the time has come, the walrus said

The time has come to stop being a hypocrite. The universe has decreed it.

(bikes in Cambridge - www.stockphotopro.com)

Himself and I are pretty passionate about the planet we live on (and I have to be honest here, Himself does all the hard work and research, I just do what I'm told). From what we eat, to where we shop, to where we go on holiday we try our very best to keep our carbon footprints and our plastic bags as minimal as possible.

Except I have one great weakness. My car (Himself doesn't drive so he can continue to polish his halo). I know, I know. It's not even a new car, with low pollution, let alone a hybrid or electric car. It's a 14 year old heaving rustbucket. But I love it. I use all sort of excuses for driving places from "you try carrying 15 yoga blocks around with you on the bus" to "I've got fibromyalgia *whine whine*". Yeah, quite. I really don't use it that much, there's just times, like going to work, when it's just more....convenient.

But really these days I have no excuses. I live in Cambridge, the City of the Bicycle, I no longer need to carry 15 yoga blocks anywhere and honestly, my health is under control.

And then yesterday, a message from the gods. My car went in for a service and came out a write off. The work it needs will cost about twice as much as the car is worth.

I was so upset. Himself worked out how much money I'd spent on the damn car in the last year and I had a minor heart attack. He then pointed out that I could get a lot of taxis/pairs of shoes/glittery eyeliners for that money. I smiled.

So this morning I cycled to work. It's a 6 mile (about 10km) round trip. The 3 miles to work takes me about 25 minutes at the moment but I'm hoping to get that down to 20 minutes over the next few weeks. It felt good to be cycling, I felt I could be in a much more mindful place on my bike than in my car and oh but how good it felt cycling past the queues of traffic that I usually sit in!

So for now, we'll see how things go. We're going up to Yorkshire at the weekend so I will be hiring a car for that. it does mean I will have to cancel the teaching opportunites that I had lined up as I physically will not be able to get to the venue, but everything happens for a reason. Maybe the universe is telling me to focus my energies elsewhere.

I'd like to think I could live without a car. I'm taking it one day at a time.

In the meantime I would like this panier set!

the joy of yoga!

Today I am a guest blogger over on The Joy of Yoga. Go take a look!

I love Emma's Joy of Yoga blog. She posts so many interesting and inspirational sequences and is always looking for guest bloggers so if you have something to share drop her a line!

