The benefits of meditation and yoga for cancer patients: how one woman reduced her stress levels and anxiety through mind-body healing
- Meditation, yoga and the traditional Indian medicine known as Ayurveda helped a woman with cancer let go of her stress and anxiety
- The cancer diagnosis gave her a sense of purpose to inspire others to look deeply into their own lives and to prioritise their health and relationships
How we choose to face and embrace our troubles shapes the way we perceive them. Most people would see having cancer as a terrifying ordeal, for example, but for 45-year-old Alison Brock, cancer has been a blessing for which she is grateful – a wake-up call that led her to transform her life and find her purpose.
“I am a different person today, compared to who I was four years ago. Cancer taught me the importance of self-care, of nourishing my mind, body and spirit,” says Brock, a long-time resident of Hong Kong. “We often think self-care is selfish, but when you take care of yourself properly, you can do a much better job of caring for your family, friends and community.”
Her cancer story began in February 2016, when she felt a small lump in her breast while having a shower. “As soon as I felt the hard, pea-sized lump, I was filled with fear and instantly thought ‘it’s cancer’,” she says. A trio of tests – a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy – confirmed her fears: she had stage one breast cancer.
“All I could think about was, ‘what if I die? How will my three young children cope, growing up without a mother?’,” says Brock, for whom telling her kids about her illness was wrenching. “My youngest who was four years old at the time, asked me ‘Mummy, are you going to die?’”
