Major cancer centers across the country are taking a second look at yoga. Big names such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, are now offering yoga classes to their patients.

With a history of being written off as an exercise fad, yoga has been finding its way into recent medical studies in regards to its benefits as a complimentary treatment modality for cancer patients. Psychologists specifically have been researching its effects on the brain in regards to the ‘feel-good’ chemicals that yoga releases and heightens.

Studies have shown that yoga does improve one’s overall quality of life because it promotes stress and anxiety relief. Physiologically, Ayurvedic therapy has the potential to reduce cortisol levels, although this theory is still under review.

Alyson Moadel, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY, has been tracking yoga’s effect on breast cancer patients for the past eight years. In 2007, she found that patients experienced social improvements and overall emotional well-being, when practicing yoga.

Moadel has expanded this study to include those suffering from lung and colorectal cancers, given its apparent success with breast cancer patients. The Society for Integrative Oncology release guidelines stating the treatment “should be incorporated as part of multidisciplinary approach for reducing anxiety, mood disturbance, and chronic pain and for improving quality of life in cancer patients.”

Sat Bir Khalsa, PhD of Harvard says that “Many disorders have a strong stress component, and I think yoga acts on that.” It also “increases resilience and stress-coping capabilities” if practiced long enough.

Khalsa agreed with Moadel in that “A lot of stress is due to dysfunctional thinking.” He also pointed out that, “Cognitive behavioral therapy trains you to be aware of those negative thoughts…and to replace them with more neutral, rational thoughts. Yoga does something similar, but on a deeper level.”

Improving the quality of life is something that cancer patients are in dire need of. Those suffering from extremely stubborn cancers such as mesothelioma, would benefit greatly from a practice that could clear their mind and relive stress and anxiety. Since the diagnosis of this type of cancer often occurs in the later stages of the disease, aggressive forms of traditional treatment often wear the body and mind down leaving it yearning for endorphins to ease the pain.

Gaining credibility in the medical world will not be an easy feat for yoga. It has been said that the passivity to yoga over past years has occurred because of misunderstanding of the practice and its benefits. Right now, yoga research is still in its infancy, though studies are increasingly sprouting up in hopes to prove its complimentary healing capabilities.

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