This short course/CPD presents Birthlight Yoga for Breast Health as part of Well Woman Yoga, a holistic approach to Yoga for women’s health and wellness informed by Ayurveda.
Regulated by the endocrine system, breasts respond to hormonal changes through women’s lives from teens to post-menopause years. Breasts matter about how women feel about themselves in cultural and personal ways: they are erotic, beautiful, to be celebrated, massaged, and nurtured.
Breasts are ignored in most yoga teacher training courses. If you’re a Yoga teacher or therapists interested in promoting women’s health with yoga you will gain new insights about how to adapt practices to suit women’s breasts, rather than women having to endure discomfort. Good posture and proprioception are key to how women experience their breasts. Enhancing long-term breast health, whether women have undergone breast surgery or not, must find its place in a celebration of the feminine at all ages.
This Well Woman Yoga module/CPD offers relevant knowledge from Ayurveda and Yoga, and a wealth of practical resources that women can use at different stages of their lifecycle, whether they wish to take care of their breasts in a preventive perspective or to maintain their health and wellbeing after undergoing breast cancer treatment.
Although breastfeeding is good for breast health overall, it is not easy for all mothers in many ways. However, learnt ease with breasts can promote ease in infant feeding. “where breastfeeding is concerned, experts can only give information, or advice, or care. But breastfeeding mothers need more than that. They first need a shared self-confidence.”
Michel Odent
Breast cancer represents 15% of all new cancer cases each year in the UK (55,545 cases of women’s breast cancer in 2020). Does prevention and self-care matter? Since 82% of breast cancers are in women over 50, wellbeing through the perimenopause years and beyond matter, whether women need to undergo medical treatment and surgery or not.
Maintaining good tone in the muscles that support the breasts in the chest and the back is crucial for health promotion and day to day wellbeing. If at some point a mastectomy is required, and whether breast reconstruction is the chosen option or not, this good tone can make a significant difference to how women inhabit their bodies post-surgery.
Following this course all health professionals working with women in a holistic perspective will be able to offer simple self-massage and yoga practices that can bring about greater physical comfort, self-esteem, acceptance, and harmony.
Yoga therapists wishing to support women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer or who have undergone treatment will gain directly applicable knowledge and practices from this CPD, but further yoga therapy skills are required to help women individually through medical treatment.
You will gain awareness of:
- Breast anatomy and the key ‘muscles of yoga’ that can be activated in supporting breasts. What happens when breasts change.
- Anatomy and Physiology of breasts in Ayurveda.
- Why and how spinal alignment and correct breathing matter.
- The relation between breasts, heart, and the lymphatic system. Breasts and shakti are related.
- How to accommodate yoga asanas to breasts rather than breasts to asanas.
Practices taught will include:
- Two Self massage of breasts sequences (one short, one longer), with instructions about using oils suitable for the breast tissue.
- Self-care for lymphatic drainage (with and without axillary nodes).
- Yoga-based practices and Asana variations to promote breast health.
- Yoga sequences to ease sore breasts during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and the lactation period.
- Yoga sequences for breasts during the perimenopause and beyond.
- Breast-based self-nurture with yoga for all women, using mudras and visualisation.
- Gentle but effective stimulation of marma points to promote breast health.
You will acquire additional knowledge of:
- How to practically help women celebrate their breasts as they are and find harmony with their breasts through their life trajectories and choices (augmentation, reduction, implants.
- How to use yoga for breast health to develop a more integrated awareness of self care.
- Yoga practices to help women reclaim their breasts after breastfeeding.
- Yoga practices to help women reclaim breasts or breast space-after surgery, with or without breast reconstruction.
Birthlight prioritises simple and effective body-based practice over and above technical information. Helping one woman at a time and facilitating the wellbeing of women in yoga classes in the community is yoga for life. This course is based on this value.
This short course can be taken as a stand alone CPD as one of the elective modules of the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga Diploma.
Françoise has been personally motivated to develop yoga for breast health in her yoga practice and teaching after losing most of the women in her female lineage and several close friends to breast cancer.
For more information on the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga course visit our Well Woman Information Page.
