Healing With Yoga

When I stepped into my first yoga class one cold and dark December night, it had been a year since my unilateral mastectomy surgery and I was literally still reeling from the barrage of breast cancer treatments I'd been through.   In fact, I was still receiving infusions of Herceptin (a type of targeted chemotherapy for my specific type of breast cancer) every three weeks.

Let's just say that my mind, body and soul had been through some major transformations, and I was left with multiple issues, including chronic pain, mind-numbing fatigue, and bouts of depression.  Despite all of these issues, I had been trying hard to pull myself back together.  I had joined a fitness club and used the treadmills regularly.  I'd been meditating almost daily for a few months.  I had completely overhauled my diet.  And yet, it felt like there was no end in sight.  I was unprepared for the sheer length of the recovery process.  But not being one to easily give up, I kept looking for solutions.  And that's what led me to try that yoga class that night.

At the time, I could not have dreamed that yoga would soon become a big part of my life, nor of the doors that it would open for me in the coming months.  But here I am,  over a year later, fully embracing yoga as part of my new, healthier lifestyle.

As fate would have it, I was the only student in class that night.  A private lesson!  The instructor asked what I wanted to get out of the class, so I explained my situation.  She patiently led me through some gentle stretches and gave me a few moves to work on at home.  I felt so blessed to have stumbled onto this class and I was hopeful that it would be the leg up I needed to help me get over the hump and more fully into recovery.

After that first night, I began attending that evening yoga class regularly twice a week and gradually I began to feel improvement in my range of motion, flexibility, and balance. As I worked through the poses and stretches my instructor led me through, I finally felt like my body was beginning to heal.

More Than Just A Physical Practice

In the beginning, I thought that yoga was mainly a physical practice, which would help my body recover from the assault it had been through.  But what I discovered was that yoga actually is much more than that.  It is also healing for mind and spirit as well.  Yoga provides great stress relief.   At the end of each class, my yoga instructor talks the class through a full body relaxation series as we rest in sevasana (or corpse) pose.  Yoga has also helped me to be fully present in the moment.  I have learned to focus on my breath as I flow through the poses and to use a soft focused gaze (or drishti) to help further my focus.

Still Learning, Still Exploring

I am by no means an expert at yoga.  I still consider myself a newbie, but I continue to enjoy the process of discovering where this healing modality will take me, and I hope to inspire others to try it out for themselves.  

I will continue exploring this topic in upcoming posts, including my account of the Rhythms of Nature Yoga Retreat that I attended last September at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado.

Namasté!