yoga (at the easiest and gentlest level) every other day. only three people with Fibro (out of thousand) responded and said that they never got pain after a session. Is it just me? Is it my age (62)? Is it something else? Does anyone here have similar reactions to movement?
I was searching the web for the same answers when i read this post. For me, I experience the most after activity pain when I've gone to far.
What works for me was something a PT suggested; 20 mins doing, 20 mins resting is what's currently working. Maybe consider trying a different exercise? swimming? I found yoga quite painful myself. I did thai chi for a while. on good days i dance to music... just keep moving forward
Hi saluna420, and welcome
- nice how you found us, registered and posted only three hours after longtimer's fresh post!
Quite a few people post similarly here, no way is it just you, longtimer! Ah,
@fimi's also chimed in whilst I was forgetting to finish the post...
It takes about 5-10 minutes to "overdo me", ripping me up, even making me cry for pain, cramping etc. if I do long stretches (yin yoga), slow moves (tai chi/qi gong, even in a fibro clinic) & a neck/back exercise class for people 20 years older than me.
The problems are due to changed body senses and changed knowledge from experience:
1) While we are doing something, the cortisol/adrenaline may stop us from feeling a lot of the pain, plus
2) we are used to pushing thru pain from before fibro (part of its cause?) and the risk of a flare may be small or worth it.
This means we need to learn from our new experiences to sense as well as learn off by heart where our
sweet spots, our limits, and our risks are, their range on bad "days" and on good "days" (i.e. hours, situations, when we've already done something or we haven't). How many seconds or minutes we can do something, how much break we need immediately after that, so when we can start again - seconds, minutes, hours or days. Best to avoid anything that kicks in next day, I'd suggest.
So like with anything with/to which we treat ourselves - food, meds, supps,
whilst they all can be triggers, it's a matter of finding out our very own
dosage at which they aren't a symptom trigger.
Personally I find I can do anything, but only in baby steps = tiny stints (seconds or minutes), or with easement (e.g. tai chi for 2 minutes lying on my back). And increasing that whenever I'm feeling better. But regularly. After 1.5y of cryotherapy with expert acupressure, we'd got my local pains down to zero, and to make sure I tallied 2 to 5 hours of "self-physio" every single day - which includes various kinds of stretching, breathing exercises, relaxation methods, cold showering, on good days a "7 minute scientific workout" or part of it. (Not counting 'sports' like the table tennis I manage 20-50 minutes most days, or cycling.) But "20 minutes doing and 20 minutes" resting is far beyond most of my "self-physio". Most exercises I can do in 20 second stints for about 3 or 5 minutes. Most of them I do while I'm doing other things - typing, waiting, eating....
As I now quickly get any new local problems down and "just" have severe fatigue and Ache, I'm going easy on exercises ("only" an hour a day), but as soon as anything crops up, I clamp down on it immediately. I really need to get my "sports" up further somehow, for general health as well as well as my lipids, but Chinese acupuncture for my severe MCAS flare is having difficulty getting my mobility/energy up from 10% to at the moment around 20%.