Pink Ribbon Pilates

I just spent the weekend in San Francisco with ten amazing women learning about the post-operative exercise protocol in the Pink Ribbon Certification program. The women had come from all over the world for the workshop and the backgrounds and certifications in the room were diverse. Some people were Physical Therapists, with a solid understanding of rehabilitative exercise while several others were brand new Pilates Instructors just beginning to navigate a career working with bodies. Most people, like me, had already had many clients who had breast cancer and we were there to find a systematic way to confront the myriad of physical challenges that come from the disease and the treatments. Cancer is humbling both for the person going through it and all the people trying to help the person through it. Perhaps this is why I found that in the workshop there were no egos in the room. There was a truly collaborative approach to learning and understanding the material.

I taught my own father Pilates when he was losing his strength from treatments for Prostate Cancer. He was without a doubt the most energetic person I had ever known before the illness and yet when he was going through treatments, some days he would plead to skip our sessions simply because it was the last thing he felt like doing. Discouraging as it was to see him weakened, he was able to see improvement from the work we did. I think no matter how much strength had been lost, those little flashes of progress offered us both some hope that it was not always going to be like this. Just show up and do the work and you will get stronger. That is a fact. This inspires me to keep people working when they are having a bad day and feel like there is no point in exercise. Yes, it is possible for the illness to take over and it did in my father’s case. However, he continued his exercise program almost until the last day of his life. Fortunately, with early detection in Breast Cancer, we are not facing this kind of prognosis. The treatments can be temporarily debilitating but we have ways to, as Joseph Pilates said, “fix this.” We know that exercise has healing properties. It helps regulate mood swings and it fights depression. It helps with functional movement and life skills. It improves circulation, reduces fatigue, and it is necessary to rebuild the strength that is lost from the surgeries and treatments for Breast Cancer. I look forward to many more experiences in my career when my client and I witness perhaps only tiny, but very tangible improvements in strength. It is those moment that help us both keep believing that if you continue to show up for the work, you will get stronger.