MS Journey #23

Naked yoga

Strange topic for the MS side of this blog. Actually strange topic for me to bring up at all.

I’ve been struggling lately with fatigue, very weak legs, and worse than normal tingling. Also my practice has become a rare sight. This is because of the above MS irritants but also I’ve had a constant flow of family visitors for six weeks. The house was so full we had to borrow dining chairs from the neighbour just to sit at dinner. Every bedroom, basement, and even the living room floor were occupied with beds.

So there is nowhere in the house where I can find a place to practice. If I try to get out and go to the studio I’m waking up half the house and one of them is my 11 month old grandson. I don’t want to risk waking him up.

But now everyone has gone back home and the basement is mine again.

So this morning I got up showered and went downstairs to practice. As I have indicated I’m having trouble with MS symptoms. The ones that are bugging me the most these days are excessive tingling and weakness in my legs, also pain in my knees. I’m not sure if the pain is from MS or the fact practice has been rare lately but that is part of the MS journey; blaming everything on MS.

Just to get on the mat was a self induced argument. An obstacle that makes it harder to win the further apart practice becomes. On this morning I won and got on it.

It started on the third sun salutation. I took off my shirt and this is normal for home practice. On the fourth sun salutation I took off my shorts this is also normal as underneath I wear compression shorts that go down to just above my knees. Which is right where the tingling starts as it works it’s way down my legs. But as I mentioned excessive tingling is happening and it gets intensified when anything touches them like clothes. So I took them off – what!, that’s right, completely in the buff.

For me this is a radical move but as Kramer once said “I’m loving every minute of it”. Such a simple thing to do.

I know the sight of a man my age doing yoga poses naked is enough to make you cringe. But I’m not expecting or wanting anyone to watch me – even when I have clothes on I don’t like being watched. But practicing naked was a surprise that makes perfect sense for someone with MS.

If you have similar symptoms as mine then clothes are often an amplifier. I especially don’t like to wear long pants and these days walking in them is difficult. So the idea of not wearing clothes should have come to me sooner than it did.

It feels great and somewhat freeing to practice this way. It’s also invigorating and more comfortable than I thought I’d feel. There’s a freshness to it maybe even a feeling of this is the way it should have always been. It’s also cooler which is also beneficial for MS’ers. When I got to the sitting asanas I put my shorts back on as I expected to stick to my mat.

However the next day I remembered I have a rug to put over my mat. So when I got to sitting asanas I placed it over my mat. I could describe how sitting asanas can cause potential issues but I’ll leave that up to your imagination – it wasn’t that bad. Halfway through sitting asanas I took the rug off. I did not like how it felt and I lost the grip that I needed.

So I’m not advocating naked Yoga classes it’s obviously something to be done in private(1). And I’m fortunate to have my own space to do this. Intensified MS symptoms was why this thought came to mind. From purely an MS point of view practicing naked somewhat lessened the tingling situation. From a yoga point of view it felt freeing. My mind wandered towards how I was feeling and away from how I’m breathing. But I did focus more on breathing on the second and third days. I doubt this is something that I will do all the time. It was an interesting experiment that I may or may not continue.

Be safe

(1) After I wrote this I thought I’d google “naked yoga” to see if this statement is valid. And apparently naked yoga is actually practiced in class formats. It’s not something I would be brave enough to do but there you go – who knew. And be aware if you google the same, all kinds of stuff is displayed.