I am off to San Francisco for the Yoga Journal Conference in January. That much we know. What to take? The choices are numerous, the decisions are hard. Breast cancer is something that has personally touched several of my friends. October was breast cancer awareness month. The Susan B. Komen “Race for the Cure” hosted its Austin event last weekend. What can yoga offer cancer patients for their disease and pain management? What can it offer them on their path to recovery? While I can certainly see the value of yoga as a tool for disease management ~ learning to breathe, releasing stress, living in the moment ~ this is not something that I have any education to back me on.
In January 2009, Yoga Journal will sponsor its 6th Annual San Francisco Conference. Following the main conference, there will be an offering of one-day intensives on Monday, January 19. Themes for the daylong workshops include: Yoga and Activism, Green Yoga, and Yoga as Medicine. Within each of those topics, conference participants can further specialize.
For example, in the Yoga as Medicine offerings, participants can choose from:
- Yoga for Emotional Health: Focus on Anxiety and Depression with Gary Kraftsow
- Freedom of the Hip Joint: Asana, Anatomy, and Therapeutics with Judith Hanson Lasater
- Higher Education on the Lower Back with Aadil Palkhivala
- Anusara Yoga: Yoga to the Rescue with Desirée Rumbaugh
- Adapting Yoga and Transforming Health Care with Matthew Sanford, and finally
- Yoga as Medicine in Cancer Treatment with Jnani Chapman
Recently, a woman called me looking for my help. She wants to practice yoga. She is recovering from breast cancer. She is recovering from breast cancer AND has elementary-aged children. She is recovering from breast cancer, has elementary-aged children, AND her husband is deployed to Iraq. What can I offer this woman who has sacrificed so much?
I clicked on the description of Jnani Chapman’s workshop.
Jnani Chapman
After an overview of the body’s organs and systems, cancer cell pathology, and the side effects of treatment, we’ll explore how yoga awareness, breathing, movement, and relaxation methods can help bring symptom relief.
Will this be enough? I look for more information on Jnani Chapman. In an article about the benefits yoga can offer cancer survivors, one woman shared her experience. “For me, yoga’s main benefit is the reestablishment of a sense of my body as being ‘on my side’ after months of wondering why my cells had chosen this aberrant course,” says Merrie, a breast-cancer survivor who also attended Chapman’s class.
Hey, never underestimate the value of having someone on your side, especially when it’s yourself. After all, sometimes “the only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.” ~ Mignon McLaughlin
Yoga as Medicine in Cancer Treatment
Instructor: Jnani Chapman
Monday, January 19, 2009 from 9:00am – 4:30pm
at the Yoga Journal Conference in San Francisco
* * *
Now the options are a little better. Have you heard of the book “Cancer is a Fungus”. I ordered it on Amazon yesterday (and got it today – damn!). It explains how there is a new technique whereby a surgeon can inexpensively apply a solution of sodium bicarbonate directly to the cancer (through the vein which leads to the effected area). In just a few treatments, the cancer completely disappears, with no side effects. Bladder, oral and skin cancers can be treated without surgery.