Because of global and broad hypersensitivity (caused by the psych drug injury) sometimes 2 minutes of yoga is exactly the right amount. Sometimes 2 minutes of yoga right now, 5 minutes a hour from now and 10 minutes before bed is just right. This makes taking classes difficult sometimes and impossible other times. There are many occasions during which more than a few minutes of yoga can put my nervous system into overdrive. Learning just the right amount has been critical.
Listening to the body is very important. Even yoga done when the nervous system isn’t up for it can be counter-productive. Healing from this injury requires nurturing the autonomic nervous system in ways few people trained to teach yoga understand. That said, I’ve found many teachers who are more than happy to trust that I know what my body needs. Find those teachers and work with them if you need a teacher. A good yoga instructor will know to trust your sense of your own body.
I did most of my initial rehabilitation (from having been bedridden) at home on my own where I could listen to my body and do only what I could handle. So that meant, at first, just raising a leg in the air while still in bed and rotating my ankle. I did that with my arms as well. Slowly, slowly I got out of bed. I used a lot of youtube yoga videos. They’re free and there are 100s available to choose from. I always listened to my body and started and stopped videos a lot and just learned poses one by one etc. I had a lot of time on my hands. There was no rush.
[For more of this story, written by Monica Cassani, go to http://beyondmeds.com/2015/01/15/yoga-tips/]
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