An Inside Job: Yoga and Cancer BY DEBORAH BAKER
“ What do people plan?” —Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
W
e human beings like to plan for our lives. Even without a defined set of expectations, we quickly learn that we will get stuck without some advanced preparation. Wash your hands, pack a raincoat. Deborah Baker hiking in Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs, CO
As students of Iyengar Yoga, our life plan includes behavior that promotes good health and well-being. Yoga helps us cultivate a healthy body and mind. We eat well, we use natural body and cleaning products, and have myriad healthy habits. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali provides a lovely framework for discipline and good living. As a rule, we are a group who feel empowered by taking control of our health. Even before I took my first Iyengar Yoga class over 29 years ago, I followed a path of healthy living. I believed that these practices could give me control over my health. That illusion was shattered when I was diagnosed with an advanced stage of Hodgkins lymphoma, an aggressive blood cancer that was a quick and certain death sentence just a generation ago. I became so dedicated to the practice of Iyengar Yoga that I eventually turned yoga teaching into a full-time career. It helped with the stress of raising children, and I even brought them with me on trips to Pune in 2005, 2007, and 2009. Yoga seemed to be the ideal path to good health. Discipline had long been a helpful coping mechanism for me, and I lived by the principals of abhyasa—practice and persistent effort—even before I understood what it was. A cancer diagnosis directly presented the principles of detachment and letting go, which now gives me a much clearer perspective of vairagya—letting go of fear and accepting what is. I live fully suspended between the twin pillars of yoga—vairagya and abhyasa. Abyhasa matters to me, but I now have a much keener view of vairagya and being fully present with the way things are. “ Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual
Yoga Samachar Spring | Summer 2019
citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” —Susan Sontag Today I am healthy, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine. Treatment has included well over 100 blood draws, which test 45 items ranging from blood cell counts to liver and kidney function, and I have endured well over a dozen CT and PET scans, two surgeries, three hospital stays, and a week in the ICU from a bout with deadly sepsis. I received a very strong but very effective combination chemotherapy called ABVD: Adriamyacin/doxorubicin, bleomycin, viniblastine, and dacarbazine. Each of these drugs has horrible side effects, and doxorubicin and viniblastine are known to cause latent heart and lung damage. I am statistically at risk for secondary cancers and a list of latent effects from the treatment. On the positive side, however, these chemicals have so far eradicated my Hodgkin lymphoma. Fast-growing or aggressive cancers respond very well to chemotherapy because the rapid rate of cell turnover enables doctors to better target these cancer cells. During the six months that I received chemotherapy, I had very little energy or desire to do yoga asanas, plus the Power Port (a registered trademark) in my chest protruded like a golf ball under my skin. It attached to a thick line through my jugular vein and into my heart. I felt the port all the time, making it painful to move my chest. I did benefit from some restorative poses, especially variations of Supta Baddha Konasana. These helped my breathing and also helped me relax.
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