The thing I love most about Emma's blog is the title. The JOY of Yoga. That sums yoga up for me. Yes some days my practice is frustrating. Some days I find myself bogged down by ego and my own limitations. But always, whether I'm teaching, practicing at home or practicing in a class, always somewhere deep inside I feel that innate joy of living. That joy doesn't come from other people or things or places or beauty. It comes from me. Just me. And that's why however terrible I may feel I drag myself onto my mat 6 days a week. :)

~~~

Kelly McGonigal, who guest posted for me last week, has sent through a copy of her book. I havne't finished reading it yet but it is wonderful so far.

Inside the front cover Kelly wrote a message for me:-

"No-one is more deserving of your own care and compassion than you yourself."

How true. How true. And how easy that is to forget. The last few years of my life have been hectic and rushed beyond measure and my own health has come second place to my career, my yoga teaching and the health of my clients. This year is about me. Surrounding myself with the things and people I love and begin to move in a different direction, slowly and mindfully.

Thanks Kelly for yet another reminder of my need to do this!

Yoga for Pain Relief

A week or so before Christmas I was approached by Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and yoga teacher at Stanford University, and the editor in chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. She is also a former chronic pain sufferer who wanted to get the message out about how yoga can improve your health and happiness on as many blogs as possible in celebration of the publication of her book Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind and Heal Your Chronic Pain. Of course as a fibromyalgic yogini I jumped at the chance for some wise words on a subject so close to my heart.

Kelly is kindly sending me a copy of the book - which I will review when I have read it. Unfortunately it is not available in the UK yet but you can pre-order it here or order from the US here.

So without further ado let's hear from Kelly about Fibromyalgia and Yoga.

~~

Most people think that yoga is about standing on your head, reaching your toes, and getting twisted into pretzel poses. But the healing practices of yoga go far beyond the postures. The breathing, meditation and relaxation practices of yoga may have the most powerto help people with chronic pain, including fibromyalgia. Below, some of the science and promise behind how yoga can help:

1. People with fibromyalgia appear to process pain differently than people with other forms of chronic pain, including musculoskeletalpain and headaches. As anyone with fibromyalgia knows, they are more sensitive to physical stimulation. The pain detectors of the nervous system can become so sensitive that they react to any sign of increased pressure, tension, or inflammation in the body. But research suggests they are also more affected by negative emotions. For people with fibromyalgia, emotional distress increases the nervous system’s sensitivity to pain more than it does for people with other types of chronic pain.

This may sound like bad news, but it also means that learning how to handle negative emotions can have a significant positive effect on your pain. Many meditation techniques teach you how to accept and then move through negative emotions, and how to consciously choose to feel positive emotions like gratitude and joy.

2. Catastrophizing, telling yourself that your pain is unbearable, uncontrollable, and likely to get worse, makes the brain more sensitive to both the physical sensations and emotion suffering components of pain. This has been shown specifically in people with fibromyalgia, as well as other forms of chronic pain. Strengthening your belief that you can handle your symptoms can make your pain more manageable.

This may be one reason that guided imagery and relaxation can reduce pain in people with fibromyalgia. Research supports three types of imagery: imagining yourself in a favorite, safe place; body awareness and conscious muscle relaxation; imagining yourself engaged in an activity that pain/fatigue have made difficult. Imagery and relaxation may help make the brain less reactive to pain, which can make sensations more tolerable and reduce the anxiety, sadness, and anger that can go along with pain. Other yoga practices may have a similar effect, for example, research shows that simply paying attention to the sensations of breathing can reduce stress, increase a sense ofcontrol, and make pain more tolerable.

3. Physical pain and social pain, such as loneliness or rejection, are detected by the same pain systems of the brain. The experience of either one can make you more sensitive to the other. This may be why a pain episode makes you feel more socially isolated or why you crave social support when you are in pain. It also may explain why loneliness makes physical pain worse, but having a loved one present can reduce pain. Research shows that social support decreases pain sensitivity in people with fibromyalgia specifically. It’s not possible to have round-the-clock closeness with others, but a yoga meditation on social connection can have a similar effect. For example, one study showed that daily loving kindness meditation practice significantly reduced chronic pain.

