I have been practicing since March 2009 and tonight will be my 445th Bikram class in 445 days.

I've had psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis for 27 years (I'm only 40, BTW). The arthritis is very similar to rheumatoid arthritis - basically, my immune system freaks out a bit and attacks my joints. I had about 10-15% of my skin involved when it was at its worst. It had gotten bad enough that the only medications that would work for me were the relatively new biologics - specifically Enbrel - which suppress the immune system by interrupting a specific component in the inflammation process. Enbrel also has some rare, but nasty, potential side effects like cancer (lymphoma) and multiple sclerosis-like neurological disorders. For a little over 5 years, I was on double the recommended does of Enbrel to control my symptoms.

The first 6 months of Bikram sucked. My body fought the yoga as I was trying to get my damaged joints to open back up. The arthritis would pick joints at random to attack. This made some postures difficult to impossible to do. I still end up just laying on my arms most of the time in Locust Pose - primarily due to pain/arthritis in my elbows. But, the frequency of classes where I can actually get my legs up in Locust is slowly increasing.

I have not needed any Enbrel for my psoriasis/arthritis since October 2009. The arthritis isn't completely gone, but I can now manage it with ibuprofen. My psoriasis has gone from covering 10+% of my body to covering less than 3%. I have recovered a tremendous amount of PAIN FREE range of movement in all of my major joints. My yoga isn't pretty and I have a LONG way to go in most of the poses... but, for me, the yoga is more about my health and how I feel than about whether or not I can do a standing split in Floor Bow or can touch my head to my knee in Standing Head To Knee. (I'm nowhere close to being able to do either of those, BTW)

My body needs the heat and humidity to really loosen up my joints/muscles. We had a week where the humidifier wasn't working well and I could feel my joints stiffening up day to day. I also do the yoga in my hotel room when I'm traveling just to keep from losing too much ground by not being able to get to a studio.

For me and my problems, the yoga is 90 minutes of medicine I need every day in order to maintain my quality of life. Despite my frequency of practice, I'm not one of the hardcore Bikram Kool Aid drinkers. Bikram works for my problems and it may work for other people's problems. There are things that I don't like about the Bikram organization as well as some things about my own studio... but I go for the heat and the dialogue, not the drama, issues, etc.

The hardest part of the yoga for me sometimes is just getting in the car to go to the studio! Even if I'm tired, or didn't get to eat and drink like I'm supposed to, etc. I still go and just do as much of the yoga as I can. I always get some benefit out of even my worst classes. I don't beat myself up about having a "bad" class. The yoga is what it is for that day and it will be different tomorrow.

 Good luck with your challenge!