able to breath normally. Now these classes are my litmus test to measure where my health is, and don't consider myself sick anymore.

Has any one else tried this and had any success?
 

calzy

Senior Member
Messages
113
Location
Naples Florida
You obviously dont have CFS! lol.....My 210 lb grown son (who works out daily with weights) got his a*s kicked in by this yoga and only did 2 classes.
 

markmc20001

Guest
Messages
877
I tried Bikram yoga and couldn't hack it. I do regular yoga and get quite a bit of benefit from the meditation and stretching. I hope I can continue to keep it up! I have both physical and mental fatigue, but more mental I think than what some really bad folks here experience.
 

LaurelW

Senior Member
Messages
643
Location
Utah
I went for a while while in a period of relative wellness. Those classes are really very strenuous. They do each exercise twice, but I only did each one once and laid down on my mat during the second one. I couldn't tolerate the heat after a while because of hot flashes. I think that this actually could be a pretty good litmus test of how well I am. Obviously my OI wasn't a big deal then. Now I would probably pass out within minutes.:In bed:
 

carolwxyz99

Senior Member
Messages
114
Has any one else tried this and had any success?

I think the Bikram yoga would be far too strenuous for me but I really like the idea of doing yoga in a hot room. I attend specially adapted yoga for ME/CFS classes in the UK and think that the Bikram yoga would also be too strenuous for most people I know who attend our classes. However, having said this, a few people who are recovering well or mildly affected may find our classes a bit too gentle and be OK with a normal yoga class.

Many of us who go to our classes feel the cold badly, especially the most badly affected, and the heat in a Bikram studio could very possibly help the muscles, though a few of our members feel the heat badly (mainly post menopausal women). Also I find I can do less when the room is too cold. Maybe one day we can pursuade a teacher to take a specially adapted class for ME/CFS in a Bikram yoga studio - now that would be fun. I'm not sure if we have a Bikram studio near here yet though - but its an idea for when we do. Maybe as a one-off I'll make a room in my house very hot and try doing some remedial yoga in it and see it feels different to doing it at a normal temperature - I'll let you know what happens if I get round to trying it.

Photos of the sort of things we do in our class can now be found on our website www.sheffieldyogaforme.org.uk, and reviews of tapes/CDs of the type of adapted yoga we do are on our information page.