Yoga for a cancer survivor

I have logged over seventeen years as a cancer survivor.  Every passing year is an occasion to celebrate, and it’s also an opportunity to think about the things I’ve incorporated into my life since my cancer treatment ended.  Many things have contributed to my feelings of wellness and gratitude since that year of diagnosis, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.  One of the most important has been the incorporation of yoga into my life.   The benefits of yoga are far greater than I could have imagined when I began.  I has provided me with some tools that I can carry forward into the next decades of my life.  It can help you, too!
 
One of the most fundamental tools that yoga can give you is breath awareness and control.  The breath is a fascinating tool, as it is the only process in our body that is both voluntary and involuntary (or autonomic). This means we can control it, but if we don’t, it will still work.  If you sit in a resting position and just become still, your breath will naturally flow in and out of your lungs.  On the other hand, you can take a breath in, (slowly or quickly),  hold, release it in a burst or in a long slow exhale.  Our ability to control our breath is a powerful mechanism for focusing our attention, calming our mind, relaxing our body, relieving anxiety, and more.  And it turns out that if you can breathe, you have a yoga body, so anyone can do yoga!
 
Not only does everyone breathe, but most of us develop tight muscles and joints. As we all know, when we are anxious or stressed, our muscles can contract and hold the tension.  You might have a common site of tension when you’re stressed – maybe it’s your neck, your shoulders, or your lower back.  With yoga, you can learn to can target these specific areas and do poses that release the muscles and bring warmth and relaxation to these areas. These techniques can be used beyond the yoga mat, sitting at your kitchen table or desk, driving (for a few yoga techniques!), or before going to bed.  They can help you sleep, too.
 
Beyond releasing muscle and joint tension, yoga provides a tool for relaxation of the mind. We can focus on breathing while sitting in stillness,  or while doing yoga postures. At the end of a yoga session, we lie down in  “corpse pose” (on our backs, with legs and arms stretched out, palms to the ceiling) and close our eyes.  There are various scripts that the instructor might use to help us get to a totally relaxed state.  She might, for instance, start at the toes and work up, suggesting relaxation in every part of the body, for instance, “My feet are completely relaxed……my ankles are completely relaxed……my knees are complete relaxed…..” etc.  Or she might take us through a breathing exercise where, with long, slow breaths, we visualize inhaling our own personal sunlight and bringing it to every part of our body, then releasing it back to the universe.  Or she might ask us to think of things that we are grateful for in this moment, breathing in gratitude and breathing out gratitude. 
 
These are only three of the tools that yoga has brought me.  They have become part of my wellness plan, and more importantly, they are things that I do somewhat automatically now, to help me stay balanced, relaxed, and focused.