Yoga and Breast Cancer Recovery

Recovery from breast cancer doesn’t just mean beating the disease back into submission but also means getting back to total body wellness (one of the reasons we love Back in the Swing!).

A new study from the Journal for Clinical Oncology shows that Hatha Yoga has a significant impact on inflammation as well as fatigue for breast cancer survivors. This is great news! (It’s also not entirely new-news – prior studies have suggested/supported similar claims, so let’s say that yoga has been reinforced as a healthful idea. Again.) Hatha yoga is a gentle version of the age- old technique of poses, breathing and meditation.

The study showed in a group of former breast cancer patients (with a range of stages of diagnosis) that simply practicing yoga in classes for a few months had a lasting effect, even months after the classes were over. Yoga participants had lower levels of markers of inflammation in their blood and lower fatigue than the non-participants.

Any time we get to report on some good news for the breast health community, we get excited. Getting excited about holding still and taking deep relaxing breaths? The irony isn’t lost on us. OM!

Image Credit: Office yoga redux by Jenica26 via Flickr Copyright Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Originally published on 2/3/14 on mammographykc.com.