Yoga for Cancer Patients: No Mat Required

Long ago and far away, before I was a cancer patient (or even married to my current husband, or mother to my children), I taught yoga - and of course, I practiced yoga, almost every day. My yoga of choice was power yoga - an almost aerobic form of yoga as fitness (think Baron Baptiste), practiced in a very warm (but not Bikram hot) room with high humidity. At my peak, I could do all kinds of fun  asanas (poses) and had terrific breath control and great flexibility. I even took some acroyoga workshops, and I loved those! After finishing grad school and starting my career and getting married and having two babies, yoga took a bit of a back seat and I stopped teaching. But I still practiced several times a week and kept yoga close to my heart, part of my central identity. It was the first time, really, that I had excelled at any physical endeavor - I never played on any team sports or anything like that. So it was really a shift in my own thinking about what my body could do, and how I related to myself.

But then cancer showed up, and within a week, I'd had surgery to remove the primary mass in my colon. Surgery went well, but the incision split open and became infected, making yoga completely inaccessible for about 8 weeks. And at that point, I was taking a very powerful course of chemotherapy that left me noodled out, limp and lying around in the Colorado sunshine. A few weeks later, liver surgery and major complications stemming from it again stymied any attempt to get back to my mat.  The inability to practice made me feel depressed, anxious, and guilty. I wanted to return to my regular life. I wanted to be on my mat! I was devastated. If only, I kept thinking. If only I could get back to my mat. In the meantime, however, my cancer experience continued apace, and dragging myself out of bed was sometimes my big achievement of the day. Yoga, with all the relief and reassurance and self-worth that it promised me, felt exceedingly far away.

In the spring of 2014, though, one of my surgeons provided me with a new perspective. I was prepping for an intervention known as SBRT, in which highly targeted radiation is used to zap tumors. In preparation, I had to go and breathe while they took measurements so that they could create the perfect conditions for using this process. And it was funny: most people breathe between 12-16 times a minute. But I naturally had only about 8 to 10 respirations per minute.  Eventually, I had to concentrate on speeding up my breathing in order for the intervention to work. Dr. Schefter knew of my love of yoga and my intentions to return to my mat as soon as possible, and at some point she shook her head and explained that I'd incorporated yoga so deeply into my life that my very breath patterns had changed. I was yogic breathing all the time.

What a revelation this was to me! I hadn't abandoned yoga; instead, I had unconsciously shifted into "off the mat" mode. If you've ever been in a yoga class, you've probably had an instructor remind you that yoga is a practice intended to help you cope with real life in a more satisfying and healthy way than you otherwise might. "Off the Mat and Into the World!" proclaims a well known yoga non-profit, and books and webpages abound with advice on how to take your yoga off the mat.

I gotta be honest: I hadn't really thought much at all about the whole "off the mat" aspect of yoga before that moment. I talked about it when I taught classes, and nodded in agreement when other teachers made mention of it, and sure! I used some deep breathing when in labor with my daughter, but to me, yoga outside of the studio was a social opportunity and an attitude, a way to boost my confidence, strength, and flexibility. Yoga was fun. I loved being able to do a standing backbend at 35 years old. I loved the friends I made and the teaching. I loved making my partner in crime during work meetings at the studio laugh uncontrollably.  But that was about it. I only had so much time to think about it, after all. 

Cancer brought me back to yoga. As any cancer patient knows, cancer humbles you. It brings you - no, it fucking forces you - to take to your knees and a broken heart, with cries so forceful you find yourself saturated all the way through your shirt, over and over and over again. But after Tracey pointed out my reflexive yogic breathing, I often found respite from the terrors of stage IV cancer. Suddenly, all I really had to do to practice was close my eyes and breathe. Deeply. Slowly. It wasn't just the breath - the yoga - that calmed me. It was the joy and self-confidence associated with practicing that flooded through my fingertips. It was a reassurance. A touchstone. A guarantee that I hadn't completely lost myself and become a different person just because I had a disease. 

Have I been back on my mat? Well, yes and no. For several years, I couldn't practice any of the asanas, because I was recovering from two major surgeries, and then I wound up with pneumonitis and needed supplemental oxygen, and then I broke several ribs as a result of the radiation treatments I had undergone, and then and then and then... Sure, every couple of months during the early years of my diagnosis, I would tiptoe into the studio and try to get back in the swing of things. But I felt full of shame that my body no longer could reach full extension in poses that had once been easy for me. I didn't want anyone to see me, lest they make fun of me (an absurd thought, really).  But these experiences, as disappointing as they were, eventually also helped deepen my practice: not so much the physical aspects of my practice, but the mental and spiritual ones. As those aspects of my practice improved, I began to find a new route to my mat. Although I  have numerous injuries and limitations - deep muscle pains as my body works to keep those broken ribs of mine in place, chemo-induced neuropathy in my hands and feet, a host of breathing and lung problems that make supplemental oxygen my constant companion many a day - I started trying some new yoga practices and studios.  Last year, I began to focus on resuming a regular studio practice. It hasn't been a smooth process. There have been days, weeks, even months when I didn't make it to the studio a single time. But the intention of practicing on the reg have been and continue to guide me, and I feel confident that I'll get there. 

Why am I telling you all this? I don't really know. Yoga has been on my mind lately, and so has my blog. I've been struggling to find peace in the wake of the passing of another friend fighting colon cancer. Younger than me by several years, Elif passed away three days ago,  leaving behind the light of her life: her 10 year old daughter.  But do you know what she did while she lived? She danced. She practiced ballet (and she also painted) in her every free moment, for as long as she could, with energy drawn from deep inner wells that none of us can quite imagine until we're faced with finding those resources within ourselves. Her efforts brought her, I think, joy, insight - and maybe even a little peace. 

I guess yoga is my ballet...and I know that it can also be yours.  I'm a total beginner all over again, after all. And finally, finally, that's okay for me.  As a matter of fact, I'm sort of loving it! I'm also radically aware that I've managed to erase the lines of the mat from my mental image of where yoga "belongs" in my life - at least, most of the time. Yoga is with me wherever I go. It's all about the breath. "Lose the breath and lose the pose," I've heard time and again over the last few decades. I shrugged that off sometimes, in the old days. Not anymore. My yoga - and yours, too - is nothing without it.

Instead of trying to force myself into poses to show my capabilities, or attending a class because that's the one I've always attended, or taking poses and time in the studio for granted, I choose classes with deliberation.  Right now, I'm really loving Yin Yoga at Kindness Yoga. I can practice this method without tripping over my oxygen cannula, and it provides me the opportunity to reach deeply into my body - and my spirit. It inspires wellness. 

In the end, considered together, there's no way for me to deny it:  yoga and cancer have taught me to appreciate my body. Like so many women, I've spent far too many minutes of my life hating my appearance, lamenting extra pounds, wondering what certain people thought of me and whether I would look "good enough" for them.  Now, I sit and wonder: Why the hell did I do that? All my life long, before cancer and since, my systems have kept ticking away: heart beating, blood flowing, brain synapses firing, joints working. All this and SO much more despite the horrors of cancer, cancer treatments, and self-loathing. My body faithfully serves from the bottoms of my callused feet to the tippy-top of my quickly regenerating hairline. Just waiting for the day that I would be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, wow. Your body is amazing. Even more than that - some days I wake up (okay, maybe more during the Christmas season than other times) and think, My body and me - we really are a miracle. And so are you.

Happy Holidays - 

Jessica