Think about this. Women with breast cancer are not just surviving but thriving. Although it has only been about 5 years since strength training for women with breast cancer has been encouraged by their physicians, many breast cancer women have taken the position that strength training, exercise, and mindful practices are paramount to their overall recovery and health status for many reasons beyond the physical strength benefits.

The Real Beauty of Strength Training For Women With breast Cancer
As a wellness coach, it’s often difficult to compartmentalize the effects that strength training has on a single aspect of the body. It’s true. Evidence does suggest that a twice weekly comprehensive strength training program can increase the body’s bone mineral mass approximately 5 – 9% depending on the program duration. And, it is also true that a female may gain as much as 4- 9 pounds of muscle mass in a comprehensive 2 day a week strength program depending on the program duration and age of the exerciser. But the real beauty of what strength training can do for women with newly diagnosed and treated breast cancer lies in the multitude of life quality issues that can be managed more comprehensively and more astutely, and perhaps most importantly through their own initiatives.

Mind Body Connection as Restorative Benefit
While working with one breast cancer survivor in the weight room at Serenata Beach Club, she tells me her tendencies for fatigue, anxiety, depression, and weight gain have been greatly diminished since training in the gym. I think to myself, and wonder how many other breast cancer survivors and patients from years past could have benefitted from such sage advice as using exercise to benefit not only the physical body, but the mind body connection so commonly recognized today as a necessary restorative benefit to those with various cancers and diseases.

Survivors and Patients Using Exercise as Agent For Real Change
Many breast cancer survivors and patients in our communities have been using weight training and aerobic exercise as powerful agents for change. They are smartly aware that the advantages of exercise are amazingly powerful because the benefits extend beyond the physical realm, such as increased strength, increased bone density, decreased body weight, and better health numbers in general, “but they help me,” as one 7 year cancer client says, “live more graciously and moment by moment.” Another says that, “Exercise and the powerful feeling I get from lifting weights reinvented my life. I am more confident. I am more in the moment each day. And I am more grateful due in great part to feeling strong and in control of my life. It’s been a long time, but I am far better physically without a doubt. Mentally, I have made leaps and bounds.”And yet another newly diagnosed and treated survivor says, “I’m the same person, but I know more about myself and life. I see things differently, but in a good way.” And years ago I recall a client that aptly stated something similar to this, “When I work out, not only do I reap the rewards physically, but I feel I am extending my will to not just survive but to thrive.” She says, “I was not put on this earth to merely survive, which sometimes you can feel that way with this, but I have to feel alive, and movement does that for me.”

Survivors Leading the Way
Perhaps what I have learned best from my breast cancer survivor clients is the understanding that breast cancer is about moving forward in a way that they may control important variables of their own healthy lives. It often includes becoming stronger by working out, lifting weights, engaging in cardiovascular exercise, as well as eating healthful foods. But more importantly, it seems the variables they control are the heightened sense of the mind- body- spirit connection that is becoming a prevalent desired state of being today for many of us. Many participate not just in weight training and cardiovascular training, but in meditation, spiritual, and self awareness practices. It occurs to me often that many of our cancer survivors here in the Jacksonville area are leading the way to this heightened sense of being that many of strive us for. Their diligence and persistence in coming out of this disease with a clearer vision and understanding of what’s important in life is admirable.

Congratulations to our many breast cancer survivors. You have figured it out and it appears you are doing a fine job in leading the way for the rest of us in gaining a more satisfying, engaging, and simpler life that is created when engendering more mindful, integrated, healthful living practices.