Pilates and breast cancer
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and a good time to remind ourselves and those women we love to get early diagnosis testing. It’s amazing to say the words, “for those recovering from breast cancer” and for many women this is the case because of the research that has been done due to the fundraising and building of awareness of Breast Cancer Awareness month. If you know a woman who is recovering, pilates can be a great part of the rehabilitation plan and pilates actually has some history with breast cancer rehabilitation. In the 1950’s Eve Gentry, one of Joseph Pilates’ protégés, had a mastectomy for breast cancer and Joseph helped her rehabilitate with his method. She went on to create her own school of pilates in Santa Fe, NM and lived into her 80’s. There are several different types of surgeries depending on which type of cancer is present and this will determine how much mobility is available in the shoulder after the surgery. It usually takes 8-12 weeks after surgery to start any exercise program and hopefully the survivor has been having rehabilitation with a physical therapist in those 8-12 weeks. Pilates is a gentle yet strengthening exercise focused on quality of movement rather than quantity and this can decrease injury during recovery. Posture can also be affected because of pain from the surgery and compensatory movement patterns and pilates can help start to rebuild core strength and shoulder and upper back. Contracting the core can be done without movement so even if everything else is restricted the core can still be maintained. Therefore, learning how to contract the core pre-surgery is a really good idea but not essential. After your instructor has given you exercises to do at home some helpful items to use in between pilates sessions to continue building strength are a band and the toning balls or hand weights. Your instructor can give you specific exercises during your session and then doing them 3-4 times per week can help recovery. STOTT will eventually be coming out with a breast cancer DVD but in the time being another good resource is Dr. Suzanne Martin who has a DVD called Breast Cancer Survivor’s Guide and has lots of good information, her website is www.pilatestherapeutics.com. We have several instructors at Bodycenter who have experience working with recovery of breast cancer and you can call Shane for a referral.
Melissa Noble
from Bloomington, IN