Cancer R & R

When Jnani Chapman teaches yoga, she relies on some of the same prompts heard in yoga classes around the country. "Use your breath to release the clutter in your mind," she encourages in soothing tones. "As you inhale, acknowledge whatever's on your mind at the moment. As you exhale, breathe those thoughts out and away."

While Chapman's strategy is standard, the "clutter" plaguing her students is not. After class, a few of the women give voice to their distractions. "I think about dying all the time," says Beth softly.

	Member Quote "I've heard about yoga for fitness and for spiritual pursuits. But now yoga is being used in medical settings... Has anyone else used yoga as a complementary health approach?" --anja Respond

The other students nod, unsurprised. "There are times when I feel grateful to be alive and I have a good day. Then I find a lump on my neck and I plunge back into despair," says Mary. "I've spent a lot of time veering between the gratefulness and despair."

Yoga, the women agree, serves as both respite and ballast, a safe and quiet place that allows them to relax, exhale.

Beth and Mary, both of whom have been battling cancer for years, are just two of the dozens of women who have taken advantage of the yoga classes taught by Chapman and sponsored by the Carol Frank Buck Breast Care Center and the Ida and Joseph Frank Cancer Resource Center of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

At the country's most prestigious cancer centers, rolled-up sticky mats and yoga straps are a common sight.

Chapman also teaches women receiving treatment for breast cancer for the Breast Cancer Complementary Support Program, a 12-week series collaboratively supported by UCSF, at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and the Institute of Health and Healing at California Pacific Medical Center.

The classes, offered several days a week free of charge, attract both current patients and alumni alike, says Chapman, who says she might have in one class a woman in remission for eight years and, in another, a patient whose metastatic cancer has spread to her bones and who is coping with end-of-life issues.

Fortunately for cancer patients, Chapman's classes are not unique. At the country's most prestigious cancer centers--M.D. Anderson in Houston and Sloan-Kettering in New York City, to name two--rolled-up sticky mats and yoga straps are a common sight. Yoga is routinely prescribed by oncologists as a way for cancer patients to reduce stress and retain or regain movement and muscle tone.