Tag: yoga

Yoga with Goats (and T1D)

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It seems like a new fitness trend is “going viral” every week: between aerial silks, SoulCycle, and at-home fitness mirrors (in which a real trainer appears in your mirror and you get to watch yourself while they talk you through the workout – whoa FUTURISTIC right?), there is a plethora of ways to get physical that don’t involve standard, boring weights or treadmills.

I recently had the opportunity to try one of the most random, and possibly cutest, fitness craze…goat yoga. Yep. Yoga, but with goats.

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All downward dogs should be called downward goats when doing a goat yoga class.

It’s exactly what it sounds like. You move through a series of yoga poses, but there just happens to be adorable baby goats roaming around the class. They aren’t shy about making their presence known, either. When they aren’t bleating or searching for goat treats under your yoga mat, they’re actually JUMPING ON TOP OF YOU. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a tabletop pose (see my photo, above), downward dog, child’s pose…they’ll find a way to climb on you and turn you into their personal jungle gym.

It was a little disconcerting at first, and it was damn difficult to focus on flowing through yoga poses because you didn’t know if or when a goat would hop on your back or accidentally brush up against you with its horns.

And it was virtually IMPOSSIBLE when my blood sugar went low halfway through the class.

I knew that I was starting to feel off after I completed a short series of bird-dog crunches. I felt oddly exhausted after doing five on each side, so I went to go check my CGM data on my phone when I realized I didn’t have access to any, because I’d just inserted a new sensor that morning and the warm-up period wouldn’t be complete until the end of the goat yoga class.

Great timing on that one, Molly.

I decided to give it a few minutes before I took any corrective measures. So I just sat there, watching people struggle to get bendy with goats running amok. It was really pretty funny, but my sense of humor was shot, thanks to my low blood sugar.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that the goat factor also prevented me from correcting my low right away, but…well, those things were germy. They’re farm animals, of course they will be messy and smelly. But they were literally peeing and pooping on our yoga mats, and precariously closely to our clothes/bodies. Forget feeling like I needed to sanitize my mat when the class was over – I felt like I needed to power wash MYSELF, at max intensity, just so I could feel totally clean again. So the prospect of checking my blood sugar in the middle of everything seemed absolutely unsanitary and virtually impossible.

But…like, I had to suck it up. After all, I didn’t want to do that thing that goats do, which is faint. Except they do it in a semi-cute way, and because they’re born with a condition that causes muscles to seize up when they’re startled. And there was no way I was about to faint due to a stinkin’ low blood sugar in front of a bunch of strangers and goats.

So I forced myself to navigate to the clean, protected patch of land that my backpack was perched on, dodging poop balls on the way over, and immediately grabbed my hand sanitizer so I could cleanse myself before reaching into my backpack and consuming a small box of yogurt-covered raisins. I still felt gross about it, but I did the right thing and took care of myself.

And I’m happy to report that by the end of the class, my blood sugar was on an upswing and not one goat had peed or pooed directly on me. Sweet success!

 

Hot Yoga: A New Win for my Diabetes

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Normally, if you asked me if I would willingly go into a 105 degrees Fahrenheit room for 90 minutes for a workout, I’d say ohh HELL nawwww before you had the chance to finish asking your question.

I’m not someone who has a passion for exercising. I tolerate it. I try to do it daily for two very important reasons: 1) It keeps me in shape and 2) it helps me manage my blood sugars better. Otherwise, there’s very little about exercise that I actually enjoy. I’m not a fan of feeling out-of-breath for long periods of time. I have a love-hate relationship with the post-workout soreness that floods my body after a particularly intense session. And I definitely cannot stand sweating – on just about any given day, I’d rather be freezing cold and wearing layers of clothing than dripping in sweat.

All that said, though, I willingly participated in a fitness class called Bikram yoga…which is also known as hot yoga because you’re in a temperature-controlled room heated exactly to 105 degrees for the duration of the workout. For 90 minutes, you slowly move through 26 poses, and that’s that.

I wasn’t worried about the latter; it was the former that had me sweating (both literally and figuratively). I wondered whether I’d be able to tolerate the heat for a full hour and a half. I also had concerns about my diabetes devices – would I be sweating so much that they would fall off? Would they be able to stay safely in the room with me, or would the heat be too extreme for them? And how would my body and blood sugars respond to the hot yoga, anyways?

