I often get yoga teachers reaching out to me with lesson planning questions along the line of, “I have a student who has just been diagnosed with cancer, what should I teach and what precautions are there?”, or “what asana practises are best for breast cancer, I want to support a friend who is going through treatment?”

What do people think about or picture when they hear the word ‘yoga’? For most people this will be some kind of posture, and probably one that is difficult to achieve! Even as yoga teachers fully aware that yoga is more than exercise, when we think about teaching yoga for cancer the tendency is to think first of suitable and adapted asana practises.

Recently I had a lovely experience in class with two women on either side of their surgery recovery. Both of them have had a mastectomy and reconstruction. One of them was totally new to class and the other has been coming to class for a few months. The latter, lets call her Hanna

I had an interesting conversation with a private client recently who joked about how she dresses up for her consultant appointments. As the conversation unfolded some deeper truths came to light about what was behind that.

A new lady joined my class several weeks ago who is recovering from surgery and chemotherapy. At our first meeting she explained her cancer journey so far and how she wasn’t feeling herself and was keen to ‘get back to normal’.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. The deeper you go the calmer it gets”, said the scuba dive master as I headed out over very choppy Thai waters feeling very seasick.

Have you ever tried bed yoga?! Ever thought of teaching it as a home practise to your students? I usually start my classes with …

My yoga for cancer chair class is a chatty one: it’s a small group and we sit in a circle, so it lends itself to conversation. In last week’s class…

Cancer is something that affects us on a personal as well as a professional level. We need to be conscious of this as people who work with cancer.

Have you ever received any unsolicited advice? It seems to be a common occurrence for people living with cancer.