Breast cancer and yoga: Yoga Techniques

First of all, yoga is not a therapy and it is not designed to CURE people of anything, although it is said that it does stimulate the body to release its inherent ability to cure itself. On a physical level, yoga is a practice for people who are in good health and it aims to PREVENT illness: by optimizing every bodily system and the functioning of every bodily organ; by stretching deep muscles, fascias, ligaments and tendons; by correcting bad posture and shallow breathing. Yoga and meditation also work on an emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual level and what is equally important, they work on our energy. The "how" is explained in detail below.

YOGA AND ONCOLOGY PATIENTS
Regular yoga practice does have many benefits for oncology patients (many general studies have been done, just trawl the Internet and I'll post the links of any I come across) and from my own personal experience and study I know yoga boosts the immune system, it calms the nervous system and balances the glandular system. Being an oncology patient is no picnic, obviously an emotional roller coaster in itself, but when you're doing chemotherapy, good god, the reactions of your nervous system are off the charts. The drug attacks the nerve endings, which is why your hands and feet go numb, why you feel it working in your glands and organs, your face. In my first session I felt the chemo go straight to my ovaries. It wasn't very painful on a physical level, but psychologically it was. I deliberately didn't investigate more on this front because I didn't want to give my mind and nerves any more ideas than necessary. As for breast cancer patients, if the majority of breast tumours have a hormonal cause, then obviously yoga is very beneficial as it works on balancing your endocrine (glandular) system.

YOGA AND CHEMOTHERAPY

I am a yoga teacher and have practised yoga on an almost daily basis for over 10 years. However, while undergoing chemotherapy I found it nigh on impossible to practise yoga regularly. I'd be too tired, feel too rough, feel too down, feel too weak. Sometimes I didn't know if the challenge was more physical or more psychological, when I just felt like giving up, or giving in to feeling crap. Whatever the reasons, I do know that however little you do you receive the benefits (even if you don't feel them, see below). I had never been a very disciplined yogini at the best of times (true yogis are famed for their immense discipline) and chemotherapy, plus a heatwave in Barcelona, just did me in.
The joy of yoga in normal circumstances is that it taps into your blocked energy and you feel so alive afterwards (although it's a different rush to the endorphine high from sport), and this is the high that you come to expect from your yoga practice. It's a very big carrot indeed. Then along comes chemotherapy and it disconnects you from your energy and god knows what else and you don't feel half or any of the normal effects, and quite frankly, where's the joy in that? Makes it very hard to persevere.

A WORD OF WARNING: A very good recommendation I was given by a private oncologist: don't do yoga on the day you receive chemotherapy or the following day so as not to stimulate your circulation and encourage the drug to circulate round your body.
Another precaution I took during chemotherapy was to avoid exercises that stimulate the lymph system too much - I couldn't bring myself to do dynamic exercises that stimulated the area of the arm pits, as my lymph nodes were affected. The fear of mythical (?) metastasis.

YOGA AFTER SURGERY
Yoga teachers are not doctors and obviously you have to check with your doctor as to how soon and just what you can do after surgery.One conservative estimate is that after a tumorectomy and linfectomy recovery would be about a month. Everybody has their own pace of course.

YOGA, HEALTH AND BREAST CANCER