The Yoga rules

By Paul Jerard

Yoga cannot replace the medical treatment that cancer survivors must experience. However, gentle, restorative yoga speeds the recovery process and provides therapeutic healing to a ravaged body.

Cancer does not discriminate, and strikes young and old with impunity. The good thing about yoga is that it offers an appropriate therapy, exercise program, and even life path, for anyone young, old, or in between. The benefits go far beyond improved flexibility and relaxation. Yoga sets cancer survivors on the road to healing, with a life-centered focus and a real way to cope.

Health care facilities, around the world, are now incorporating yoga therapy into their cancer recovery centers. Medical professionals are beginning to recognize the extraordinary benefits yoga provides to patients. The difficult road of recovery back from cancer is not always lit well enough within basic clinical care. Yoga focuses on the union of mind, body, breath, emotion, and spirit, to finally give cancer survivors a holistic leg to stand on.

People recovering, from most types of cancer, share at least a few maladies. Fatigue is the most common. Any time the body is subjected to high stress situations, such as - surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and pain, fatigue is an obvious result.

As part of the recovery process - The body has been fighting a disease and then fighting to heal. Regular yoga practice will increase energy levels, and allow those recovering from cancer, to feel able again. Yoga postures strengthen and tone core muscles in the body. This low-impact movement also improves circulation and mobility.

The particular postures and yoga routine, that will help someone recovering from cancer, will be prescribed on an individual basis. There are many types of cancers, and what may benefit one recovery, or individual, may not be as effective in the case of another. That is why highly trained, and expert yogis, are so important for therapeutic yoga and cancer recovery. Knowledge of particular healing or therapeutic properties, of each posture, breathing method, and other yogic healing aspects, is indispensable.

ฉ Copyright 2008 - Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

Paul Jerard, E-RYT 500, has written many books on the subject of Yoga. He is a co-owner and the Director of Yoga Teacher Training at: Aura Wellness Center, in Attleboro, MA. http://www.aurawellnesscenter.com He has been a certified Master Yoga Teacher since 1995. To receive a Free Yoga e-Book: "Yoga in Practice," and a Free Yoga Newsletter, please visit: http://www.yoga-teacher-training.org/index.html