Yoga & Chronic Pain

Yoga is an ancient practice that has steadily increased in the public’s awareness, to the point that it has become downright trendy. But don’t let that scare you away from this therapeutic form of exercise. I can speak from first hand experience that it can transform your body and life. Like a lot of my posts, I believe in sharing first hand experiences with the reader because the facts and benefits of yoga are readily accessible to the willing seeker, but first the desire to find out more must be there. So hopefully through sharing my personal story, it can help anyone else that may have been struggling with the same issues.

Let’s begin with what yoga has done and continues to do for me, personally. It is one of the reasons I can move and walk pain free now. After a back injury I incurred during MMA training back in 2001, I was stubborn and instead of resting and getting the rehabilitation I needed, I worked through the pain, causing even further and more severe injury. But being the “anti-doctor” person that I was raised to be, I still did not seek the proper help. I didn’t realize how slowly, parts of my life started to drop away because of the chronic back pain. I started to avoid things that caused unbearable pain and learned to live with the constant nagging pain that never went away, to the point that I wasn’t doing any of the physical things I had once enjoyed. I no longer danced, trained in martial arts, walked my dogs, did yoga …. Or much of anything really.

I didn’t realize how bad things had truly gotten until one day I couldn’t get out of bed without screaming in agony. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom, and that short trip took me over an hour! I was taken to a chiropractor that day. But the news wasn’t good, in fact they came back with scary X-rays, warnings of possible permanent paralysis if I didn’t stop training in a sport I loved, possible surgery and a treatment plan that would cost over $12,000 in physical rehab. I nearly cried, but then I decided I was going to do whatever I had to do to not have surgery.

After about a year of 3 times a week chiropractic appointments and what I termed, mid evil torture but they called physical rehab, I was on the road to recovery. But I noticed that if I missed one chiro appointment, my back would regress quickly. If I missed a whole week, I felt as if I had undone the entire year’s work! I didn’t like feeling so dependent on my chiropractor. It was the same thing as being dependent on a prescription. I had to find a way to fix myself, because I knew that no real mastery comes until you can conquer yourself.

I had a background in yoga; my father is a hippie and I was literally raised doing yoga and meditating alongside my dad as a child. I was also a trained dancer from the ages of 8 to 26 and yoga was always my warm up and cool down. Heck, I’ve even taught yoga classes one summer in college! But for some reason when I moved from the world of dance to the world of mixed martial arts, I neglected my yoga practice and when the injury occurred, I was in too much pain for it. I also realize, in hindsight that as my depression worsened I gradually let go of all the things that made me happy and healthy, yoga being high on that list.

But facing the chronic back pain that I was now living with on a daily basis, I was determined to figure out a way to fix my back on my own and I knew in my heart that yoga was the key. I immediately knew that it was the answer I was looking for, but I wasn’t in any way close to the same shape and limberness I had once been in. When I tried yoga again for the first time in years, I almost cried out of frustration with the new limitations my body was showing me. It was a humbling experience to say the least. At first, I just wanted to quit because I couldn’t do the same things I used to be able to do. But I realized that I needed to start from the very beginning, to approach yoga as a total newbie.

I had to step back and think about how I treated my students when I had someone brand new to the practice, who maybe wasn’t so athletic. Did I ever scream at them or get mad at them when they couldn’t do what someone else could do? No! Of course not! I always gave gentle encouragement and told them to be kind to themselves and to listen to their body. I realized that my self-talk had been one of my biggest enemies! At that point I began to ask the universe and the Angels of Yoga, if there were any, to please come into my practice and to help me feel the true spirit of what yoga is about.

It didn’t take long before a soft voice in my head started to urge me to be gentle and patient with myself. It had taken me years of abusing my body to get into the sad shape I was in, so it was going to take a while to undo all that damage. There was no magic pill to take, I had to do the work. I needed to have patience with myself and yoga was the best way to learn how to do that. Because as you bend over slowly and breath deeply into a stretch, your body won’t allow you to rush it. If you do, you pay immediately. So you learn to back off a little and allow time and gravity to be your partner.

I really had to start from the most basic positions and even those were painful. To go from being a professional dancer in my past to barely being able to bend over and touch my toes was a moment when I realized that I had to regain control of my life and part of that control began with my body. After all, the old saying that you don’t have anything if you don’t have your health becomes all too true when you can barely stand or walk and every moment of every day is filled with pain. But the biggest hurdle was my own ego and negative self-talk because I couldn’t help but continually compare where I was with with where I used to be and the negativity just naturally followed. I felt defeated and the body that I used to have seemed like a distant memory, not something that was even possible anymore.

