“The cancer needs to be removed from the breast and the mind”

“It is yoga that adapts to the person, not the person to yoga. This practice has a great ability to heal, to be a therapy, to walk with us for a lifetime. It acts deep down, because it is connected to breathing, and therefore can be transforming. It is a powerful means to achieving and preserving health of mind and body, which are intended as a single, inseparable system. Health, happiness and wellness can be in our hands, enabling us to take on responsibility for ourselves in a wider context.” These are the words of Prof Krisnamacharya, a great master from Madras, that inspired this courses of yoga, which have started in the breast unit of the hospital in Gallarate.

It is part of the humanisation project sought and begun with the association C.A.O.S., which strongly believes that healing is a perfect alchemy of body and soul which needs integrated treatments. According to the President, Adele Patrini, “Like extraordinary Amazons, women will change the world of medicine”.

The course has been operating for 4 years, and has seen, first Paola Moretti and now Renata Zibetti take care of frightened women, after they had battled breast cancer. As Maria explains her relationship with this discipline, “It is not Maria who makes the yoga experience, but this experience that makes Maria, making her new, harmonious and positive”.

And Carmela said, “I started a little while ago; yoga makes me feel good.”

And Angela said, “I started at the beginning; for me, it’s a blessing. I’ve acquired a sense of responsibility and positivity.”

Then, there is Mercede, who, at the age of 75, says she is reborn. “At the beginning, I couldn’t even stand up; now I feel reborn!”

And Giovanna, who stated candidly, “Today, I’ve got yoga, and I don’t want anyone to bother me; when I’ve finished, I’ll say: I feel good!”

The increase in the incidence of breast cancer (more than 45,000 new cases a year in Italy) has led the WHO to include this disease, and the associated treatments, among the emerging priorities in public health, adding the psychosocial variable to the five distinctive features of the battle against cancer.

The number of international protocols shows that the scientific community pays a lot of attention to an interdisciplinary culture, which, in clinical practice, in training and in research in the field of oncology, give particular importance to the acquisition, by all professional figures, of new relational and cultural skills to deal with the needs connected with managing a chronic and disabling disease, like cancer. Consequently, new knowledge is developed: to respond, not only with technically, and scientifically excellent treatments, but also with the ability to “take on” the numerous complex and pressing needs of the patients and of their relatives.

When the women enter the gym, they are welcomed by Renata Zibetti with the statement, “Yoga is for you, only for you, your problems stay outside!”

The patients have formed a group, and they worry if anyone is missing; they ask, they enquire, they look for each other.

An interesting aspect of this project is the “group therapy”: when they come in and sit on the rubber mats, before they start, they have a “positive round”, when everyone recounts the positive things that happened to her during the week.

“The cancer needs to be removed from the breast and the mind,” said Dr Silvana Monetti, the Head of the Breast Unit of the hospital in Gallarate. “If the psychological issue, the conflict with the body and with fear aren’t resolved, the person is not healed.”

Pasqua Baiano, a nurse on the Breast Unit, is of the same opinion; every day, she takes care of a lot of women who come, scared, together with relatives who are even more scared, sometimes young husbands with little children.

“The keyword is ‘gently’” said Renata Zibetti. “We start from where we are, from how we are, very gently… if something has to happen, it will!”

Attention shifts from the patient to the operator, and the yoga courses are offered also to medical and nursing staff, etc. … throughout the hospital, thanks to C.A.O.S. and to the Rhamni School in Gallarate.

Laura Dajelli, the director of the school, explains, “Yoga primarily means union, which leads unavoidably to greater emotional and physical stability … to tranquillity of our minds, which at times can stop being so compulsive in producing frenzied activity.”