Description

Birthlight Yoga for Breast Health October 2025

Yoga for Breast Health – A Holistic Approach

This short course/workshop presents Birthlight Yoga for Breast Health as part of Well Woman Yoga – a holistic approach to women’s health informed by both modern understanding and traditional Ayurvedic perspectives. Open to yoga teachers, therapists, health professionals, or anyone interested in breast health for personal knowledge.

Breasts are ignored in most yoga teacher training courses. If you’re a Yoga teacher or therapist 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.

Why Breast Health Matters

Our breasts change throughout our lives, responding to hormonal shifts from puberty through to post menopause. They’re central to how we experience our bodies – physically, emotionally, and energetically. Yet yoga training and yoga classes rarely address them specifically!

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. Good muscle tone can make a significant difference to how women inhabit their bodies. This can also make a difference post-surgery whether that involves mastectomy or breast reconstruction or not.

Many women experience common non-cancerous breast conditions through the life cycles that can affect comfort and wellbeing, particularly through the menstrual cycle and during perimenopause including:

• Cyclical breast tenderness and fibrocystic breast changes
• Benign lumps, cysts, and breast pain 
• Changes during/after breastfeeding

While these conditions require proper medical assessment, many women seek complementary approaches to help manage associated discomfort.

Important Note About Breast Cancer

Current research-supported approaches for reducing breast cancer risk focus primarily on lifestyle factors like maintaining healthy weight, regular exercise, limiting alcohol, not smoking, and appropriate screening – especially for those with hereditary risk factors. This course does not claim to reduce cancer risk beyond these established factors.

Instead, we focus on comfort, awareness, and traditional practices that may support overall breast health, comfort and wellbeing.

Ayurvedic Perspective on Breast Health

In Ayurveda, breast tissue is considered a site of kapha dosha and is associated with the mammary channels (stanya vaha srotas). The health of breast tissue is connected to:

• Proper lymphatic flow (related to rasa dhatu or plasma tissue)
• Hormonal balance across the menstrual cycle and life stages
• The energy of the heart center and emotional wellbeing
• The quality and flow of bodily fluids and nourishment

This traditional understanding offers a complementary perspective to modern anatomy and physiology.

What you will explore:

• Breast anatomy and the key ‘muscles of yoga’ that can be activated in supporting breasts.
• How the menstrual cycle and perimenopause may affect breasts.
• 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.
• 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.

Following this course you’ll be able to share simple self-massage and yoga practices that can bring about greater physical comfort, self-esteem, acceptance, and harmony from a holistic perspective.

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.

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 was originally 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: https://birthlight.com/well-woman-yoga/

Tutors

Kirsteen Ruffell & Liese van Dam

Where

Live on zoom

Breakout rooms and Q&A sessions will facilitate learning and lively interaction. Accompanying the live zoom sessions, our online learning platform  illustrates the course with visual materials, online study and includes a pre-course component accessible to participants ahead of the course.

When

Friday 10th Oct – 6.30pm-8pm UK times

Saturday 11th Dec – 9.30am- 4.30pm

Sunday 12th Dec 2023- 9.30am-1pm

Qualification

Participants will receive a digital Certificate of Attendance. If you would like more than a Certificate of Attendance you can complete the coursework to gain a Birthlight Certificate for teaching Yoga for Breast Health.

Coursework consists of a worksheet (10 questions) and two documented case-studies (either one group and one individual, or two individual case studies, face to face or online).  Coursework can be completed within six months and will be carefully assessed with personalised feedback. This Short Course also counts as an Elective module of the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga Diploma.

For more information on the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga Diploma please contact us.

Contact Hours

12 contact hours live on Zoom

Equipment Recommended

PC, Laptop or mobile phone and a good signal. A yoga mat and various props, a chair, space to move around.

Max Participants

45

Online Learning Resources

Yes, including pre-course reading.