Yoga trainer eases cancer patients’ pain

 

Da Nang (VNS/VNA) – The 5.30am yoga
class was over. Hurriedly wrapping up her mat, sweaty Dang
Thi Quynh Nhu could not spare time for a refreshing shower. After teaching the
first class of the morning, she headed straight to the hospital.

As she walked towards the oncology
department of the Da Nang City General Hospital, her steps hastened at the
sight of a crowd gathered along a hallway in front of the hospital auditorium.

At their feet were dozens of worn out
sponge yoga mats that most people would have discarded by now, just by their
looks. There were peelings all over the old, faded mats, and they’d become
unusually thin.

The second yoga class of the morning was
special. It was free, and the students were patients battling the last stages
of cancer.

The class would generally last for an hour,
ending at around 7.30am three days every week – Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
– before the 25-year-old instructor rushed to her office at 8am.

“The reason I choose that class time is
that it is no longer too cold in early morning, and not too hot either. It is
cool, which is perfect for the patients,” Nhu told Viet Nam News.

A 70-year-old patient is one of two dozen
regular students of this special . Suffering from breast cancer for
the last ten years, the disease had metastasised all over her body. She’d had
to undergo prolonged radiotherapy and her health had deteriorated day by day.
Her arms stiffened, her body ached, and there were times she could not move her
body an inch.

Now, she’s able to raise her arms higher
than she could ever imagine. “It is so simple for anyone else. But it isn’t for
someone one like me,” she said.

Nhu, a professional yoga trainer, knows
very well that for ordinary people are simply impossible for
cancer patients.

“They are in pain and their bodies are very
weak. That’s why I teach them yoga therapy, with basic exercises of breathing
and light moves which help to strengthen their muscles and organs,” Nhu said.

The first class opened on a November morning
last year. Nhu is an office worker during the day and a yoga instructor at
different gym centres in the evening. She had wanted to do something meaningful
in the city, so she jumped at a friend’s suggestion that she teaches yoga to
cancer patients.

Doctors and nurses at the hospital, to her
pleasant surprise, were more than supportive of her idea. They told her that
the cancer patients, who were very sick and in horrible pain all the time,
spent most of their time in bed and hardly got any physical exercise.

“The hospital staff helped me a lot. They
cleared out the chairs in the hallway and laid out the mats for the class as I
did not have enough time to do it, running from my early morning class to the
hospital,” Nhu said.

Some patients quit in the middle of the
class as it hurt so bad when they tried to do the moves for the first time, the
young trainer said.

“But time by time they got accustomed to
the exercises, they felt their health getting better and their body movements
got easier when practicing yoga. They started calling on others and encouraging
others to join,” Nhu smiled.

The number of the class members varied each
day, between 15 to 30, as not all patients could make it to the class on a
regular basis.

“But if there are ones who want to
practice, I will teach them,” Nhu said.

“I don’t know about the future, but yes, I will
try to keep the class running as long as I can.”-VNA