The study, the largest of its kind to date, was funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in early June.
Danhauer says the findings are good news because yoga that’s appropriate for recovering cancer patients is widely accessible and affordable.
“You will probably find someone in your community who has training in Hatha yoga or restorative yoga,” Mustian says. She recommends classes that feature one (or both) of these approaches and an instructor who’s certified by the Yoga Alliance. Ideally, she adds, the instructor will also be experienced in working with patients with health problems.
Many of the nation’s top cancer centers, such as the Stanford Cancer Center at Stanford University, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, have their own yoga programs.
At the Albert Einstein Cancer Center in the Bronx, N.Y., where researchers have been studying yoga in cancer survivors for the past 10 years, patients can continue practicing yoga at the center even if they’re no longer participating in the study. “We have several patients who have been doing it for years,” says Alyson Moadel, PhD, the director of the center’s psychosocial oncology program.
It’s not entirely clear how yoga helps cancer patients, but it’s likely to involve many different processes. The breathing exercises, for instance, seem to help some patients cope with anxiety, nausea, and pain, according to Moadel. “There’s also the group support,” she says. “They like to go to a group where there are other people like themselves doing this.”
Future research will look more closely at how yoga affects the bodies and minds of cancer patients and survivors. Last month, the MD Anderson Cancer Center received an unprecedented $4.5 million grant from the NCI to investigate incorporating yoga into breast cancer treatment. As part of that study, researchers will track the patients’ stress hormone levels and use monitors to measure their wakefulness during sleep.
