yoga

i absolutely love yoga. my favorite dvds that i do are by mark blanchard. he's this crazy flexible guy in his thirties who makes power yoga dvds. they are really challenging and make my arms fall off. i love it. each video is 1.5 hours and by the end, i feel so refreshed and relaxed.

i taught yoga for a while in college and the craziest class i had was parent/child yoga. all the kids were 3-5 and it was chaos. we'd make a lot of animal noises depending on what pose we did (dolphin, cobra, cat, cow). it was really funny though. the kids would be in a pose for like 3 seconds then all of a sudden do 3 cartwheels and a split and then grab an exercise ball off the wall. the parents could not control their kids at all and would just continue the class like they weren't even there.

Bikram is great for my UC. For 90 minutes I felt symptom free, and for hours after I felt invincible! It goes away eventually but your mind is relaxed and that is always a good thing =)

I do hot yoga and I love it!  I feel the heat really relaxes my muscles and helps keep me from getting injured. I also have really tight muscles, tight joints and aches and pains from my UC and I'm sure from Prednisone use.  I tend to get injured easily as I take cardio classes too. But the hot yoga really seems to help my body. I've never felt worse after taking it and I feel it sort of 'cleanses' my body too.  It isn't for everybody as it gets up to 86F degrees, at least in the classes I take.  But for me I find it really helps!

ITSALWAYS,

What kind of meditation do you do before getting out of bed?

I love Rodney Yee yoga dvds. I used to take yoga classes and really miss it but there arent any good ones offered in my town. Ive always wanted to try bikram yoga. There is a class half hour from here. If I ever get to feeling better, maybe I will check that out.

Thank you!