Yoga and Your Health Dealing with Fibromyalgia

By JJ Gormley

I have noticed an increasing number of my yoga students telling me that they have Fibromyalgia. I've researched the diagnosis and treatment of this disease in both the traditional and alternative worlds of medicine. Based on my growing experience with students suffering from Fibromyalgia, I've arrived at my own set of conclusions about this disease and ways of using yoga to help alleviate its symptoms. A caveat is needed here, however. I am not saying that I've discovered a cure nor even the reason why people get this disease. What follows are simply some collected observations from what I've experienced in working with Fibromyalgia sufferers. I pass them along not only for any specific merit they may have, but because I think they speak generally about the overall benefits of yoga in our lives.

Fibromyalgia comes from the Latin fibro, meaning connective tissue such as tendons and ligaments, myo meaning muscular, and algia, meaning pain. Sufferers experience chronic pain in their muscles and joints. Typically, the medical establishment treats this chronic pain most commonly with anti-inflammatory drugs, tricyclic antidepressants, acetaminophen, non-narcotic analgesics, and/or anti-anxiety agents. The pain often leads to depression and chronic fatigue, and inability to function mentally at work, with all its attendant consequences. Typically, the pain can leave the sufferer only able to sleep for a couple to a few hours at night, without the benefits of restorative sleep to ease the mind.

Conventional and alternative treatment therapies generally have not produced lasting relief for Fibromyalgia sufferers. Modern Medicine Magazine reports that systematic follow-up studies of patients using conventional treatments at Fibromyalgia specialty clinics show no overall improvement over the baseline condition, although different patients improved and deteriorated in specific areas. Chiropractic adjustments and acupuncture treatments are sometimes sought to try and alleviate pain, but from what I've been told by my yoga students, the relief is only temporary.

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