Sam Kesten: Ulcerative Colitis Relief

Yoga For Ulcerative Colitis
I started practicing yoga with your videos because I have a disease that brought me down to about 15-20% mobility.

This happened over the course of the last 7-8 months. So far, I’m back to about 85% mobility and I attribute most of my improvement to your videos. Thank you for putting out videos that literally changed my life. I have a severe form of Ulcerative Colitis (UC), a genetic autoimmune malfunction that causes (among other things) inflammation in the GI tract. It can also cause tremendous back pain (worse than breaking bones), and other physiologic problems. This year I began to develop back pain and inflammation in and around my coccyx which I believe is related to my UC, but about a dozen doctors are clueless.

After being in extreme pain for months, my doctors told me to just keep bed resting in hopes that it would improve, and that I need to change my expectations on what levels of physical activity I can do. I grew up racing bikes, backpacking and long distance sailing, I love being outside. My doctors told me that I could realistically hope for half mile walks around the neighborhood twice a week.

I tossed their advice out the window and started doing your yoga videos 2-3 hours per day. I’ve never used any other yoga/fitness video before, but I like how straightforward your videos are, and that they aren’t busy with unnecessary editing, effects or music. Within a month or two I was mostly functional again. It was a pretty immediate transformation. Now I do your pinkbike back pain video once in the morning, once after work (or before and after my gym routine after work), then once more before bed. I’m back to 85/90% functionality, and I have my life back.

Yoga For Ulcerative Colitis

The closest I can figure (none of my doctors have any answers), is that since my GI tract was/is inflamed, and that inflammation is also present in my lower spine (coccyx specifically), that my muscles were also becoming inflamed (especially my piriformis muscle). Your yoga routine for back pain and hip openers really focuses on the areas that cause my pain. The more yoga I did, the better I felt. Stumbling into yoga was a happy accident.

I’ve just downloaded the balance series, thank you. Looking forward to throwing some variety into my routine. Circus tricks have always been my favorite thing to do on bikes and snowboards, and your balance videos will play right into that.

You’ve done so much for me I can hardly explain how much I appreciate the content you put out. Living in pain is a unique and terrible thing. Now that I can move around again and have the body of a 33 year old instead of a 93 year old, I’ve returned to full time work, I’m biking and hiking again, and I’m going to ask my partner to marry me next month on our two week camping trip. You’ve done so much for me, thank you.

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