I only have one kidney…

Hello Kimberley

Thank you for posting your interesting question. I think that physical pressure exerted by the movements is likely never to pose a risk with these yoga poses unless you are practising with poor alignment and technique. That is certainly something that I can help you with here and with the resources I provide (of all forms, many of them free!).

I would think that the biggest risk to you is not that of physical pressure but the following issues of:
>> Hydration
>> Replenishment of electrolytes etc for the kidneys metabolism and processing for the body’s needs – problems of hyponatremia
>> Problems with heat exhaustion and the effect on the major systems in the body.

Many studios heat the room way too high. Many of the tens of thousands who read this forum regularly are in a chronic state of mild heat exhaustion. This happens because the heat and moisture (combined to be referred to as the Heat Index) create conditions that are too extreme for the body.

I advocate a room heated to body temperature (and possibly a little more) together with middling ranges of moisture. Unfortunately many studios follow the myth, borne from an arbitrary retrospective utterance of the supposedly required temperature for this yoga and have subsequently taken it gospel, that the temperature needs to be 105 degrees F. This is too high and again, I don’t suggest you continually subject yourself to this temperature especially if you are going daily or 5 or more times per week.

There is the chance to recover if you have time between classes of a day or more but consistent regular exposure to high heat is definitely not for everyone. Trouble is you can’t tell who is a candidate who can cope with extra exposure.

I strongly suggest you look up 2 things on the internet. 1) heat exhaustion and 2) hyponatremia. The latter is a condition of low salt (specifically low sodium). Your body has the ability to regulate its levels of salt but ONLY if you give it the salt in the first place. Given you only have one kidney, you would possibly need to compensate. I don’t know enough about one-kidney systems to be definitive at all. You do of course, have one kidney doing the work of two. So you want that work to be easy, stress-free, not out of the ordinary.

But I do know that you don’t die from too much salt (except in rare systemic conditions which you don’t have) but you can die from too little salt. Losing water in sweat and the minerals happens in hot yoga faster than regular sweating. Salt must be replenished. The problem is that mostly it’s just the rehydration that is spoken about. The thing you MUST know as a beginner too (my final point for now) is that during the first 2 weeks of your practice, while your body is acclimatising, you are likely losing more salt than regular students. So please take some sea salt (or electrolyte products) now at this crucial time.

Remember to do your homework. You’ll find the lists of signs and symptoms overlap a fair bit. So it pays to know the kinds of things you should be wary of.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