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Ask Tari your yoga related questions and discuss your concerns. Receive guidance and advice for any cancer at any stage from our experienced and knowledgeable Principal Yoga Teacher, Tari Prinster.

Send your monthly questions to asktari@gmail.com and we will post your question and Tari's answer on our website.

August 2010 Question - Why Can't I Stop Crying?

Tari's Response: Helen is a thin athletic woman married to an Air Force captain for 5 years. Helen was anticipating starting a family at 34 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The small tumor was removed, tested and revealed she had BRAC1 and 2 genes. When she was 16, Helen’s mother passed away of breast cancer. Helen and her husband consulted oncologists and plastic surgeons before making the painful decision to have a bilateral mastectomy followed by breast reconstruction. Her loss and choice of cancer treatment would allow her the possibility of having the child they had always wanted. The decision gave her hope, but a plethora of emotions remained.

Helen Asked Tari: ---I am having a tough time right now and need to figure out how to get past it. I cry for me because I feel like my body has totally betrayed me in spite of being so good to it all these years. I know it is different for everyone--but how did you deal with your aftermath of emotions? What helped you the most?

Tari Answered: You are expressing normal feelings for someone so recently diagnosed with a serious cancer: fear, doubt, confusion, disappointment, plus the unfamiliar day-to-day fluctuations of all of these emotions. Awareness of these emotions and fluctuations is one of the secret positive side-effect of cancer. Cancer can be an opportunity, albeit unwelcome, to look at life through a different lens. If you use that lens wisely, there are many valuable lessons. To do this at such an early age may not be a curse, so much as, a blessing.

Cancer is a box full of surprises. Yours was disappointment in your body. We are brainwashed to think that if you had eaten more veggies, ran more miles, stayed more positive, or had your body would not have let you down and allowed you to get cancer. That kind of thinking makes it more difficult to become a healthy-cancer-survivors. It adds unnecessary guilt to the challenges of a cancer diagnosis. Don’t blame your body. It is not separate from you. It is you, and you need each other.

I suggest you think of cancer is a manageable disease. Find tools to manage your body and feelings. An important tool is self-compassion. Don’t blame your body for betraying you. Rather dig deep inside of it and find what makes it health, stronger and more resistant to all diseases.

Another good tool is to not be afraid of negative emotions. They hold valuable lessons. Use them to get to a new place in your life, physically and mentally.

Think about your body as precious life giving vessel, and focus on how best to treat it now. How do you make your body a cancer-free and unresponsive environment? Be gentle, nurturing and understanding of your body, just as you would of a newborn. (Which you will have one day.)
For me the finding tools to get health, stay cancer resistant and effectively manage my emotions was yoga.

After my cancer surgeries, I panicked when I could not lift my arm after auxiliary node surgeries. The fear of lymphedema was stronger than the fear of dying of cancer. I restarted my daily yoga practice slowly and gently, but with a different focus and intention. Creating an anti-cancer environment in my body and get back to normal as quickly as possible was the goal. It was a process not without setbacks.

I had two big surprises during my months of recovery using yoga as my post cancer prescription. First was the yoga tool I had underestimated… meditation and thought control. I really needed it. There was great value in being able to monitor my thoughts so I could go to sleep at night, manage the stress of waiting in the doctor’s office on my follow-up exams or lying in an MRI machine for 45 min.

The second yoga tool was discovering that yoga helped me as much, if not more, than physical therapy in ways I did not anticipate. Yoga keeps me strong, flexible and active. Moving is how we detox the body. We are designed to move. Movement does not cause cancer. It is the main tool of survival, or, as I now call it, 'thrival.'

The third tool is the most powerful. Yoga taught me how to breathe. When they said those three words, ‘You have cancer’. I stopped breathing. Cancer stole my breath. Through my daily yoga practice I have learned to breathe again. The best lesson in all this is to take life one breathe at a time.

My suggestion is The Yoga Prescription© use yoga to reclaim your life during and after cancer. In the meantime, tell me about your healing process, send me more questions and stay in touch.

Tari Prinster
asktari@gmail.com


Tari Prinster is a cancer survivor and senior yoga teacher. She created a yoga program for women cancer survivors 8 years ago. During that time,Tari has trained yoga teachers all around the globe in her methodology. She leads The Libby Ross Foundation yoga retreats and teaches weekly classes in New York City. Her forthcoming book, The Yoga Prescription: Using Yoga to Reclaim Your Life During and After Cancer, is a practical guide demonstrating how and why yoga can help reduce risks, challenges and long-term side effects of cancer. www.tariprinster.com