I knew the only way to get answers to my questions was to show up for class and find out for myself.

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Me, post-class, dripping in sweat in my car. Next time, I’m bringing a change of clothes.

And that’s exactly what I did. I went to a morning class with my stomach empty and my backpack full of diabetes supplies. My blood sugars tend to respond better to exercise when I don’t have any food in my system or insulin on board, so I made it a point to wait to eat my breakfast after yoga instead of before. But I still wasn’t entirely sure if or how my blood sugar might react to a brand new kind of workout, so I wanted to be armed with several different low snacks. I felt fairly confident about its stability, though, as I headed into the class sitting pretty at 110 mg/dL.

In addition to extra diabetes supplies, I also thought to bring with me some water that I’d filled and frozen the night before the class so I could stay hydrated throughout it with water that was sure to be extra refreshing in the heat.

Even though I had all this stuff with me, I chose to leave most of it in a cubby outside the studio, save for my CGM receiver, a tube of glucose tablets, and my water bottle. I didn’t want to take any chances with my cell phone, PDM, or glucometer and expose them to the heat – I have firsthand experience with an overheated cell phone, and while it does eventually cool back down its own, overheating my devices is not something I’d actively seek to do. I was taking a bit of a risk with the CGM receiver, but since I have the Dexcom app on my cell phone, it’s not like I’d be at a huge disadvantage if something were to happen to my receiver.

So with my gear in hand, I stepped foot into the yoga studio…and immediately started sweating. Yes, that quickly! It was a heavy, stifling, and moist heat – the exact kind that I hate the most. I started to question whether I had the endurance to even sit in this heat for 90 minutes, let alone move seamlessly through yoga poses in it. In the minutes before the class began, I sipped water slowly and told myself that above everything else, I needed to listen to my body throughout the class. I started to feel better as I reassured myself that it would be perfectly acceptable to walk out should I start to feel light-headed, low, queasy, or anything else abnormal.

Fortunately, though, an exit plan wasn’t needed as I made it through the full class! That’s not to say it wasn’t challenging or extremely sweaty – seriously, my body was so covered in sweat that it looked like I’d just come out of a swimming pool – but I proved to myself that I could do it. And the best part was that my blood sugar behaved beautifully: As a reminder, it was 110 mg/dL at 8:30 A.M. Class started at 9 and lasted until 10:30 A.M. I was home by 11 and when I checked my blood sugar there, I was at 118 mg/dL. I couldn’t have asked for better pre-, mid-, and post-workout blood sugar levels.

Was it scary to try this new, moderately intense exercise? Yes. Was I concerned about my diabetes before, during, and after the class? Yes. But was it all worth it? I’d say yes. I overcame my fears and was met by blood sugar success, making hot yoga a diabetes win in my book.

Sun Salutations and Stable BG: Yoga Does the Trick for my Diabetes

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Whoa, who’s that dork doing a high-speed yoga routine up there?

Hi, it’s me!!

It’s kind of weird to watch a video of yourself doing yoga – especially when you see how awkward you look because the time-lapse feature on your iPhone sped it up so much.

So why did I film myself doing a yoga routine? Once I get past my self-consciousness, I look at the video to see what needs adjusting; for instance, I could sink a little deeper when I’m in my chair pose. I could also stand to slide my foot a bit higher up my leg, perhaps balance it on my thigh, when I’m in the tree pose.

Aside from looking for what needs to be improved, filming the routine also helps me understand why I do yoga. It shows me how my flexibility has increased, as well as my balance. I also realize that it shouldn’t be a surprise to me that I worked up a sweat during this practice – I’m constantly shifting from the ground to standing to various other poses. My muscles are stretching out and getting warm from the movements, so of course I’m giving my body a workout in the process.

And in turn, I’m also keeping my blood sugar stable. The yoga poses combined with controlled breathing and mind wandering does wonders for both my diabetes and my mental health. More often than not, I ride a straight line on my CGM throughout a yoga practice. It’s a great way to get in the right frame of mind at the start of a day, or unwind at the end of a long one.

Plus, there’s nothing like sinking into child’s pose (lying face down on the mat with your arms extended, your knees apart, and your rear in contact with your heels) or taking a nice long savasana (or corpse pose, in which you lie face up with your eyes closed, arms at your side, with fingers and toes spread open – without letting your muscles tense up) at the end of a practice to reset the mind.

Can’t beat the benefits of yoga.