Day 2

Yoga:  90 minute ashtanga class
Other relaxation:  30 minute hypnotherapy CD
Bloating: 8
Cramping: 7
Constipation:  0
Diarrhea: 2

Today started okay but got progressively worse.    I haven't yet figured out if there is any purpose in documenting the blow by blow of symptoms here.   Indeed I am rethinking this whole blog.  I want to write about health and IBS and eating disorders but I haven't really figured out a structure that would be useful to me and, ideally, engaging to anyone who happened to stumble upon this little corner of the internet universe.   

To make a long story short, by the time I got to yoga at 5:30 I was full of swallowed gas - sometimes when I am crampy and then have a long conversation with someone (I had a couple of long phone calls in the afternoon), I can feel myself gulping air. I can't explain it better than that.   Just one of the results when things feel out of sorts inside.

I felt a bit better after yoga but none of the air has passed through me.  So now it's after dinner and I am quite uncomfortably bloated.  My only salvation at this point is that I can take a sleeping pill to go to sleep.  I would very much like not to be reliant on these, but the discomfort and pain of bloating keeps me up at night.

But back to the yoga.   I am going to a fairly hard-core studio and so I am continually impressed by the ability in my fellow students.  It makes me excited to think that if I just keep it up, I could become as good as they are.   The girl on the mat next to mine was particularly inspiring becuase she has a figure a lot like mine - petite but very round and curvy.    I find that the image of the yogi is often - like with everything else - skewed towards a skinnier type, so it's helpful for me to see you don't need to be a string bean to achieve grace and agility at it.

And my chatturangas need serious work!