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"I don’t, personally, believe in Chiropractic, Aromatherapy, Psychiatry, Astrology, Reflexology (get a grip it’s your foot for gods sake) Psychology, Sociology (it’s just philosophy for the impatient), elves, Homeopathy, Herbalism, the power of mime, Osteopathy, Iridology or Crystal Healing. In short I think the world is a material place. Magical, but fundamentally material.
I started doing a type of Hot Yoga (not Bikram), 3 years ago because I wanted to exercise in a way that would not put undue pressure on my slightly tiring joints, or my quite profoundly damaged back. It was good, until I slipped another disc. I didn’t blame ‘the yoga’. I knew enough to know that you could slip a disc picking up a cushion...
I suppose I lost a little patience with that kind of yoga. I still quite enjoyed doing it but given the illusion of benign movement one had to buy into to carry on doing it, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. It was all a bit ‘Emperors New Clothes’ for me, a bit like lying.
So I thought I’d try Bikram. Didn’t help at first, which was OK, in fact my sciatica got worse. If I got through a class I’d have to sit down every 70-80 yards on the way home because it hurt so much. In truth I think I carried on doing it not in the hope that it would make the sciatica go, or that it would make the long term back problem underlying it, for which I was awaiting surgery, improve but out of pure bloody mindedness. I couldn’t stand the thought of not exercising and just letting things get worse and also couldn’t bare the idea of just doing nothing but wait for a doctor.
And anyway I liked doing the yoga and I liked the attitude of the various teachers. Nobody made any rash promises. I wasn’t going to get my hair back for example – harsh but true – nor grow the knees of a 24 year old – a relief in a way as I had nowhere to put them. They just encouraged, and smiled and told you why what you were trying to do might help.
They all taught the same things albeit in slightly different ways and oddly you got to emphasise different Asanas with different teachers which was helpful. Anyway I enjoyed coming in standing in the corner and falling over 2 or 3 times a week. I thought that it was more likely to do good then harm because the exercises made physical sense but I wasn’t expecting ‘a cure’ or a miracle, I was just hoping not to get too fat while waiting for an operation.
But after about 6 or 7 months, things did start to change. Not always for the best. Sometimes my back got bad after a session and I couldn’t go for a week, a couple of times it went into spasm and I couldn’t do anything for a couple of days. When I was able I’d go back and try again, fall over again and wait for my back to tell me to stop. And when it did I would listen…. But when I went back I could move a little better, and surprisingly – no really – I could eventually do postures that I couldn’t have ever imagined doing before. Then I noticed that despite the back hurting I found I didn’t need to sit down after 70-80 yards, In fact I could walk 100 yards and then 200 yards and finally all the way home. The back still hurt sometimes and there were days when I’d decide not to go to yoga even though I wanted to because I knew it would do harm rather then good. But the sciatica went. I mean completely went. Now far be it from me to sound like Thora Hird recommending stair lifts – Do you know what it is like to be in pain for 2 years and then not to be in pain? It’s bloody brilliant!
If you have ever had sciatica, and tried everything from anti-inflammatorys to chiropractic, acupuncture to surgery you will know what I mean when I say it changed everything. My range of movement improved, as did my mood (you don’t realise just how ‘glass half empty’ you can get with chronic pain) I even played a couple of games of football. And I can go out walking, hell if I wanted to I could go out hopping. It’s just that I don’t want to.
I still have a bad back and I’m still awaiting surgery but I won’t have the operation. I’ve had back surgery before and doing Bikram is better. It isn’t a miracle waiting to cure you of your ills instantly and if you want it to have an effect you need to do it a while and just see what happens and listen to your body (the teachers say that a lot and they are right, even when your body says 'not today'). But it is something I did to make things better, and not just a little bit better but enormously, immeasurably, profoundly better. I still fall over, I hurt my knee recently and any hope of doing another toe stand has vanished for another 3 or 4 months I expect. But I don’t much care. I will do this for, I hope the rest of my life. Certainly for as long as I am able to either find my way to a studio or put my own shorts on. I like everything about it and I like the effect it has on me but mostly I like the fact that despite the fact I tried everything to get rid of sciatic pain from acupuncture to Chinese bloody herbalism, doing Bikram for a year did it."
Mark Radcliffe 7th Nov 2005
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