Workshops & EventsYoga for People Living with Cancer
(a Yoga Biomedical Trust/The Life Centre Continuing Professional Development Course)
90-92 Pentonville Road,
London N1
Sat 14 & Sun 15 Feb, 2009
Book at The Life Centre Reception
or call 020 7221 4602
Downloads
Download Booking Form for this CPD Course
- qualified yoga therapists
- students on The Life Centre/Yoga Biomedical Trust Yoga Therapy Diploma Course
- qualified yoga teachers with some experience of working with people with cancer.
Each year, more than 275,000 people in the UK discover that they have developed cancer. Some of them will turn to yoga for support in dealing with the trauma of diagnosis and treatment, and for help in their healing process. So, whether or not we intend to work specifically with people who have cancer, most of us will at some point in our teaching lives encounter students with cancer. For many, this will raise a variety of questions:
- Why do people with cancer come to yoga, and what are their expectations?
- How can yoga help them?
- Can yoga do them any harm?
- What should the teacher do, and not do?
This course is intended to help yoga teachers and therapists develop the confidence, the knowledge, and the personal and professional skills to teach people who are dealing with the challenging experience of a life-changing illness: caring and compassion, most obviously, but also the maturity and detachment that allow one to care and to be compassionate without becoming inappropriately involved emotionally, or drained energetically. The course will look at this aspect of the teaching, and its unique demands and possible effects on the teacher.
The course will offer an overview of cancer, its treatments, and the effects of those treatments; and insight into the experience of cancer and why people with cancer come to yoga. We will look at the ways in which yoga practice can help and support them, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We will consider the potentially overwhelming emotions a life-changing illness gives rise to; and the ways in which yoga practice can help people to acknowledge, accept, process, and release these emotions and free the energy held in them.
The course days will be a mix of practical work, talks, and group discussions in which it is expected that everyone will participate. We will introduce the simple movement, breathing, relaxation, and meditation techniques that in Julie’s personal experience and teaching and training work have proved most helpful. Some of these key practices will be worked on in each session, and participants will be expected to practice them between sessions.
Julie Friedeberger has been practising yoga since 1970. She qualified with the British Wheel of Yoga in 1988 and did seven further years of study and training with Swami Dharmananda Saraswati, founder and spiritual head of the Dharma Centre for Yoga and Healing. She has taught yoga since 1987, including work with old people and emotionally disturbed people. Between 1990 and 2000 she tutored two five-year teachers’ training courses for the Dharma Centre.
Yoga was the key factor in Julie’s own recovery and healing from breast cancer in 1993, an experience that left her with a deeper trust in yoga’s potential for healing (not “curing”!) and for bringing about positive change on all the levels of our being: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The focus of her teaching in the years since then has increasingly been on how the yogic practices contribute to healing, and on the effectiveness and power of the simplest of these practices. Since 1998 she has regularly taught BWY In-Service Training days throughout the UK on yoga for people living with cancer, and workshops and seminars on the healing power of yoga for the BWY and other yoga and cancer support organisations.
In 1998 Julie started a Yoga and Cancer programme at the Yoga Therapy Centre, since when she has been contributing a module to the Yoga Biomedical Trust Yoga Therapy Diploma Course, and teaching a weekly class at the Centre for people who are living with cancer. In 2006, at the request of the British Wheel of Yoga, she developed the Teacher Training Module on Yoga for People Living with Cancer on which this Continuing Professional Development course is based.
A Visible Wound: A Healing Journey through Breast Cancer (1996) describes her cancer experience and the support her yoga practice gave her through that transformative, pivotal period of her life.
The Healing Power of Yoga (2004) developed out of her subsequent work with people with cancer. It is a practical book, with instructions and line drawings for the practices that will be included in the course.
You should also make yourself familiar with the practices on Julie’s CD, Breathe and Relax: A Way to Healing. The books and the CD are available from:
Julie Friedeberger,
16 Coleraine Road
Blackheath
London SE3 7PQ
Yoga Nidra will form a substantial element of the course, and will be included on all course days. Specialist training is needed in order to teach the full practice, but for experience and understanding it is suggested that participants regularly practise with at least one of Swami Pragyamurti’s excellent Yoga Nidra CDs and read Swami Satyananda’s book, Yoga Nidra. These can be obtained from Yogamatters (www.yogamatters.com) or from the Satyananda Yoga Centre (http://www.syclondon.com).
There is a great deal of information about cancer on the internet, of varying degrees of accuracy and usefulness. You are encouraged to investigate some of the better websites. The following are well-designed and well-structured sites that provide clear, comprehensive information:
http://cancerbacup.org.uk
http://www.cancer.gov
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org
http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk