Yoga Improves Lives of Breast Cancer Survivors

Iyengar Yoga Helps Breast Cancer Survivors Fight Back

A new study concludes that breast cancer survivors feel remarkably better when they do Iyengar yoga.

“Treatments including surgery, chemotherapy, hormonal therapies, and reconstructive procedures can leave breast cancer survivors feeling emotionally and physically traumatized,” says Sally E. Blank, PhD, a study coordinator and an associate professor in the college of pharmacy at Washington State University. “And for some women their sense of femininity is compromised.”

Of course calm, deep breathing can help breast cancer survivors –or anyone– relax, but Iyengar yoga is classified as moderate-intensity exercise. “We’re studying ‘active practice,’” says Blank. “That means that the women who participate in these Iyengar classes are doing standing, seated, twisting, inversion, and back-bending poses. We’re really asking these women to work, and to challenge themselves physically and emotionally.”

Created by B.K.S. Iyengar, this yoga practice isn’t the usual restorative program that may have previously been offered to cancer survivors; instead it can include postures that give participants a cardio workout that builds strength, flexibility, endurance, and balance. Other benefits of the Iyengar system is that it focuses attention on postural alignment and symmetry in the body, and it incorporates the use of props?like yoga blocks, belts, and chairs?to help people who are working their way back to wholeness. Iyengar teachers are trained to carefully sequence poses for their students, focusing on improving physical stamina, while raising confidence. Grappling with the physical and mental challenges of yoga decreases stress and the side effects of medical treatment, all of which seem to be just what the doctor doesn’t typically order, but the findings indicate that it works.

Blank says, “After eight weeks of Iyengar yoga, the small, beneficial changes may not amount to very much ‘clinically’ in the way that a medical practitioner might look at it; but those small changes are significant to the patient.” Referencing their scores at the beginning of the study, the nineteen women noted improvement, scoring lower on areas of pain, anxiety, and depression, and scoring higher on feelings of positive self-image and perceptions of survivorship. In comparison to other breast cancer survivors who didn’t participate in the yoga program, “The yoga students also faired better in a blood test that we use to measure how their immune cells kill tumor cells,” says Blank.

~ Michele Deppe