4. In one unusual study, researchers in Japan tested a master yogi who claimed to be able to block all pain during meditation. The researchers used a laser to create a pain response in the yogi, both before and during meditation. Brain imaging revealed normal pain processing when the yogi was not meditating. During meditation, however, there was dramatically reduced activity in all the areas associated with a pain response, including the areas that produce pain sensations, thoughts and emotions about pain, and the stress response. Although most of us will never become master yogis, this study demonstrates the full potential of meditation for changing your experience of pain.

5. The yoga tradition has long recognized that your breathing reflects the state of your mind and body. When the body and mind are disturbed by fear, anger, sadness, illness, or pain, the breath becomes disturbed. But the road goes both ways: how you breathe can also influence how you feel. This was elegantly demonstrated in a study that observed how the breath naturally changes during joy, anger,sadness, and fear. The researchers induced these emotions in participants and measured changes in breathing rate, depth, movement,and tension. Joy, for example, was associated with steady, smooth, slow, deep, and relaxed breathing. Sadness, in contrast, was associated with irregular, shallow, and tense breathing interrupted with sighs and tremors.

In a second study, the researchers turned the observations for each emotion into breathing instructions. They had participants change their breathing according to those instructions, with no hint that the breathing patterns were connected to specific emotions. The breathing patterns reliably created the emotions they were associated with,without any other emotion cue or trigger.

Yoga can teach you to breathe in a way that supports feelings of comfort, safety, and joy.

~~

Thank you so much Kelly, there is a lot there I can empathise with. I could wax lyrical on how much yoga has helped me in all these ways, but I think we all know that by now right?!!

Namaste x

my word for 2010 - mindfulness

Mindfulness is calm awareness of one's body functions, feelings, content of consciousness, or consciousness itself.
~~

In choosing mindfulness as my word for the year I am not hoping for miracles, I don't look upon it as the first step on the road to enlightenment, I just want it in its lowest common denominator. I just want to be here right now.

I have a tendency to spend time in a rose-tinted past or an imagined future. Times when things were or will be better. A tendency that is not uncommon in people suffering from chronic illness or pain. One day things will be better and then life will be like it used to be. Meanwhile I am missing all the experiences that life is throwing at me right now. They don't always have to be good experiences to be important.

So this year I want to be present in everything I do. When I write, when I eat, when I am with those I love, when I am at work, when I exercise, when I meet new people or try new things, when I am on my mat. Especially when I am on my mat.

This isn't about hours of meditation every day, this isn't about experimenting with different mindfulness techniques (not that there is anything wrong with that). This is about appreciating the life I have right now. Every damn moment of it.

love & links

Well the cold slowly descended lung-wards over Christmas and now I am stuck with bronchitus. Hurrah, hurrah and thrice hurrah! Still I scrubbed up yesterday to go to Ma and Pa Yogini's for food and presents and to treat them to a cacaphony of coughing. This is what parents are for.

I'm loving these coloured opaque tights from M&S - apart from this green colour they have red, purple, pink, stripes, leopard skin.... and probably more. The green shoes are handmade by Ren over at Fairysteps. She's updating her shop right now, you should go and check it out. New shoes and bags for a new decade!

So how has your yoga practice been going over the long weekend? Sadly yoga and meditation are not conducive with paroxysms of coughing so my yoga over the last few days has mostly been about looking after myself and my poorly lungs. Those of you who are feeling better than me but struggling to keep up a routine over the holidays might like EcoYogini's hints and tips on DIY Holiday Yoga!

Have you chosen a word for the new year? Mine is mindfulness, I keep promising to elaborate on this and I will. Soon. In the meantime find out why Kathleen's word is courage.

It's resolution time over at Read Write Poem. I particularly like the resolution about aiming to get 12 rejection letters this year. That seems do-able!

I suspect many of you, like me, feel that there's a small chance you've eaten too much good stuff over the last couple of weeks. If you combine this with the treacherous ice we've had here and the treacherous state of my lungs, I haven't had a power walk in nearly a fortnight, and I'm feeling it. Sally over at Already Pretty gives a nice little pep-talk for all of us feeling a little out of shape.

Finally, Anna at Much Love asks three important questions about love. So here are my answers:-

1. One thing that you loved in 2009. Oh there were many things! But top of my list has to be Lyrica. Strange I know to choose prescription medication as the thing you love but my life turned around this year thanks to these little pills. I'm not saying there wasn't a lot of hard work on my part but the Lyrica certainly kick started me into being able to live the life I want in spite of my Fibromyalgia rather than merely exist in its shadow.

2. One thing you're loving at this very moment. Ooooh the smell of spicy parsnip soup which is cooking in the kitchen. Also Himself for still thinking I'm beautiful despite the cold sweat glistening on my brow from the effort of coughing!

3. One thing that you'd love to do next year. I'd love to have continued good health really. I'd also love to go to Dublin.

I'd love to know your answers to these questions dear reader. Let me know if you post them in your own blog.

I hope you all continue to have a wonderful holiday season and that none of you have to go back to work just yet!

On living with Fibromyalgia

Learning to live with Fibromyalgia has taught me many things. And what I’m learning right now is to be kind to myself, not to expect so much from myself all the time.

Whilst I was only formally diagnosed with Fibro a couple of years ago, I’m pretty sure I have suffered on and off since I was about 17. At first they said it was “growing pains”. When I pointed out I wasn’t growing anymore they called it ME. Somewhere along the line that got changed to CFS (although I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing) and now it’s got another name! Whatever you call it, in the long run it amounts to the same thing – exhaustion, headaches, a 15 year sore throat (!!) and, coupled with the scoliosis, pretty much constant chronic pain.

Now before I go on I want to say that this isn’t a self-pity post. This isn’t a “Why Me?” lament (because, as I have said before, “Why Not Me?”). This is just a reminder of how far I’ve come.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with is other people’s attitudes. ME has another name in the UK – “Malingerer’s Disease” – and I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me “but you don’t look ill”. No maybe I don’t, I’m a whizz with the make up brush but inside I feel like stir-fried ass – thanks for asking! ;p

But no matter how hard it’s been I’ve always tried to live my life to the fullest, to drag my sorry carcass out of bed and get on with things to the best of my endeavours. There have been times when I’ve had to put my hands up and admit that something is too much. I decided against a long-term dream of studying Archaeology because I knew my health wasn’t up to the 12 weeks a year in a tent in a field digging holes aspect of it all. But if I had studied Archaeology I would never have gone to Australia and I would certainly never have found out I could write.

And that’s it isn’t it, dear reader? Everything that happens, good or bad, gets us to where we are today. Yes, I may have to walk rather than run, I certainly can’t have more than one alcoholic drink without falling asleep and some days I have to drag that aforementioned sorry carcass back to bed. But on the other hand, I have gained an Masters degree, travelled the world (more than once) and worked in law in the City of London for nearly 10 years. And I also know without this I would never have become a yoga teacher. After years of practice that helped me keep my body strong enough to deal with pain and my mind strong enough to deal with the sadness the pain could bring and with the help of some fantastic teachers I realised that my limitations (for want of a better word) could help me reach out to people who wanted to know about yoga but had been too afraid to ask! As I tell my students, if I can do it anyone can.

I have days when the pain is too much, when it really brings me down. But we all have bad days. Right now I’m learning to accept the bad days and look after myself on them, because there are so many good days and I have achieved so much in my own little way.

My Right Hip

So last week I asked my chiropractor if we could have a look at the x-rays of my hips and pelvis. About three years ago when I first started seeing this chiro he x-rayed pretty much my whole skeleton. As most of my main issues were in my upper back and shoulders we've been concentrating on them predominantly. However, recently these issues have been getting much much better and the old issues in my right hip have been playing up again. My right hip keeps seizing up, so badly that I had weird spasms in Pigeon pose the other day and had to fall sideways out of it :)

I have mixed feelings about what I saw in the x-ray. There is a definite difference between the two sides. My left hip sits nicely in it's socket with lots of space to rotate, my right is kind of stuck in a small socket and I am now aware that the clunking noise I sometimes hear from it is the ball of the top of the thigh bone hitting the bone of the socket. It's really hard to describe but basically there will never be the same rotation of movement in that hip as in the left one. In some ways I feel good about this, it's the way I'm made and I don't have to beat myself up for not working hard enough. On the otherhand it's yet another part of my body that does not damn well work properly!!!

So this week I will mostly be working on mindful accpetance of my right hip - keep the ligaments loose but don't force anything and love my body just the way it is. It's my karma after all.

On food....

In an attempt to bring a little more balance and contentment into my life and adhere a little more closely to anti-inflammatory diets, I am slowly drawing myself back round to a more animal-free way of life. It's going to be a process of baby steps, first up I'm cutting out meat and dairy (I shouldn't be eating dairy anyway due to a lactose intolerance), working out all the products I like and don't like. For instance I had forgotten how much I love vegan "cheese" slices but yesterday we had some tofu sausages which have given me the worst indigestion I've had in ages!

I have to say in the three years in which I have been omnivorous again** both the variety of vegan products on the market and the variety of places you can get them has definitely increased. And that's going to make it easier. What makes it harder of course is living with a carnivore! That's not really fair, Himself is omnivorous and has no objection to eating veggie at least five times a week - but what I am not going to do is push my beliefs and my lifestyle choices on to somebody else. Relationships are about compromise and my compromise is to experiment in cooking dishes to suit us both. Which is probably why I'll never be the uber-strict vegan I used to be -- but baby steps eh? Anything is possible!

=

**I was vegan for many, many years but ended up really ill about 5 years ago with iron/Vit B12 deficiency due to endometriosis issues (not the vegan diet, although at the time I was going through quite a lot and totally not looking after myself - one cannot live on peanut butter sandwiches it appears) and started eating meat again. Since then I have of course spent several years fighting fibromyalgia and feeling I needed all the protein I could get! I am now in a position to start to cut meat out of my diet again.

Day 27 - Swine Flu

I woke up this morning to pouring rain, a pile of kitty vomit and a Googlereader feed full of stories of Swine Flu.

However, it didn't depress me as much as it may have done. Whilst my thoughts are with all those in Mexico who have lost people to the illness and whilst I hope and pray the illness does not become pandemic, it reminded me of an incident during the avian flu "crisis".

At the time I was working for a large American law firm in London. The American offices seemed very concerned about the outbreak (I can't remember what triggered it) and the CEO in Pittsburgh sent us out an email with about a trillion bullet points of things to do to stop us being infected.

Best of all the Americans sent over two huge care parcels. One was full of disinfectant hand gels the other full of face masks to hand out amongst the staff.

To my knowledge those two boxes are still in the basement of my old London office.

A classic example of the British stiff upper lip eh?!!

Day 14 - Project Fitness

Back in the days when I did full Primary Series three or four times a week I used to think of yoga as exercise as well as a moving meditation. These days as a Viniyoga teacher and practitioner, my practice has become much slower, more meditation, more healing. It stretches and tones, it calms and heals, it makes me breathe more evenly, but it doesn't really make me sweat!

So, as my health begins to take an upturn I have begun Project Fitness. I've written myself a programme to allow myself to gently and slowly raise my fitness levels (one of the best things about being a trained fitness instructor is one doesn't have to pay a personal trainer - I just shout at myself whilst I'm on the cross-trainer instead!), because I am determined to get better. My health has become too much a part of me and I know longer want to be defined by my health. Fibromyalgia is not who I am, it is merely a word.

So this morning I did:-

20 minutes on the x-trainer (3km, heart rate of 160)
10 minutes of weights
15 minutes of stretching
Short swim
Lounging in the jacuzzi (this is the best bit).

I'm hoping to do this twice a week, and then take a two mile power walk outside the other three days.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed a good workout. I've missed it. I've missed feeling like this. I'm so happy to be rediscovering my fitness levels (which really aren't as bad as I thought). A good workout is meditative and healing in it's own way -- and I think the balance between a yoga practice and a cardio programme works well.

Plus as yogis we know so much more about the importance of stretching and releasing the muscles, so hopefully the muscle aches will be at a minimum!

Namaste

Day 6 - Loves and Hates

Like every Yogini I have yoga asana that I love and yoga asana that I hate.

My personal nemisis are backbends. Strong backbends such as chakrasana and full unmodified utrasana are big no-nos for me because of my scoliosis. These asana put too much pressure on my thoracic spine and end up doing more harm than good.

However, I do need backbends within my practice to open up my chest -- one of the problems with thoracic scoliosis is a tendency to slouch into the chest so chest openers rather than strong backbends are the way forward. Whilst I really do have to persuade myself into them I do find a gentle Setu Bhandasana or Salambhasana very helpful. Some days I'm even up for a modified utrasana (with my hands on my lower back rather than my heels).

Working through modifications for back problems such as scoliosis and fatigue problems such as CFS and Fibromyalgia has been one of the highlights of my career thus far as a yoga teacher - I cannot tell you how liberating it is to find a way of modifying a posture to gain the benefits without putting the body under strain.

But what are my loves when it comes to yoga asana? Well I love anything that works on elongating the spine and sides of the waist and works on lifting out of the hips whilst grounding through the feet:- balances such as vrkasana for example, or vertical standing poses such as virabhadrasana 1 (although personally I would say the stance in that picture is way too wide!)

But my all time favourite yoga pose has to be Downward Dog. I am happy to hang there for breath after breath, releasing and releasing and releasing into my crooked spine :)

Sometimes it's good to think about those poses we dread - very often the body needs what it least wants.

Namaste!

On health and decisions....

My health has not been great recently. My fibromyalgia has been flaring up badly (for which I am mercifully and finally about to start some new treatment) and I've been having very bad stress related migraines (the last one lasted 5 days). Consequently I have felt unable to get on my mat every single day as I would like, and then I become more stressed and the cycle continues. It has taken every ounce of strength I have to teach my classes.

Whilst I feel I cannot let my clients and students down, if I am making myself ill then I am going to end up letting them down eventually. So I have decided, much to my regret (but also to slight relief), to give up the Yoga for Cancer class I teach on Fridays on a voluntary basis at the Mulberry Centre. Much as teaching this class has brought me great joy and I have learned much, I feel that right now I have to put my own health and my treatment first.

Besides as Andy and I have decided that 2010 will be the year we move back to Cambridge to be near my family, I will gradually have to start letting my classes go -- and find somebody who is interested enough to buy my business. That's going to be a hard thing to let go of. Not quite ready yet.....
_______________________

In other news, a colleague and I (a colleague incidentally who would be perfect to take my business over from me, she just doesn't know it yet) are trying to get the local Council to release funding to allow Yoga for Pregnancy classes for pregnant teenagers in the area. We propose working with trained psychologists who are already employed by the Council and hope to get £1000 for a pilot project.....

Fingers crossed.

And finally I must update the other blog. I've been working on some lovely modifications for people with back pain and scoliosis. I'll get on to that tomorrow!

Back from Turkey

I spent last week teaching on a retreat in Turkey for people with ME.

Some of the people I have been teaching have been so desperately ill with ME over the last few years that they have been housebound, bedbound, hospitalised, rendered unable to listen to music or read. A living hell. Which reminds me how blessed I am. Yes, health issues I may have but praise to all the gods for the ability to always listen to music.

The most beautiful part was none of these amazing people had forgotten how to laugh - and most importantly none of them had forgotten how to laugh at themselves. I have laughed until I've cried this week. I have also swum in the sea, eaten far too much food and taught a lot of yoga. I have been taught the rudimentaries of Argentinian tango by a fabulous gay guy who lives around the corner from my brother and who laughs in the face of HIV and ME. I went to a traditional Turkish bath (which was actually horrible and made me sick but everyone else enjoyed it and that was the important thing). I have learned that I am probably a far better teacher than I give myself credit for, that I need to ease up on myself and stop catastrophising and that I need to stop caring about what others think and lead my life from my heart.

And most of all I learned that it is your students that make you a good teacher.

On Seeing the Rheumatologist

I have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The rheumatologist asked a whole heap of questions then pressed me in 18 places which hurt so much I cried, she nodded and said "fibromyalgia". I was surprised to learn that skin is not supposed to hurt when touched. I always assumed I was just a bit weak and pathetic. Turns out this is not normal after all. I am dumb....

She suspects that I have always had Fibro and that the diagnosis of ME never really cut it and was made by an ignorant and/or lazy doctor. To be fair on my previous doctors, Fibro has not been recognised in this country for very long; the US accepted it long before we did and most things that couldn't be diagnosed any other way were diagnosed as ME or hypochondria, depending on where your GP's sympathies lay.

The rheumatolgist was very impressed by the yoga and swimming and the organic diet and how well I looked after myself. We talked about that and my scoliosis for a while and she took some bloods just to rule out Connective Tissue Disease. I was pretty impressed with her. Until....

She prescribed me something called Amitriptyline. I, like a fool, didn't think anything of it assuming they would be a painkiller or muscle relaxant. It wasn't until the pharmicist gave them to me that I discovered they are in fact tricyclic antidepressants. Now I am a strong believer in the total obliteration of antidepressants from the face of the earth. Both my father and Himself suffer from clinical depression and have never got anywhere on antidepressants and tricyclics are the very worst of this hideous creation. The side effects are horrific and the withdrawal symptoms equally so. OK so it's a very low dose, and a very low dose is proven in clinical trials to help some people with the pain and the sleep deprivation. Note *some* people. And what am I meant to do? Take them every day for the rest of my life? Masking the symptoms and living in a cloud of fug forevermore? No thank you. I would be the worst sort of hypocrite if I even considered taking them.

I believe in learning to live with long term chronic conditions, not masking them. Fibro is non-degenerative and non-progressive. I need to change my outlook rather than change the chemical make up of my body.

I affirm to work towards a day when I am not my illness, when I accept myself for who I am, when I have fun no matter what and when start to put myself first. This is my wake up call. Listen to it.

Fly By Update

Firstly, to introduce a new member of the family. Please meet Aurora! She is 10 months old and we picked her up from the Rescue centre on Monday. She's been spayed and is off for her injections later on today. She is a little angel, good as gold and happily sleeps under the bed when I am teaching a class or have a private yoga client at the house. She loves yoga too -- every morning she gets on my mat with me, twirling through my legs as I hold Down Dog, showing me how a Cat stretch should be done, gently nibbling my toes in Savasana. A great lesson in Pratyahara; withdrawing my senses so the kitty just becomes another part of my practice, not a distraction. A great lesson in not giving a damn as well!

Secondly, I have two bits of exciting news:- (1) I have been accepted (subject to references and CRB checks) as a volunteer yoga teacher at The Mulberry Centre -- a drop-in centre in West London for people with cancer, their primary carers and those who have lost someone to cancer. A wonderful and life enhancing opportunity for me. (2) I am going to work on a yoga retreat for people with ME and CFS in Turkey with Fiona Agombar in October. Again an amazing opportunity to share those things that I have found in yoga that have helped my recovery process to those who are just beginning. An opportunity to help those who are intent on changing their lives around with the help of yoga. Some of the people on the retreat are very ill, much more so than I have ever been, and yet they are willing to fly to Turkey to begin or enhance their recovery for the opportunity of working with someone as wonderful as Fiona. Such courage. And such a privelege for me to be able to join them.

Thirdly, I have had my article on Yoga and Scoliosis published in Yoga and Health magazine. Sometimes my array of health problems does have an advantage!!

Communications Breakdown

Apologies for the lack of posting. That wasn't meant to happen but things have been busy!

I've been building up my yoga business - everything seems to be going well, I continue with my affirmations and my visualisations for the future. I'm particularly loving teaching the mum and baby classes too!

I've been on a few courses including a course with Fiona Agombar on teaching yoga to people with ME/CFS. Having suffered from ME since I was 16 I found the course invaluable in both my own practice and in my teaching -- if I can start to bring the therapeutic tools of yoga to people suffering from chronic fatigue and allow it to help them as it helped me it would be wonderful. More thoughts on yoga and ME here.

From this it seems I am assisting Fiona on a retreat in Turkey in October (all things being equal) and hopefully starting up a voluntary yoga class at a cancer hospice in West London. Fingers crossed for all of the above.

My own health rises and falls in peaks and troughs. I am currently waiting for an appointment with a rheumatologist as the all over chronic body pain just gets worse. It is more than just the scoliosis, it is more than just the ME. I am hoping for the fibromyalgia diagnosis to be formalised once and for all.

But the appointment hasn't come through yet.....