Hello and welcome to my blog!
Okay, here is the deal. I have struggled with IBS for a little over a decade. Like you, I have tried it all - diets, meds, supplements, hypnotherapy, a host of alternative "remedies" and a billion kinds of fibre (yes I am Canadian and that is how we spell it!) I have found certain little things that help or hurt, however I've never come to a point where I felt I was managing this illness. I have been told repeatedly that stress reduction is imperative to keeping my symptoms at bay. But I always had a hard time drawing a cause-and-effect line between stress and my gut. I suspect this is because I was always stressed - feeling like you are being tortured inside is kind of stressful! So anxiety, sadness, frustration and fear were just the normal course for me. It's only recently that I have really started to acknowledge that the way that I am BEING - the way my mind ties itself into knots about this, and indeed about all of life's stressors - is making me sick. Or at the very least, is not giving me an optimal chance of getting a hold on this illness.
I have practised yoga and meditation in the past, but never with sufficient regularly or in combination with an adequate diet to support my digestion (I was basically not eating enough for most of my adult life, which I'll go into a bit below). So my intention is to practice yoga every day for the next month and to blog about my journey. Ideally this will stretch beyond 30 days into a lifelong practice - but one thing at a time, okay?
My plan: Two ashtanga yoga classes a week, plus self-practice at home with DVDs on my days away from the studio. I'd like to do more classes but this yogi is on a budget. Ashtanga is a pretty intense form of yoga - the flow from one pose to another builds heat in the body which helps lubricate joints and muscles. I sweat a lot in class. Okay, so it's summer and my studio doesn't use air conditioning, but all the same, I do find that it's an incredible workout. My sister is a yogi and has been encouraging me to get into more, not just for my IBS but also to support my recovery from an eating disorder.
Oh, did I not mention that part? Okay I guess that warrants some explaining. I have also struggled with eating issues since I was a teenager, and in fact my digestive problems began soon after I became anorexic at 19. In my early 20s, I sought therapy, regained weight and attempted to return to "normal" eating, but found it challenging since it caused so much discomfort. The bloating often kept me up the entire night. My doctors at the time were unhelpful, so I sought advice from alternative practitioners who unfortunately endorsed a pretty restrictive approach. I was advised to cut out, oh, you know, just a few of the major food groups. I am sure these types of diets work for some people, but as a recovering anorexic it was not the advice I needed to hear. So the anorexia developed a second layer of orthorexia - obsession with healthy eating. And to cope with my symptoms, and also as reaction to this restrictive and obsessive undereating, I also developed bulimia. I was just a big, ugly mess of dysfunction. On the outside, I was admired for my pious diet of oatmeal, flaxseed, fish, quinoa and steamed greens, but inside I was starving, binging, purging, and in tons and tons of pain. I was also, for a large part of this period, using alcohol to ease the spasms in my bowel, relieve the trapped gas and get myself to sleep. The drinking only increased my propensity to binge and purge, and of course alcohol itself is not easy on the gut.
Fast forward to this winter: my digestive symptoms had worsened to the point that I was no longer bulimic - I was in WAY too much pain to subject my system to further assault. I was also not drinking anymore - a doctor had finally prescribed me a sleeping pill so I didn't need to knock myself out with wine. I was eating my uber-healthy diet, seeing a osteopath, a naturopath, journalling and taking Bach Flower Remedies (don't ask) - and I was in monstrous amounts of discomfort. I was terrified - here I was doing everything right, and yet I was getting sicker. And thinner. The fact is, I wasn't doing everything right: I wasn't eating nearly enough. It took a particularly concerned therapist to make me realize I needed to gain, like, a shitload of weight, and that it didn't seem I was gonna be able to do so alone.
So I took a leave of absence from work, flew to another city and checked into an eating disorder facility. I also saw a gastroenterologist while I was there - my 5th, at this point. He ordered a Sitz marker test and a defagram (which is not like a candygram). And concluded the same thing that all the others had: it was IBS and I should work on reducing stress. Right. The staff at the eating disorder treatment center said my symptoms were typical of their clients - anorexia starves the organs and causes a myriad of problems including digestive woes. They were confident that my symptoms would improve as I regained weight and as my system got accustomed to handling that strange and unfamiliar entity known as a square meal.
And they were right. I ate more, I gained weight, and I did feel quite a lot better. But I'm not 100% - I still have IBS. And now that I am back home, back at work and back in my "real" life, I am finding the anxiety creeping in again. And this past week my IBS got a lot worse. Since I'm eating exactly the same as I was in treatment - a balanced meal plan that incorporates all of the food groups - I am being confonted, again, with the idea that I need to be doing more. Eating well is a piece of it, but I need to work on releasing tension and connecting with my body - and my life - in a more positive and relaxed way.
I won't go into a huge dissertation here on the touted benefits of yoga, but my goal is to not just reap the physical benefits of the asanas, but to also take the lessons of yoga - such as patience, acceptance, forgiveness of the limits of our bodies, while continuing to try to extend those limits - to my life off the mat. I want to approach the rest of my life not with my typical worry and tension, rigidity and intolerance, but with opennes, calm and flexibility. We're talking a major existence overhaul here.
As for the eating disorder, let's not mince words: this is a mental illness, and I am not yet rid of it. I am now maintaining a healthy weight and seeking ongoing support. I am hoping that yoga will help rebuild the muscle mass that I lost while my body was essentially feasting off itself. But I also realize that obsessive exercise can be yet another manifestation of this pernicious disease. I do think that yoga is qualitatively different from say, jumping on the treadmill and not getting off until the "calories burned" hits the magic number you've set in your head. At least, I am hoping it can be so for me. When I consider the possible benefits, I suppose I think that I am better off doing a lot of yoga to help my mind and body than not doing it for fear of being obsessive. You might disagree with me. I have certainly been wrong before!
So here goes. Wish me luck. Tomorrow is a 10 am class with one of my fave teachers at the studio. Okay, I'll admit it, I have a bit of a crush. So I suppose I should get in my beauty sleep. Night, all!
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