March 26--The lobby of Heartland Health's Cancer Center doesn't look much like a yoga studio, but Andrea Ambrose and her students make it work.
Ms. Ambrose separates off a corner with rolling room dividers and brings a small stereo to play soothing music. She brings extra mats and blankets to lay down.
The space, in a way, represents what the Restorative Yoga class is all about. Just as the dividers and the music try to create the illusion the class isn't taking place in a cancer center, the yoga tries to bring a reprieve to the participants' cancer diagnosis.
For a little bit anyway, patients aren't concentrating on cancer, even though the signs of it, the pages to the oncologists over the Cancer Center's intercom, the ring of the telephones, surround them.
Yoga brings other benefits to cancer patients as well.
In 2010, the University of Rochester released a study that found yoga helps cancer patients with sleep problems and fatigue. Students of a yoga class designed for cancer patients reported better sleep and also were able to cut back on sleep medications, according to the report by lead researcher, Dr. Karen Mustian.
Rita Whipple, an oncology social worker for the Cancer Center, and Ms. Ambrose both say they've seen how Heartland's yoga class helps with participants' fatigue.
"One of the biggest ways I see is (through) increased energy," Ms. Ambrose says of the class's benefits for cancer patients. "From what they tell me, they sleep better. They're more relaxed, less stressed."
A recent class, which meets at 4 p.m. Wednesdays, drew three participants. One woman, who asked not to be interviewed because her colleagues don't know about her diagnosis, told Ms. Ambrose her knee and hip were hurting her.
As the class moved into the warrior pose's lunge, Ms. Ambrose told the student not to bend her knee if it bothered her. The woman stayed standing, while Ms. Ambrose and her two other students went into warrior pose.
Ms. Ambrose says her class is very individualized. Before it begins, she tries to assess how her participants are feeling. Sometimes that means throwing out what she had planned to do. All participants also are asked to get doctors' notes clearing them for the exercise.
Sometimes her participants are coming to yoga straight from treatment. Others, unable to do the physical part of yoga, practice the breathing and meditation parts of the class from one of the lobby's chairs.
There's more to the group than downward facing dogs and sunrise salutations, adds Ms. Whipple.
"I see them form their own little support group in classes," she says.
Caregivers also are invited to attend.
Similar forms of exercise bring benefits to cancer patients as well. Heartland also offers tai chi at the Cancer Center.
Tricia Titcomb used to teach Nia at the Cancer Center, and she now teaches it at the Yoga Room.
She credits the practice, which combines dance martial arts, yoga and tai chi, among other practices, for making her cancer diagnosis a little easier. She went through two and a half years of treatment and lost an eye to cancer. She practiced and taught Nia the whole time.
"Through Nia and the movement forms, my body kind of reconfigured itself and I never lost my sense of balance or my sense of groundedness," Ms. Titcomb says.
She also teaches the practice at an annual summer camp for patients and survivors near Kirksville, Mo., and has seen her experience reflected in other participants.
She's seen how exercise, even modified versions, can bring a little relief to a condition that can be overwhelming. She's watched cancer patients get into the music, into the forms.
"The next thing you know, you're laughing. For no other reason, for that one hour, they forget that maybe they have a chemo treatment tomorrow," she says.
Jennifer Gordon can be reached at jennifer.gordon@newspressnow.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SJNPGordon.
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