I didn't think I was well enough to do daily yoga until I tried this app that's designed with people like me in mind

Health professionals often recommend yoga to help with chronic pain, poor mental health and limited mobility.

I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with yoga, enjoying it when I had the time but struggling to commit to a daily practice.

However, when I was diagnosed with an energy-limiting illness last year and my usual exercise routine became impossible to maintain, I found myself craving some sort of gentle movement that could help to lift my spirits without depleting my energy levels for days or weeks.

Enter, yoga teacher Sophia Drozd.

Drozd is the founder of the Yoga for Pain (Y4P) app ($9.99/£7.99 a month, seven-day free trial available) and is on a mission to make the practice more accessible for people with chronic illness. Drozd herself has multiple chronic pain conditions, which means that she appreciates first-hand just how tough it can be to get up and move some days.

“I've actually lived with pain for about 15 years,” she says. “I was a yoga teacher already, and I had extensive knowledge of yoga of poses within different styles and breathwork techniques.

“Through those years, yoga has been a big tool for me in managing pain.”

Despite that experience, Drozd explains that it can be difficult to practice traditional yoga when you are living with a disability, but wanted to share how she had used it to help her so it could do the same for others.

“Yoga can help to build strength as well as flexibility, which can release tension in muscles and joints” says Drozd. “It can then help to reduce stress which can make you more accepting of your condition. It can help regulate your mood, help to reduce inflammation through movement.”

Yoga requires a degree of focus, which can feel a lot when you experience brain fog, but this can help to improve brain function which subsequently can help us to manage continued pain.

“The breathwork of yoga can help us to regulate the sensations of pain and improve our sleep quality encouraging our bodies to find a sense of calmness and relaxation,” adds Drozd.

“And then meditation, which is another one of the eight limbs of yoga, can contribute to the cognitive reframing abilities helping us to observe and accept our pain.”

After chatting with Drozd, I promised her I would commit to a daily practice. Here's what I found using the app.

It’s easy to find something that suits your situation

The app is laid out in a way that helps you locate what will work for you. In the yoga for pain section I found classes designed for people with my condition, but you can also search by body part (so yoga for hip pain, or yoga for knee pain).

Or if you want to just do meditation, breathwork or yoga from a chair, there are sections dedicated to these formats.

Thanks to my condition, I have to rest in the middle of my work day, sometimes more than once, and I can wake up again feeling groggy and unrefreshed. The Y4P app features a short 10-minute practice that includes gentle stretching. It feels great but doesn’t make me sore for days.

I also tried a bed yoga session and a class on yoga for fatigue—both of which were around 30 minutes long and led by Drozd. I enjoyed these and will do them again, but I kept coming back to the 10-minute practice after I nap.

It speaks the language of chronic illness

Many people with chronic conditions or disabilities use the spoon metaphor to illustrate their capacity, which can be depleted by physical, emotional, intellectual or social exertion.

For instance, having a shower might cost someone one or two spoons on a good day, and five or six spoons on a bad day. On bad days, you ration your spoons for the important stuff, like going to the bathroom.

The spoon theory has been incorporated into the Y4P app using spoon emojis next to class titles to indicate how taxing a class will be. A 30-minute flow where you stand up and sit down multiple times will cost the maximum of three spoons—only attempt on a good day—but a seated breathwork or short bed yoga practice might only cost one spoon and can be slotted into even the most low-energy days.

You may think that with already limited energy, you’d want to spend it on the most fun and fulfilling things possible—eating chocolate, fussing over a pet, or cuddling a partner, but when you're only spending spoons on those things, self-care tends to slip off the radar.

Drozd explains that even a gentle 10-minute breathwork practice when you wake up encourages you to check in with your body, breathe consciously and mentally check in with yourself, which is a basic, but valuable act of self-care.

This process can help you to better understand your condition, your pain and your capacity, and how these things may vary from day to day.

Drozd is a compassionate, friendly host

It may just be my personality, but sometimes I just do not gel with online instructors. Drozd is like me—someone with a chronic illness who lives each day within a limited window of energy—and I took to her style of teaching. She gives options for most movements and always encourages users to take it slowly and only do what is comfortable.

Often, when yoga is recommended by health professionals, it’s given some sort of mystical quality and you find yourself thinking “oh, maybe this will fix me.” Drozd and I have both experienced this, but she was extremely clear: yoga will not fix your condition, but it may help you to live with it.

About our expert

About our expert

Sophia Drozd

Sophia Drozd is the owner and founder of Yoga for Pain (Y4P), and is a qualified yoga teacher, lifelong practitioner and chronic pain warrior. Diagnosed with fibromyalgia, scoliosis and carpel tunnel syndrome, Drozd has lived with pain all of her adult life. She is on a mission to share Y4P, a pioneering yoga app for the chronic pain community, which uses yoga and breathwork to ease pain, paving the way for a more mobile and fulfilling life for its users.