I gave up for a while longer and sank deeper into depression. With depression came an increased amount of chronic pain, which usually manifested in my back and neck or as migraines. After I had found medical cannabis and my mood began to shift into a more positive and happy place, I felt a pull again to try yoga. My pain was now manageable with cannabis and it put me into a meditative state, so I figured why not try again.

Maybe the cannabis had something to do with my new, more relaxed view of yoga because this time, I simply put on some chanting from Deva Premal, lit some candles, rolled out my yoga mat and began my sun salutation. But unlike all my past practices, I didn’t count. I wasn’t timing each pose and planning the next in my head while I held the first one. This time I just tried to breathe as deeply as I could and to allow my body to fall gently with every exhale, a little deeper into the stretch. I allowed my body to tell me when it was time to move into the next pose. Even allowing my body and perhaps my angels to guide me into what was the next, best pose for me at that time. I made a conscious effort to avoid negative self-talk, instead replacing it with words of encouragement that I would tell any student of mine.

It only took the very first day of practice for me to notice some things. I noticed that my back felt good, I wasn’t in constant pain. I was also more relaxed the rest of the day and mood and energy levels were both elevated. There was a definite difference in the way I was able to handle stress for the rest of the day. So I promised myself that I would do yoga on a daily basis. As my practice continued, my back got better and better. I had already quit going to the chiropractor a few years prior and up till this point had just been dealing with the pain in whatever way I was able to, most of them not being healthy ways. So when yoga was giving me the same results as I was getting from the chiropractor, I was hooked.

I’ll confess, I am far from the yogini I aspire to be! I’m still working on consistency. I have a tendency to slack on my practice when I’m feeling really good and healthy. So the cycle goes something like: extreme pain drives me to start yoga again ➡️a few days of consistent practice and I’m back to my old belly dancing self feeling unstoppable! ➡️ I feel so good, I think that I can skip a day or two of yoga ➡️ a few days turn into a week or two and my back pain starts to creep back ➡️I go back to yoga and swear to never miss a day again!

It’s a process and for me, it’s been an on again off again love affair with yoga. Maybe it’s wisdom that comes with age or maybe it’s just that I’m finally tired of waiting to feel better to live, and I’ve figured out that living feels good and there are certain simple things that I can do by myself and for myself that makes life infinitely better and yoga is in the top 3!

Yoga is meditative, rejuvenating, relaxing, strengthening, lengthening, and therapeutic all in one.

The health benefits are well documented and the host of ailments it helps is impressive. And it’s free! All you need is yourself and a yoga mat or towel! You can buy DVDs or watch free videos on YouTube to get started. But be sure to be kind to yourself. Be proud of yourself for beginning a new journey into health and be grateful to your body for having always been there for you. When you can start to see your body more as a partner and less as the enemy you can begin to make real progress in positive self-talk and that is more important than you realize. Start small and start slow. For me, it was such an overwhelming task, that I had to break it down to the easiest, tiniest step I could and at the time, it was to just do one pose a day, slowly adding one more pose a day until I was able to complete a simple 20 minute session. It was really slow progress but instead of beating myself up over how slow it was going, I patted myself on the back each day after practice, even if it was only ten minutes that day, and told myself, “Good job, you’re that much closer to your goals!”

I can’t over emphasize how important the way you speak to yourself about yourself is, so you continue on any path of healthy living. Yoga has a magical affect on your self-esteem and the way you see your own place in the world and for me, it’s given me back full range of motion in my back, I’ve started belly dancing again and even skateboarding again! When I’m steady with my yoga practice, I feel ten years younger and move like I am too! It’s also saved me a ton of money in chiropractic care. The following is a short list of resources that I hope will help start you off on your own yoga practice.

My favorite yoga instructor when I was a dancer was the amazing Bryan Kest of Power Yoga. But after my back injury, his intense and very cardio centric yoga was just too much.

I have recommended Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Beginners, for beginners or those rehabbing from injury.

Shiva Rea is an amazing yoga instructor and her DVDs are for the intermediate to advanced student. But here energy is so wonderful and light that even a beginner would find inspiration with her beautiful DVDs.

There are countless DVDs out there with a style for everyone. I would suggest you read a lot of reviews and find a teacher that best matches what you need at this time in your life. You can always progress into the more challenging styles of yoga as you heal and get stronger along the way.

There are also a few books that I have found helpful in understanding both the concept of yoga as well: