yoga

If I could introduce you to a method that would decrease stress, improve your sleep and increase your resilience and all that it required was water, air and a yoga mat (optional), would you be interested?

Attentive readers will be aware that the last few posts have made reference to Wim Hof. And it is to his method that I refer.

My husband had told me about this ultra-athlete some time ago, marvelling at his feats of endurance – swimming under ice, marathons in extreme conditions and climbing a significant part of Everest in his shorts! They were amusing anecdotes and the sort of thing that makes you marvel at human capabilities, but that was all.

Beautiful, yes, but not somewhere I would go for a hike, or a swim! Image: Image: Stefan Ulrich on Unsplash

A nudge

Then, a few months ago at my OMS virtual meet up, Wim’s name was mentioned again. It seemed that he was someone who was good at teaching resilience and might just be helpful for those with MS. The universe, it seemed, was trying to tell me something.

After the call, I do what I always do when faced with an unknown: research. There is plenty of information out there on the web (though I strongly suggest that you refer only to the official sites) and yes, it seemed that his method could aid those with autoimmune disorders such as my own.

There is no cure for my condition, only ways to mitigate it. Surely, this was worth a try. So I began with the breathing exercise that I found on-line for two weeks to see if I could manage it and if it seemed to do any good. It did. My sleep, which is always interrupted and sketchy at best, improved dramatically. If I woke with a dead limb, or a spastic pain in my legs, I simply acknowledged it, did a bit wiggling and fell back to sleep.

Inspiration

This word is derived from the Latin, inspirare, meaning to breathe, so it works on both counts. By practising a form of controlled breathing, one can literally become inspired. Filling the body and brain with oxygen enables it to function at its very best. It is also likely to increase your spiritual well-being, as the practice is a form of meditation.

I am not going to attempt to describe or explain the method here. It is vital that you follow the instructions carefully and do not jump ahead of your abilities. This is heady stuff! Instead, I shall give you a taster led by Wim.

Yes, he is a bit of a hippy, and yes, some of it may seem a little ‘far out’, but for me, this simply added to the entertainment.

Taking the plunge

Since the breathing had worked well, I decided to go a little further. With Covid-19 swirling about, anything that might increase my lung strength and help my rather weedy immune system was worth investing in.

My husband was still on furlough at the time and is always up for a challenge, so we decided to do the on-line course of ten weeks.

One of the key components of the method is exposure to the cold, and again, this must be done very gradually and carefully (or you risk hypothermia). Thirty seconds of cold shower after a warm one didn’t seem bad at all, but sadly, this was the easy bit. As the course progressed, the time spent in the cold increased from thirty seconds to five minutes with no warm bit at all. Ideally, we should have taken an ice-bath, but since our house doesn’t have a tub, we sadly had to pass on that one.

Because this is done incrementally, it is surprisingly manageable. I find singing (very loudly) helps distract me from the initial sting of the cold and also helps me keep to the allocated time. Now, much to my disgust, I find a hot shower quite unpleasant and only have a luke warm one on days I wash my hair, followed by cold. (I have my limits!)

A much better and more enjoyable way to gain the benefits of cold immersion, is to swim in open water. And for the weeks before we gained our puppy, Hermione, we did.

The sea! The sea! Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Since we can’t leave the wee mite, just yet, we have reverted to the shower for our daily cold dose, but it really isn’t the same.

Research on cold/wild water swimming has shown that it can bring considerable benefits by creating resilience to stress, better mental health and a more active immune system. One of the most significant benefits for me is that it decreases inflammation – the cause of so much MS/autoimmune chaos.

If you wish to read further about the benefits of cold immersion, I recommend the BBC science magazine: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/cold-water-swimming-why-an-icy-dip-is-good-for-your-mental-and-physical-health/

Though I cannot say that I exactly enjoy cold showers, they do serve their purpose. Since doing them regularly, my stress levels and anxiety are definitely reduced. I sleep better and I have a much greater sense of my capabilities. Managing a difficult, if small, challenge each morning, sets me up in a positive way. Most significantly, I have much more energy – needing less rest in the day and being alert for more of it.

For the course, yoga was the exercise component of the programme. Great! I thought to myself. I practise yoga often and this is something even I can do. Well, I was right and I was wrong. With my own meditation yoga, I do it lying down and am always very impressed with myself when I can get up again. It is extraordinarily gently and slow. Wim’s yoga, taught by an excellent instructor, was anything but. I was up and down like a yo-yo and every new lesson involved increasingly difficult poses.

As with all the above, it was taught in a way that allowed you to go at your own pace and honouring your own limits. Amazingly, I managed nearly everything, if only in their easier versions and was once again surprised at what was possible.

Can’t do that one – but I can dream! Image: MaryJoy Caballero on Unsplash

Commitment

The third pillar of Wim Hof’s method is commitment. And I can see why. It is only through constant repetition of activities that we gain strength and resilience; it is only through stretching ourselves that we grow.

Even with these excellent tools, there is a limit to where I can go. MS is peculiar in that one can train and train and get fitter, only to slide back . But I reason that if this training takes me a little further, that the slide back does not go all the way, I will still be better off. And any progression with a degenerative disease is definitely a plus.

I once wrote a quote for the children and stuck it on the fridge. It read: ‘Commitment is the key to happiness’. And I would stand by it today. Whatever path you take to improve or maintain your well-being, commitment is key. The plus side is that once a helpful action becomes habit, it becomes easier. The downside is that I shall be taking cold showers for a very long time.

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world
Eleanor Farjeon

Morning song

As a child, this was one of my favourite hymns, which I sang joyfully in assembly. The message was simple – mornings represented everything good. They were an opportunity for fresh starts and new adventures and I greeted them with excitement each day.

As I grew older, mornings became something that were met with dread: the teenage horror of getting up early for school; the six am feed when the baby had been awake all night; the crushing exhaustion as my MS insidiously shortened my days.

Now, I have returned to my childhood joy of greeting the morning. My sleep has been restored (I shall explain how in a later blog) and each day really is a blessing. So when I was up and enjoying my first mug of hot water and mindfully observing the garden in the sunshine, it was this song that came to mind.

Inspired by my favourite village, Alfriston, and the melody based on a traditional Scottish Gaelic tune ‘Bunessan’, it is perhaps not so surprising that it speaks to me.

Here’s the Cat Stevens’ version to get you into the mood.

A perfect celebration of the new day

Reclaim the light

It seems that mornings have fallen out of favour. After scrolling through three Google pages, expecting to find all sorts of fascinating facts and rituals based upon morning, I found only articles on the meaning and etymology of the word and the wonderfully droll comment, that ‘There is no ‘urban’ definition for morning because the type of people who speak ‘urban’ do not know what morning is.’

Out of the mouths of babes and urban dictionaries. As we’ve detached ourselves further and further from the natural cycles of day and night, the morning has become insignificant or an irritant to our busy man-made, artificially lit days.

It is time to reclaim the morning. It is, after all, the perfect moment to set our minds and bodies into balance. Grabbing a coffee and rushing to work does the opposite. We are wrong footed from the start and the subsequent hours are likely to be harried and stressful.

The solution is as simple as setting the alarm ten or fifteen minutes earlier and trying to keep to that schedule throughout the week – including weekends. I am not suggesting you get up at dawn (though I know some who do) but to ease yourself into rising at a slightly earlier hour. In doing so, we buy ourselves the most precious of commodities: time.

Since I have been getting up earlier, I have been able to indulge in quiet mindfulness. On Sunday morning, I sat for at least half an hour watching the garden come to life, listening to birdsong and the hum of bees in the lavender; watching the elegant duet of tiny butterflies in the marjoram and seeing the sleepy heads of the golden ragwort-like flowers gradually straighten and release their petals.

I do this each day and there are always blessings to be found. One day a giant dragonfly came and looped across the sky, another a long legged cricket hopped by my feet and today a tiny mouse was skittering across the back of the bench where I was sitting. Without stillness, without calm, such miracles will never be witnessed.

Okay, my field mouse wasn’t in a tulip – but just as cute! Image: Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Making the most of ‘free’ time

The extra time has also allowed me to do the exercises I need to optimise my health. The yoga and breathing takes about an hour, but this does not matter, because it is ‘free time’ stolen from time in bed. And the beauty of this virtuous circle is that this activity is the very thing that ensures my sleep is deep and nourishing.

Recently, the weather has been kind and there are few things more delightful than practising yoga on a dewy lawn. When I do the pose, ‘Salute the sun’, that is exactly what I am doing. When I lie back on my mat, I do not have to envisage being connected to the earth – I am, literally.

And since I am self-isolating, it also gives opportunities to go out. There are not many people about at seven-thirty in the morning and my husband and I have used this to our advantage to go for early morning sea swims. We usually have the beach to ourselves. We can relax and enjoy the experience thoroughly, since we do not have that background hum of anxiety to spoil it.

All the religious disciplines I know of call for an early start to the day, beginning with prayer. For some of you, that may well be the path you choose, for others our prayers can be more secular, a sense of gratitude for our continuing lives and the opportunity to begin again afresh. But whatever you do, I encourage you to see it as a ritual; an act full of meaning and significance. Then you really will enjoy the morning’s blessings.

The blackbird is speaking: enjoy his song.

Tag: yoga

Stepping into the Cold