Yoga

When I first started going to the chiropractor with all my aches and pains and tight back she would always tell me, "You should do some Yoga." I would smile, but in my mind was thinking, "Yoga is for people who play guitars under trees, wear knit caps in the summer, and never wear shoes."

In all my research I ran across book after book that said, "Yoga for PCOS can be very beneficial." I wasn't completely convinced. How can breathing and standing on your head be beneficial? So I randomly did an amazon search on fertility yoga on Amazon. There's a couple out there, but Restoring Fertility was made to be done with the cycle, which being an NFP person made sense to me. I went to their website and looked at the FAQs and found a post that said two out of the three women instructors on the DVD became pregnant shortly after doing the series.....I was sold!

It's not the cheapest set you'll ever buy, and I'm not pregnant yet, but it is amazing how much better I feel afterwards. I've always had tight muscles, I'm not sure if that's a PCOS thing or not, but my back is always tight and during the school year that's where I carry all my stress. After doing 1/2 hour of this yoga my back feels so much better!

The website Restoring Fertility discusses PCOS briefly and how to do the set if you are not ovulating. It encourages people with PCOS to do the DVDs twice a day to help restore fertility. I was doing that for awhile, but quite honestly, that becomes a lot of time, so I tried to do it once a day. I wasn't always perfect, and there were definitely times when I said, "Screw it, it's not working." but when I started seeing some ovulation I started up again. There's nothing on these DVDs that's overly difficult. There is some intense stretching, but they are so good at showing and explaining modifications. If you're not ovulating you do the Follicle Development one or the Ovulation one until you see ovulation. Then you can start doing the cycle.

Some people might get results right away from doing Yoga. I know in the book Inconceivable: A Woman's Triumph over Infertility  She talks about the many benefits that Yoga gave her. I would recommend that book as a great inspiration to those of you TTC. It's not directly about PCOS, but is a great book about a journey through infertility.


If there's one thing I know about most of us with PCOS it's that stress is just a part of us. Not only do we deal with the every day stress of work, family, and life, but we also throw this syndrome into the mix. A syndrome for which there is not a cure and we are often sent fending for ourselves trying to find the answers. That's a whole added element of stress that we often don't talk about because we're embarrassed. So, even if you don't believe that Yoga will turn your life around at least try it for some stress relief. This allows you to have 1/2 completely devoted to you, and to allow you to free your mind of all the stress.

Believe me, "freeing your mind" is not easy. There's a couple different references used for the women's mind: a ball of yarn, spaghetti, or a ball of wire. All of these refer to the fact that one thought always leads to another, and another, and another. Watch your husband sitting in front of the TV sometime. His brain is referred to as a waffle, or boxes. Nothing touches in that brain, and there's even a little box where he can think about nothing. Men are probably amazing at yoga and relieving stress because they have the ability to think about absolutely nothing. My husband and I have a joke about me trying to be more like a man by thinking about nothing. :) It's not easy!!

Another book that helped me to focus more on clearing my mind was Fully Fertily: A 12 week Holistic Plan for Optimum Fertility. This books goes through diet and exercise, but really dives into Yoga. For me there were some parts that were a little over the top, but the main advise I took away was to free the mind during yoga by simply saying, "I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out." and try to keep your mind focused on that breath.

It sounds stupid, and I kind of felt stupid the first time I did it, but it totally worked....well mostly, I kind of thought I was amazing in able to still be saying that in the back of my mind while I was thinking about something else. I'm a work in progress :)

So, if you're not doing yoga, I would recommend adding it when you can. Even if it's once a week, I just don't believe that all these books would recommend it if it didn't do something. Keep the faith!!