Tips For Supporting Yoga Students With Cancer Related Fatigue
Fatigue is a huge part of navigating cancer treatment as nearly every type of treatment has fatigue as a side effect. Knowing how to manage it is a challenge for many cancer patients.
A student asked me recently: “How do you know whether to push yourself to exercise, or whether to rest? Shouldn’t we always just listen to our bodies?”
This is such an important question, especially when it comes to cancer-related fatigue.
Forcing themselves to move through deep exhaustion can be counterproductive, leaving someone wiped out for the rest of the day or longer. But research also shows that regular activity actually helps reduce cancer-related fatigue.
On the other hand, if tiredness is connected to low mood, lethargy, drug side effects or lack of self-belief, then a bit of movement can shift emotions and raise energy.
So how can support students with cancer related fatigue?
As a yoga teacher or someone who has a long practise of embodied and somatic movement, I imagine you have cultivated a close relationship with your body and have an intuitive sense of what is appropriate in the moment.
Many of our students don’t have this background, a lot of those who come to my yoga for cancer classes are complete newbies who have come in the recommendation of their medical team.
We also need to remember that even those with yoga experience are in a situation where they may feel as though they are in a different body, one that doesn’t quite feel like theirs. This will affect their confidence in reading signals their body sends.
The classes we teach can be a wonderful held space and kind of laboratory to explore and discover what works and what doesn’t for each person. Our teaching cues can encourage people to feel into what is going on in their body and notice how they feel after each practice - a kind of try it and see approach.
It may be that it is over the course of a few classes that students find out what their appropriate level of activity is. Some will lean towards over-doing things and work backwards from that, others will be more cautious and gradually increase the amount they do.
Here are some tips for your lesson plans:
Be clear that nobody has to do the whole class, they can stop and rest whenever they need to and join in again when they feel ready (or not).
Start with breath work and gentle mobilisation to help prana and energy flow.
Make all practises variable so they can be done in a gentle or strong way depending on the energy of each student.
Add in pauses between each practise to breathe, rest, do a body scan, recentre – whatever flows with your teaching.
Avoid ‘bootcamp’ teaching cues that encourage people to push harder/through or to hold longer than they want to or do just one more.
Have a longer than usual final relaxation.
If you’d like to find out much more about this area, there is a whole module related to Stress, Trauma and Fatigue in the full 12 week YFCA Holistic Teacher training Course.